Editorial: Cook County's system revictimizes survivors of domestic abuse

Sarah Brown is an accountant by trade and CEO of her own firm in the south suburbs.

She's also mother to a 9½-year-old son.

And a domestic violence survivor.

For nine years she has been trying to resolve her case against her abuser, but she told us that a maze-like system has held up the process for far too long.

We met Tuesday with Brown and leaders from the City of Chicago-Cook County Violence Against Women Task Force, including Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller and Ald. Silvana Tabares, 23rd, to discuss the group's findings after six months of research and analysis.

The problem, they said, was already dire when the task force was formed in 2025. That year, while crime overall was down, when you separated domestic violence cases from other violent crimes, the picture changed dramatically. In 2025, domestic-related murders increased 27% and fatal shootings increased 56%, even as overall homicides and fatal shootings declined citywide.

When Miller and Tabares spearheaded the joint task force, which officially kicked off on Dec. 1, 2025, we applauded.

Something had to be done. But what?

To fix a problem, you must first understand it. That's what the task force set out to do, and their findings, released in an official report Thursday, put meat on the bones of this pernicious problem.

Take Brown.

Her story started in the basement of the Markham Courthouse, where she filled out a 30-page document in a crowded hallway to initiate proceedings against a partner she told us was violent.

Since then, she said, she's had six different judges, which means she's had to retell her story repeatedly and judges have seemingly not had the full background on her case. She said she lost access to lawyers because of the steep fees and began representing herself. She has no child support.

"At that point, I felt like I can't leave it up to this system to protect my child," she said. "This has revictimized me."

The term "vicious cycle" doesn't do this justice. As Tabares put it, this system as it exists today is a "maze" that challenges and intimidates victims.

Brown’s story is heartbreaking. The report suggests Brown's experience is not an isolated failure, but the predictable result of a system in which no one agency is responsible for ensuring victims make it safely from beginning to end.

The task force struggled to answer basic questions: How many orders of protection are served? How long do cases take? Where do victims fall through the cracks? The task force often found the data unavailable or difficult to obtain.

If elected leaders can’t obtain simple numbers about this system, imagine how difficult it is to ask someone to trust it when they’re in crisis.

As Tabares put it, this is about "government fixing government."

The report didn’t point the finger at one broken office or one incompetent agency. It found something more troubling: No one appears to own the system. A victim may pass through civil court, criminal court and domestic relations court. A single order of protection can require action by the court, the clerk, the sheriff and the Illinois State Police, with information entered into three separate databases before police can fully enforce it. Every handoff creates another opportunity for delay or failure.

Responsibility is fragmented, and when something goes wrong, accountability is lacking because no single agency can say, “That’s ours.”

That fragmentation has real-world consequences. For survivors, the danger doesn’t necessarily end when police arrive or charges are filed. As the report notes, most defendants in domestic violence cases are released pending trial, making it all the more important that orders of protection are served promptly and enforced consistently.

Now that the task force has given us a look under the hood, we can't look away.

The task force didn’t simply diagnose the illness. Its report lays out dozens of recommendations aimed at improving coordination, speeding service of protection orders, strengthening communication among agencies and making the system more accountable.

Among the report’s strongest recommendations are creating a centralized operations center so agencies can coordinate high-priority cases in real time and establishing permanent oversight so someone is accountable for how the entire system functions, not merely one office within it.

Some of these ideas require legislation, but others could begin tomorrow.

After listening to survivors like Brown, dismissing the report or allowing it to gather dust can’t be an option. A civilized society does not merely pass laws against domestic violence, it builds institutions capable of protecting the people those laws were written to serve.

Brown, meanwhile, has refused to wait. She is helping lead the newly formed All In Alliance to improve services for survivors in the community.

A system that consistently fails its most vulnerable users undermines confidence in government itself. It must be set right, and city, county and state leaders should begin implementing the task force’s recommendations without delay.

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This story was originally published July 9, 2026 at 5:16 AM.