Council Grove residents Curt and Christine Brungardt, parents of domestic violence homicide victim Jana Mackey, said they were disappointed the Wichita Municipal Court made insufficient use of batterer intervention programs to potentially change behavior of abusers. Wichita continues to cement itself as the epicenter of domestic violence in Kansas. This is the first story in a two-part investigative series about the epidemic of domestic violence in Wichita.
Kansas Reflector will publish the second story Friday. He fled to New Jersey but was caught by police. He was found hours later hanged in a jail cell, a likely suicide. Dark thoughts that drove Garcia-Nunez had emerged before. She escaped; he spent a year behind bars. They were told their job was to go home, grieve and leave the work of reshaping the human condition to professionals. That produced a compromise bill in encouraging β not mandating β city and state courts send second-time abusers to a certified Batterer Intervention Program lasting six months.
The opening was exploited by judges on the Wichita Municipal Court, including one that lobbied against a statewide mandate for batterers, to shuffle domestic violence offenders into anger management classes or other forms of abbreviated intervention programs.
In the years since, Wichita became a mecca for domestic violence cases, protection orders, arrests and homicides. If it saves a life, is it worth it? Rowena Irani, a psychology student at Wichita State University, was shot in the head by her former boyfriend Oct. Her mother found her, still alive. Irani died the next day. A couple of weeks before the shooting, Irani quit dating Dane Owens. At that time, he was a student at Kansas State University. C ourt records show Irani exchanged texts with a brother worried about Owens.
In a subsequent interview with police, Owens was asked what he wanted Irani to do that required persuasion with a gun. He was convicted of first-degree murder and received a sentence of life in prison without a chance for parole for 25 years. The standard certified, week Batterer Intervention Program is designed to hold offenders accountable for violence against intimate partners and support survivor safety.
