A decade of abuse: SC police have an issue with violence against women. What can fix it?

The sound of fists hitting flesh echoed in the bedroom. A woman’s voice tried to stop the fists. The voice faded.

Leah Ross said she remembered thinking: “This is how I’m going to die.”

Her boyfriend pinned her to the floor, choking her and nearly making her pass out. He poured water into her nose and mouth, and she felt like she was drowning, Leah said.

It was 2010 and the first time he abused her, she said. It wouldn’t be the last.

Leah survived the ordeal but spent the next eight years living through violent jolts from the man she later married, according to her own account and court documents.

Through the entire eight years, her husband, Donald Douglas Ross Jr., was a police officer with the Greenville Police Department, airport police and the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office.

The State contacted Ross’ lawyer, who said they would not be commenting.

Ross isn’t alone. In the last decade, dozens of South Carolina officers were charged with domestic violence — an offense that Gov. Henry McMaster called “a scourge in our state” after a sheriff was charged in 2019.

“It’s disappointing to see so many of our elected officials, particularly law enforcement officers, get in trouble,” McMaster said.

The crime has garnered a name — officer-involved domestic violence.

When all the arrests of South Carolina officers accused of off-duty violence from 2010 to 2020 were totaled and averaged, a disturbing statistic emerged. Nearly nine law enforcement employees were charged each year with violence. And that number is likely too low, according to policing and domestic violence experts.

The vast majority of those arrested were men, and the brutality isn’t confined to charges of domestic violence.

The number of arrests show that an alarming number of South Carolina officers tasked with protecting the public are themselves the perpetrators of violence, especially when they are off duty.

South Carolina has consistently been one of the deadliest states for women attacked by men, ranking for years in the top 10 until slipping to No. 11 in 2018, the latest year of a Violence Policy Center report. Nearly 46% of South Carolina women reported being victims of sexual violence or coercion other than rape, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Could police departments and sheriff’s offices in South Carolina do more to stop violence by their own ranks? Police policy experts said yes, adding that agencies shouldn’t wait to take action.

Looking back on nearly a decade of abuse by her officer partner, Leah now sees police policies that could have helped end the abuse.

“I felt trapped many, many years,” she said.

ABOVE AND BEYOND

Cases examined by The State from the last decade detail accusations of attacks with fists, guns and other weapons.

Two of the first arrests were made on January 27, 2010, when police accused two South Carolina officers of violence against women. The Horry County Police Department charged its own officer with domestic violence after alleging that he drunkenly argued with his wife, smashed furniture and pulled out a gun, threatening himself and his wife. A Richland County deputy was accused of striking a woman in the face, which sent her to the hospital with visible injuries. He was charged with domestic violence, and Sheriff Leon Lott fired the deputy the next day.

At the end of the decade, the issue of abusive officers hadn’t slowed.

On Dec. 27, 2020, former Fort Mill Police Department officer Stephen Cleary “forcibly assaulted” his wife and threatened to kill her while their 6-year-old daughter was in the room, according to warrants. During the assault, Cleary knocked their daughter backwards, causing her to strike her head against a wall. He took his wife’s phone to stop her from calling for help and held her against her will for more than an hour. All the while, Cleary had a gun laying on the bedroom floor “in a threatening manner,” the warrants said. Cleary’s wife escaped the house and called 911, police said.

Cleary fled before police arrived and didn’t show up for duty the next day, according to police records. The department fired him. Police arrested him near Tampa on Dec. 29 and sent him back to South Carolina, where state police charged him with aggravated domestic violence, kidnapping and child neglect. Those charges are pending.

“Without getting into the facts of his case, he was a police officer for less than two years,” said Ben Hasty, Cleary’s lawyer. “He doesn’t consider his identity tied up as a police officer.”

From the start of 2010 to the end of 2020, at least 96 people tied to law enforcement agencies were accused of violence against current or former spouses and partners or other relatives. Three officers were charged more than once in the decade for a total of 99 cases.

Most of the 96 people were police officers when they were charged and then fired. Others were fired or resigned days, weeks or months prior to being charged. Three had not been officers for a year or more when charged or accused.

Determining the actual number of violent accusations against officers from 2010 to 2020 is difficult. While The State documented 99, many more were likely committed, according to abuse survivor advocates and police policy experts.

Information about those 99 cases, all but two of which resulted in criminal charges, were found in press reports, state police documents and other sources. But these sources had limitations. News accounts from early in the decade were spotty. Plus, when The State started compiling reports of violence by officers in August 2018, the archive of South Carolina Law Enforcement Division news releases only went back to 2015.

Domestic violence overall is under-reported, said Sara Barber, director of the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

Eight of the 96 officers were women accused of attacking their current or former domestic partners. The remaining 88 were men.

The range of offenses shows the terror victims experience. In the last decade, officers were accused of homicide, attempted murder, sexually assaulting teenage girls, battery, kidnapping, arson, neglecting children while abusing their partners, stalking and making gun threats.

But the charge that stands out is domestic violence, which police define as a person threatening or abusing a current or former partner, married or not.

While the issue of violence in police families has been studied in the past 25 years, data is inconsistent because of varying ways states track the problem — if states track it at all.

In the general population, one in four women report facing violence by a partner, according to studies. Abuse within police families is likely happening at least as often, and some research suggests more often. Research has concluded that between 20 to 40 percent of families with a police officer experience domestic violence committed by the officer.

When Mark Wynn speaks to police organizations and asks if officers know of a colleague who had committed domestic violence, hands are always raised.

Wynn, a retired officer and survivor of abuse from his childhood who now advises agencies on violence in officers’ homes, said If a police leader hasn’t found a case of domestic violence in their agency, something is probably wrong with their detection method.

Of the 99 South Carolina cases from 2010 to 2020, 87 involved a domestic violence charge. Four other cases were charged as assault and battery that appear to be partner abuse.

Most of the 99 cases were filed against officers who patrolled the streets. A few were jail guards who worked for sheriff’s departments. Others were investigators or supervising officers with desk duty.

Officer violence in South Carolina doesn’t heed to chain of command. Leaders of police agencies also failed to uphold their oaths.

A woman claimed former Greenville County Sheriff Will Lewis drugged and sexually assaulted her in March 2017 while he was in office. The woman sued Lewis, who denied the claims. They settled the lawsuit with her being given nearly $200,000 in 2018. Although Lewis never faced state charges for sexual assault, state agents charged him with criminal misconduct of a public officer and he was found guilty after prosecutors argued he abused his office and used public money to pursue the woman.

In November 2019, state agents charged then Colleton County Sheriff R.A. Strickland Jr. with domestic violence against his girlfriend, authorities said. In October 2020, he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of assault and battery.

Former Florence County Sheriff Kenney Boone was charged with domestic violence against his wife in February 2020, about 10 months after he left office for other offenses. He pleaded guilty to domestic violence in December 2020.

Arrests of officers for violence off the job spiked in 2019. That year, 21 former or current officers were charged with 28 offenses. Nearly all the incidents involved domestic violence. The two cases that weren’t charged as domestic partner abuse appear to involve people in dissolving relationships.

In one burglary case, a Summerville officer broke into the house of a woman who had told him to stay away, according to an arrest warrant. She was so terrified she hid in a closet with her child and a gun. In the other case, which resulted in a gun charge, a Mauldin officer threatened a woman with a pistol during an argument at their house, the police department’s chief said in his firing report. Leah eventually overcame her fear of reporting her deputy husband — but it took nearly a decade.

“Almost like an addict who gets to their lowest low and then I finally just snapped,” she said.

A COMPLEX STRUGGLE

In 2010, Leah hadn’t reached that point.

The assault that year by her then boyfriend left her bruised on her neck, arm and back, according to her and Fox Carolina news station, which quoted warrants. She later compared his pouring water in her nose and mouth to waterboard torture.

She had called a friend who worked with Greenville police in bewilderment of the abuse. The friend informed a supervisor. But Leah wasn’t ready to go beyond police writing reports and arresting her boyfriend on a domestic violence charge.

She said she was “uncooperative” with police as they took steps to gather evidence. She didn’t want the charges to be pressed. Her boyfriend had manipulated her into believing she had started the abuse, she said — a process that’s now called gaslighting. He had told her she was drunk and started the fight, said Leah, who now realizes that was a lie.

Ross resigned from the Greenville Police Department days after his arrest, his officer record showed. The next year they were married and he was back on patrol as a police officer with the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport. His abuse continued, according to Leah and arrest warrants.

In February 2011, Leah was pregnant with their first child. In a bout of anger, Ross picked up his wife and slammed her to the floor, causing pain and cramping, according to a warrant.

Over the next eight years, through marriage, having children and separation, Leah said her husband continued to use his position as a police officer to manipulate her.

“He would say it up until the bitter end,” she remembered. “He would say ‘nobody’s going to believe you.’”

After they separated, Ross would say, “How am I going to pay child support if I don’t have a job because you reported me?” according to Leah.

Fear of further abuse keeps wives and girlfriends from dialing 911, advocates said. Mothers with shaking hands stop writing reports to the police out of concern about taking care of children without a partner’s income. Threats of being falsely cast as an emotionally unstable liar silence victims’ voices when speaking to prosecutors. While that fear exists with all domestic violence victims, it is strengthened when the abuser is a police officer, advocates said.

“They feel like the consequences of reporting may be greater than the benefit,” said Nancy Barton, director of Sistercare, a South Carolina organization that helps people dealing with domestic violence.

Domestic violence victims of officers deal with a complex struggle.

Knowing that their abusers will lose their jobs often stops victims from reporting or from moving forward with charges.

Victims of officer-involved domestic violence may not call police or press charges because of concern for their children. Like Leah dealt with, officer partners use their income and child care to coerce their victims, Barton said.

The victim believing that she will be blamed, and that blame likely turning into violence, is sometimes an insurmountable barrier to reporting.

“You can’t underestimate the impact of that for a survivor wanting to go forward,” Barton said.

Victims understand officers’ loyalty to one another and “wonder will they be treated fairly,” she said.

Too often, Barton has found that the answer is no, she said. When a woman wants to stop the abuse of her police officer partner but fears the risk of reporting him, authorities lose leverage to convict the abuser.

Victims who do speak up tell shocking stories.

In May 2012, former Orangeburg deputy Kenneth Winningham attacked his wife in the middle of the night, punching and kicking her, a police report said. He pulled out a gun and pistol whipped her. He fired twice around her. He threatened to shoot her in the feet to disable her and to slit her throat, she told police. Winningham told police the next day that his wife was the aggressor and he tried to protect himself but had no visible injuries and admitted to firing the gun, the report said.

Police charged Winningham with aggravated domestic violence, a felony, and the Orangeburg sheriff fired him. The next year he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault, a far lesser crime than the original charge. The state police licensing agency stripped Winningham of his certification.

In a June 2015 case, Kershaw County 911 operators answered a call and heard a woman screaming. Elgin police officer Douglas Barton had taken his girlfriend’s phone and smashed it with a hammer, The State reported after the then Kershaw County sheriff released a statement. She tried to leave the house but he stopped her, assaulted her and threw her to the ground, the former sheriff said in The State’s report. Barton smothered her screams with a pillow, choked her and struck her in the face, she told police. She escaped to a neighbor’s house and called 911.

Deputies charged Barton with second degree domestic violence and kidnapping, a felony. He resigned from the Elgin Police Department a few days after his arrest, records showed. The next year he pleaded guilty to a lesser misdemeanor charge of assault and battery.

In 2019, Michael Scott Valdario, who had been an officer in Greenville County for eight years, slammed his wife against a refrigerator after she said he was playing too rough with their daughter, a police report said. She tried to walk away but he followed. Afraid of what he would do next, she got a gun and held it by her side until he walked away. During an argument about two weeks later, he elbowed her, causing her to fall and to hit her face on a bed frame. Her lip was busted and some teeth broken, the report said. After she got him to leave, she gathered up all the guns to stop him from getting one. His wife told police she was “constantly in fear of what he will do.”

Police charged Valdario with second degree domestic violence and the Greenville Police Department fired him.

In her statement to police, his wife said she didn’t know at first if she wanted to report him. She didn’t want him to get in trouble. “I just want it to stop,” she wrote. She reported him because she didn’t want her children to be casualties of his anger.

The next year, Valdario was accused of requesting sexual explicit pictures from a teenage girl and raping her, police reports showed. Lexington deputies charged him with five sexual offenses and kidnapping. Those charges and the domestic violence charge are pending.

The State reached out to Valdario’s lawyer for comment.

As to why South Carolina police officers are arrested in high numbers for domestic violence, the explanations are mixed.

In the general population, men are nearly always the attackers in domestic violence cases, and most South Carolina police officers are men.

Some studies connect work factors faced by police to domestic violence, but those factors don’t connect to crimes like sexual assault, stalking or harassment.

Leah recognized that the stress of being a police officer factored in her husband’s abuse. When he had easier jobs, he was less violent, she said. Being an officer emphasized him controlling people he encountered and that was difficult to turn off, she said.

A 2013 study described this as police “training in authoritarian styles and the regular exercise of coercive force” and that spills into the home.

“Sometimes officers who haven’t developed a healthy outlet for stress management may self-medicate with alcohol,” said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and University of South Carolina law professor, noting that rates of alcohol abuse are higher among officers than in the general population. “Sometimes they take it out on their family members. Sometimes both.”

Substance use, notably alcohol, is part of at least 18 of the reports of South Carolina officer arrests from 2010 to 2020 and alcohol use is cited in other studies as being a factor in domestic violence.

Others explained that the decision to act violently lies solely in the hands of the abuser. Mental health issues and stressors shouldn’t explain away that abusers assault women to assert control and power.

“The offenders know what they’re doing,” said Wynn, the former officer and adviser on domestic violence among police. “It’s not a mental disorder. It’s a choice.”

‘He’ll find me’

When an officer is an abuser, the threat of a gun is guaranteed.

But officers can use other equipment, training, and resources to terrorize their victims. Even a uniform can be used for intimidation.

In one incident, Leah’s then-husband showed up at their home while on duty and blocked her in with his patrol car to intimidate her, she said.

“He was harassing me,” she said. He didn’t touch her in that instance, he scared her.

Wynn said that abusers are empowered by police equipment and training.

“When you teach someone all those tactics and they’re a domestic violence offender you’ve just supercharged [the abuser],” he said.

In December 2012, Horry County Police Department officer Charles McLendon followed his estranged wife in his patrol car after an argument and used the patrol car’s speakers and lights to pull her over, according to a police report and The Sun News. He approached her car with his service gun drawn. He told her he had one bullet “to do what he needed to do” before driving off. Later, McLendon broke into her home where he pinned her to the ground and put her into a chokehold, reports said. She survived, and police charged McLendon with domestic violence and misconduct in office. Prosecutors dropped the domestic violence charge and he pleaded guilty to misconduct.

SLED agents began investigating one of their own, Agent Rodney Bostick, in 2016 and found that he used his connection to another police officer to look up information on a girlfriend the previous November, The State reported using arrest documents. That same month, after the girlfriend, a Midlands prosecutor, told him to move out, he choked her, saying “the only way out was death.” Two months later, he choked another girlfriend, a fellow SLED agent, during an argument, according to The State and the arrest report.

Police charged him with three counts of domestic violence, kidnapping and misconduct in office for using police resources for reasons beyond law enforcement. In a deal, a judge accepted Bostick’s guilty plea to misdemeanor assault and battery after he spent more than a year in jail.

In March 2018, police charged Chester County Deputy James Darby with domestic violence and child neglect after they said he threw his wife by her hair into a dog kennel, then pulled out his service gun, cocked it and made threats, The Herald of Rock Hill reported from warrants. Their children were nearby. The charges are pending.

“Jim [Darby] maintains his innocence and is presumed innocent until proven guilty,” Everett Stubbs, Darby’s lawyer, said. “Jim’s family situation is in a good place.”

One of the most dangerous assets an officer-abuser has is knowledge of domestic violence investigations and where victims might go.

Women abused by law enforcement officers will say, “He tells me ‘I can’t hide and I can’t run.’ He’ll find me,” Barton said.

STOPPING THE ABUSE

In December 2018, Leah went to the police about the violence that left her bruised and fearful over the decade. She reported her husband slamming her while pregnant in 2011, according to warrants. She also told police about abuse from 2016 to 2018. He had punched her, splitting her lip, and had slammed her to the ground so hard she couldn’t breathe, warrants said. Their child was in the room during one of those attacks.

State police charged Ross with two second-degree and two third-degree counts of domestic violence seven months later. The Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office fired him for misconduct. In January 2020, he pleaded guilty to one count of third degree domestic violence and gave up any ability to be a police officer again.

Leah now sees solutions that could have helped prevent the abuse by her former husband.

If an officer is accused of domestic violence, service weapons should be taken and desk duty given immediately, she said. Counseling for officers should be required. Officers should also be required to do yearly training on how to deal with family life and job stress. Officers should also go through a yearly psychological examination like the kind of examination they go through before they’re hired.

Preventive measures such as pre-screenings are the first steps to stop empowering abusers with a badge, Wynn said. Another way to prevent abuse is teaching officers about what happens if they’re accused of domestic violence.

Police training agencies should offer classes for domestic partners that talk about how to report violence and how to cooperate with prosecutors as well as training other officers how to report colleagues’ abuse. Confidential counseling should be available to officers’ domestic partners.

State law does not require most of these steps, although some have been taken by larger South Carolina police agencies. Psychological testing for all would-be officers in South Carolina is now required. The exams requirement began about two years ago, said Mike Crenshaw, Oconee County sheriff and president of the South Carolina Sheriff’s Association.

The tests show if a candidate has a tendency towards violence against women. It directly asks “have you ever hit a woman?”

Since the start of these exams, more than 100 officer applicants have been rejected, Crenshaw said.

Now police organizations are discussing if psychological exams should be required routinely, including for veteran officers. Crenshaw supports routine exams.

“The person you hire today might not be the same person three years, five years from now,” he said.

Counseling is also available to officers and their families through the South Carolina Law Enforcement Assistance Program but it’s not required. Abuse survivors and their advocates also said that officers at risk of becoming abusive will refuse counseling by claiming it will get them fired. Counseling is too late by the time abuse is reported.

Police are also required to do yearly training on knowing and responding to domestic violence committed by the citizens.

While some advances have weeded out bad applicants and helped those dealing with family issues, South Carolina police agencies aren’t required to have policies or standards.

A statewide policy for officer-involved domestic violence could reduce the violence against women, according to policing experts.

New Jersey and North Dakota have policies for officer-involved domestic violence. Police leaders, scholars and survivor advocates developed a policy in Florida. Washington requires its police agencies to have such policies, as does Oregon’s police accreditation group.

South Carolina does not have a specific policy that provides guidance if an officer is an abuser. It’s up to each of the more than 300 police agencies in the state to create their own policies.

Of the 46 county sheriff’s offices in South Carolina, only the departments in Richland and Clarendon reported policies for how to respond if an officer is accused of domestic abuse, according to a survey by The State. Twenty-three county sheriff’s departments did not respond to the survey.

Richland County’s policy requires simultaneous internal and criminal investigations, punishment for officers who cover up abuse allegations or interfere in investigations and protections for victims. The department has also implemented a mental wellness program to help deputies and their families with the stressors of the job, Sheriff Leon Lott said.

Clarendon County’s policy also stipulates internal and criminal probes but brings the sheriff or an appointee more into the investigation. Among other stipulations, the policy includes immediately creating a safety plan for the victim.

At least four other sheriff’s offices — Horry, Greenville, Lancaster and Lexington — have quasi policies. Those policies require an officer to possess a gun. They also mention that under the federal Violence Against Women Act, anybody convicted of domestic violence cannot possess a gun.

However, that act expired in 2019 and has not been reauthorized. Still, state law prohibits anyone with a restraining order from possessing a gun.

Otherwise, those four departments treat a domestic violence arrest of an officer like any other arrest.

At least 17 sheriffs’ offices treat domestic violence by officers like any other crime.

The Columbia Police Department and West Columbia Police Department’s policies also mention the gun restrictions that can result in firing but treat a domestic violence arrest of an officer like any other offense. The Cayce Department of Public Safety also doesn’t have a specific policy.

The Town of Lexington Police Department has a 10 page policy on officer-involved domestic violence. Enacted in 2009, the policy addresses procedures for helping to ensure no abusers are hired, reporting standards for officers and punishment for not reporting, immediate and separate administrative and criminal investigations as well as victim support and protections.

Forest Acres Police Department didn’t respond to questions about their policies.

The Columbia Police Department had seven officers accused of domestic violence from 2010 to 2020, according to The State’s research. West Columbia, Cayce and Lexington’s police departments had none.

In the same years, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department had six deputies accused of domestic violence and another who pled guilty to assaulting a woman off duty after she rebuffed his advances at a bar. Lott fired the deputy about a week after the assault and recommended the officer’s certification be stripped.

“Our profession is made of humans and they will make human mistakes, but when they cross the line and violate the law, we will take action,” Lott said.

The Lexington County Sheriff’s Department had four deputies accused of domestic violence, including one jail guard.

The number of officers charged with domestic violence in South Carolina from 2010 to 2020 shows that the offense isn’t like any other crime in its frequency.

Like rigorous pre-hire screenings, creating a specific policy for officer-involved domestic violence is a first step to slowing down the abuse, according to Stoughton, the former officer and USC law professor who studies policing.

A policy ends “informal enforcement,” such as officers trying to work it out with other officers or departments trying to manage an abuser internally, Stoughton said.

For years, officers informally enforced DUI offenses when they pulled over other officers, according to Stoughton. Then agencies began putting policies into place that required charges if an officer pulled another over for driving drunk. It worked, he said. The same shift would likely happen with officer-involved domestic violence.

But just having a policy isn’t enough. Training and enforcing that policy determines its effectiveness, Stoughton said.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police created an officer-involved domestic violence policy for any agency to adopt in 2003. Lexington Police Department’s policy mirrors this model.

“If you leave [a domestic violence arrest] to officer discretion it won’t be dealt with correctly,” Wynn said.

Reforming the “warrior mentality” of police culture may go hand-in-hand with new policies, according to Stoughton.

The view police have of themselves as warriors in constant battle for their lives must change, Stoughton has written. It “can pit officers against everyone else, which means that police culture is very protective,” he said.

The warrior mentality can result in an investigating officer trusting another officer over an abuse victim, Stoughton said. Officers will protect others through what’s been called “blue walls of silence” and not report violence or minimize it.

Women’s activists say these cover-ups are without a doubt occurring.

Police leaders should make it known that they won’t tolerate any officer being an abuser, Wynn said.

Already in 2021, SLED has charged four officers with violence against women. An officer was accused of raping a “mentally incapacitated” woman, a warrant said. Another officer was said to have sexually assaulted a woman while in uniform and with his service weapon on him, according to a warrant. The other two officers were charged with domestic violence. All four were fired.

It took time, but Leah spoke out and she hopes that will help others facing abuse.

“I want to help people not feel the way I felt,” she said. “Or feel the way he felt. And help people in law enforcement better deal with situations like I lived in for so long.”

If you’re dealing with violence contact Sistercare through sistercare.org. A list of organizations that can help can be found through sccadvasa.org/get-help/. Officers dealing with mental health and family issues can get help through SLED’s SCLEAP .

This story is part of an ongoing series by The State, “Black and Blue,” that is highlighting untold stories about police officers in South Carolina and their interactions with women. Our reporters working on this project would love to hear from you. For stories about domestic abuse and SC law enforcement, you can reach Travis Bland at tbland@thestate.com or 803-771-8342. If you have a story to share about an interaction between an SC officer and a Black woman, you can reach Chiara Eisner at ceisner@thestate.com or 803-814-4464