One City’s Attempt to Change How Domestic Violence Is Tackled

San Antonio has long had a high rate of family violence. An unusual court is trying to intervene before the violence turns deadly.

On a sweltering July night, Jesse Falcon was so high on cocaine, marijuana and alcohol that he would later say that he barely remembered the explosion of violence that happened.

Convinced that his girlfriend was pursuing another man at a social gathering at their apartment complex in San Antonio, he began attacking the man. When his girlfriend tried to intervene, he shoved her so hard that she was left with a gash on her arm.

Mr. Falcon, 21, did recall one thing about the evening: “I was full of rage,” he said.

Cases like Mr. Falcon’s are troublingly familiar to court officials in San Antonio, which has long been plagued with a high rate of domestic violence. “They leave jail angrier and more resentful, and the trauma continues,” said Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez, a family violence judge in the city.

A court run by Judge Gonzalez is trying a different approach: providing the abusers with a chance to change.

First-time offenders like Mr. Falcon can avoid becoming another statistic in the long string of men — and a growing number of women — who go to jail for hurting their families, if they are accepted into a family violence diversion program run by Judge Gonzalez’s court, which is known as Reflejo, Spanish for reflection.