New 12 months’s Day is meant to be a recent begin.
Triva Starks skilled a traumatic incident when her husband assaulted her whereas she was ailing with the flu.
She had not gone out. She had not began an argument. Starks requested one query. “The place have you ever been?” and that query put her life in peril. He beat her.
She just lately posted the surveillance footage of the assault on Instagram, unedited and unfiltered. The web watched in shock.
The Houston-area hairstylist, entrepreneur, and mom who goes by Nikki had been with viral sketch comic Uncle Stanley Joe since she was 12. They’d been married for 20 years. She knew his anger. She had discovered to learn his moods, to time her questions, to shrink herself to maintain the peace. None of it was sufficient that evening.
“I all the time knew that I used to be going to finally submit the video to reveal him,” Nikki mentioned in an interview with the Defender Community. “And it was simply to not expose him, it was additionally to assist others who’re coping with home violence, and in addition to carry my toes to the fireplace to by no means return.”
The video Nikki posted was not even the worst of it. It was one of many “mildest” experiences of abuse that she shared with the general public.
Her story landed in the midst of a month that has surprised the nation.
In April 2026 alone, Dr. Cerina Wanzer Fairfax, a Virginia dentist and mom of two, was killed by her estranged companion days after being awarded full custody of their kids. In Shreveport, La., a person shot and killed eight kids, seven of them his personal, in what police known as a completely home incident. Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Metayer was tragically discovered shot to dying by her companion in her dwelling. And the physique counts proceed to extend.
Black girls throughout this nation and proper right here in Houston are being killed by the boys who share their beds, their kids, and their final names. And in most of these circumstances, the indicators had been there lengthy earlier than the set off was pulled.
In keeping with the Institute for Girls’s Coverage Analysis (IWPR), over 40% of Black girls expertise intimate companion violence (IPV) of their lifetime, a charge considerably larger than the roughly 31.5% for ladies total. This contains bodily violence, sexual violence, and stalking by an intimate companion.
“Intimate companion violence, for a few years, has usually disproportionately impacted Black girls greater than some other demographic,” mentioned Chanica Brown, chief consumer providers officer on the Houston Space Girls’s Middle (HAWC). “That is simply traditionally what we see right here at our residential campus.”
In 2024, HAWC answered greater than 35,000 calls and greater than 3,000 dwell chats. The middle housed greater than 900 survivors, together with greater than 400 kids.
The warning indicators most ladies miss
Consultants say most deadly relationships have identifiable warning indicators. Most survivors had been by no means taught to acknowledge them or had been conditioned to excuse them.
“The purple flags that we mostly see, those which can be missed, actually are surrounding energy and management,” Brown mentioned. “Isolation is an enormous one. Isolation from household and buddies, and that basically tends to be a gradual development.”
Brown described different hallmark behaviors, together with fixed criticism, monetary management, know-how surveillance, and threats, whether or not directed at immigration standing, kids, or a survivor’s employment.
“And loads of instances we’ve seen too the place the survivor has an earnings of their very own, and so they’re required to show over their earnings to the abuser,” Brown mentioned. “So, simply actually exercising energy and management over the survivor. A few of these are neglected.”
Protected Horizon Vice President of Neighborhood and Digital Providers Michele Richard mentioned bodily escalation indicators are among the many most harmful and most neglected. She recognized stalking as a lethality escalator, together with monitoring units hidden in autos or baggage, shared passwords, and monitored telephone exercise.
“If two or extra of these items are occurring on the identical time, we urge survivors to achieve out to a service supplier to speak by way of security planning, particularly if somebody is contemplating leaving the connection with youngsters.”
Why do survivors keep? And why leaving is lethal
The query survivors say they dread most is: “Why didn’t you simply go away?”
The reply is neither easy nor secure.
“While you take the steps to go away, that’s when you’ll find yourself murdered,” Nikki mentioned plainly. She is aware of this firsthand. A cousin of hers was killed by her husband in Spring, Texas, after she sought a divorce. “So I’ve seen home violence in my household, proper in entrance of me.”
Her daughters had been the explanation she stayed, and in the end the explanation she discovered the braveness to go away.
“I would like my daughters to be happy with me as a result of I haven’t been an important instance,” she mentioned. “They type of see me as a girl who’s not very robust in terms of strolling away from their dad in a really abusive state of affairs and consistently placing them again in a cycle over and over and over. I simply need them, to begin with, to belief me.”
Triva “Nikki” Starks
“I would like my daughters to be happy with me as a result of I haven’t been an important instance,” she mentioned. “They type of see me as a girl who’s not very robust in terms of strolling away from their dad in a really abusive state of affairs and consistently placing them again in a cycle over and over and over. I simply need them, to begin with, to belief me.”
Consultants say essentially the most harmful time is when the survivor is leaving or has left. Survivors go away and return to abusive relationships a mean of seven instances earlier than leaving for good, with every departure carrying escalating threat. That is the time when the particular person inflicting hurt is dropping energy over the survivor. If there’s any time that an individual is considering following by way of with femicide, the homicide of a girl, it’s that point.
Monetary dependency is among the strongest obstacles holding girls trapped.
“Once I had no cash, I knew for a undeniable fact that I might by no means go away him,” Nikki mentioned. “What am I going to do? I don’t have the funds to offer for our youngsters or myself.”
Nikki spent years quietly constructing monetary independence as an entrepreneur, fastidiously assembling an exit plan whereas nonetheless within the marriage.
“I knew that I couldn’t go away with out an exit plan. So I took years to construct myself up as an entrepreneur and get my very own cash,” she mentioned. “And as soon as I received my very own cash, I used to be nonetheless there. However I didn’t know that my husband was not going to let me go away.”
Her recommendation to girls going through monetary dependency is to develop a plan for monetary independence, similar to saving cash from an allowance or strategically managing invoice funds. It’s important to develop an exit technique, as monetary dependence can result in extended constraints.
Isolation, too, compounds the hazard. Nikki described projecting energy publicly whereas hiding abuse privately.
“Outdoors of the house, I’ve all the time tried to be this robust, brave lady,” she mentioned. “Folks would say she was smiling by way of all of this, and we had no clue.”
The “robust Black lady” picture is itself a barrier to survival. There’s this stigma of being the robust, matriarchal one who holds the household collectively. Typically Black girls really feel the necessity to defend the household in any respect prices, which may imply defending their companion.
Faith performs a big and infrequently silencing function. There is perhaps some non secular norms that will make it troublesome culturally for Black girls to really feel like they will’t go away the home violence state of affairs.
When the system falls brief
Nikki described her disappointment with the authorized system after an assault in Harris County, the place police might solely present restricted help because of the home violence unit being closed. She expressed broader issues concerning the system’s failure to guard all girls, noting {that a} earlier case involving her had gone unresolved. Her experiences have led her to really feel that the justice system isn’t designed to assist victims like her.
The comparability to her expertise in Montgomery County highlighted the inconsistency, as police there issued a protecting order routinely after a special incident.
“Montgomery County is among the finest counties that take care of home violence,” she mentioned. “They really did what wanted to be performed.”
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, in a press release to the Defender Community, acknowledged the systemic failure instantly and named federal defunding as a driving power behind it.
“The Trump Administration’s lethal cuts to home violence service suppliers and demanding packages households depend on have exacerbated this disaster,” Ellis mentioned. “The system is falling brief when survivors, particularly Black girls, face violence and nonetheless should battle to be housed, protected, supported, and even believed.”
Ellis famous that the Victims of Crime Act fund has decreased 72% since 2018, and that the proposed fiscal 2026 federal funds would scale back funding for the Workplace on Violence In opposition to Girls by 30% from $713 million to $505 million. Native service suppliers laid off workers in response to federal cuts in 2025.
In response, Ellis led the creation of the Harris County Home Violence Help Fund in 2022, which gives versatile funding to 19 community-based organizations, together with Contemporary Spirit, a Black women-led group serving girls of shade, for housing, transportation, childcare, and different survivor wants. Harris County’s fiscal 2025 funds additionally included $1 million for home violence coordination, led by HAWC.
“Each lady deserves to dwell free from worry,” Ellis mentioned. “And each survivor deserves to know they don’t seem to be alone, and assist is on the market.”
A message to survivors
Nikki is within the season of therapeutic. She reassures survivors that they don’t seem to be silly or weak and that they’ve the capability to beat challenges.
She additionally instantly addressed girls held in place by non secular obligation, a stress her personal husband’s household used in opposition to her for years.
“I’d all the time hear that God hates divorce,” Nikki mentioned. “I wish to inform you at this time that he doesn’t. In Psalms 11:5, the Lord says for his soul hates the depraved and the one who loves violence. He hates the depraved. And any man that’s placing his fingers on you, he’s depraved. You may get out of that state of affairs as a result of God will carry you thru. He loves us. He loves his daughters. He won’t ever go away us or forsake us.”
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