Pacifying the Home Front

Photograph by Stan Grossfeld

Many police departments and social-service agencies continue to view domestic violence as primarily a family matter, intervening only when the abuse has become too frequent or severe to ignore.

But Stacey Kabat, who herself grew up in a violent home, sees physical abuse in households as a human-rights issue that should command everyone’s attention.

To achieve that goal, she founded a charity, Peace at Home, in Jamaica Plain, Mass. The organization has recruited youths from City Year, a charity that promotes volunteering, to attend training sessions on oppression, social activism, and other aspects of domestic violence and then pass along what they’ve learned to school groups of 7th through 12th graders.

“Everyone — victim, perpetrator, and bystander — needs to understand more about domestic violence if we’re ever to stop it,” says Holly Curtis, the group’s executive director.

Here, Ms. Curtis (center, behind the bars) and Amir Femi (beside her, also behind the bars), project manager for City Year, join some of the City Year volunteers in depicting the charity’s mission: restoring peace to homes where victims and perpetrators of abuse often feel trapped in cycles of violence.