October: Domestic Violence Awareness Month Co-Author of “Stabbed in the Heart,” Lynn Shiner, Victim of Domestic Violence Uses Own Personal Tragedy to Help Other Victims of Domestic Violence
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t was Christmas Day 1994, when Lynn Shiner had arrived at her ex-husband’s house to pick up their children Jen and Dave, who had just spent the previous night with their father. Lynn, knocked on the front door, and received no answer. Becoming reasonably concerned, Lynn began trying to come up with possible excuses to why there had been no response at the door, but as she says, “you obviously try to change fate by thinking of more positive scenarios; you try your best to avoid thinking of the worst case scenarios; Like maybe he had taken them out to breakfast, taken them to play at the park, or unexpectedly had to drop them off with another relative or friend. However, deep down in her gut, she could just feel that something horrific had happened to her children.” Shiner says, “On any other normal day I would’ve just opened the door and gone inside, but something inside me told me to stay outside, and look through one of the windows. It was then Shiner saw what initially appeared to be her exhusband asleep on his couch, still feeling that this was usual, Shiner called her then boyfriend, Paul to come over to check things out further inside the house. Nothing could have prepared Shiner or anyone else for the grizzly scene inside the home. Shiner recalls, “A neighbor quickly phoned 911, saying, ‘you’ve got to get over here and come into this house with me, something horrific has happened,’ all while my boyfriend and another neighbor entered the home, it was there they discovered Shiner’s ex-husband dead on his couch with a selfinflicted stab wound to the chest, plus the two children, Dave and Jen, tucked away in their beds; both had been stabbed multiple times with Jen having been stabbed directly in her heart.” Shiner could tell the news wasn’t what she wanted to hear, and she fell to her knees, and began to scream in hysterics. How could a devoted mother of two ever recover after such a tragic incident such as this? “You don’t have a lot options. The options I saw were to both curl up in a ball, and hide away from the rest of the world, or commit suicide, which at the time was the strongest option I was considering because I couldn’t begin to imagine a life without my children,” explains Shiner. Instead however, Shiner chose to not let her children’s lives die in vain along with them. Shiner used the bursts of empowering grief to begin asking more questions. “One day a few weeks after the murders I marched right into the Office
of the Coalition against Domestic Violence, and demanded answers,” Shiner exclaimed! Through some of her own thorough investigation, Shiner found out that several weeks prior to the murders her ex-husband had been arrested for stalking and harassment and that a fellow co-worker of the exhusband’s had filed a police report testifying in an affidavit that “he feared for the lives of this man’s children.” “In which case, if I had found all of this information out sooner about my ex, I would’ve never allowed him to have overnight-visitation with our children,” Shiner bellowed. After the murders, Shiner lobbied for the passage of the Dave and Jen Law, which allows parents involved in a custodial dispute to gain immediate automated access to the criminal reports filed against the other custodial parent. Plus it allows the other custodial parent to request an emergency court hearing to modify the current custody agreement. The Jen and Dave Act, was signed into law by then Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge in 1997. When asked what Shiner hopes to achieve through her domestic violence avocation and own tragedy? Shiner declared that, “I am anxious to debunk some of the myths: domestic violence honors no sanctuary, crosses every aspect; there are more people like me than not, people are afraid of talking about it.” Ms. Shiner will be giving a presentation on her journey of experiencing tragedy through an act of domestic violence, and how she has used her own personal story as a way to educate and create public awareness of domestic abuse. She will be sharing this same presentation at three separate locations on October 22nd and 23rd. The first will take place on Wednesday, October 22nd at the main campus of the Community College of Allegheny County: 808 Ridge Avenue, Pittsburgh, 15212 from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. Then, that Wednesday evening, October 22nd, she’ll speak from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at the Passavant Hospital Foundation Legacy Theatre, 700 Cumberland Woods Drive, Allison Park, 15101. Her final presentation will be given on Thursday, October 23rd, at the North Campus of the Community College of Allegheny County, 8701 Perry Highway, Pittsburgh, 15237 from 2:304:30pm. Continuing education credits for nursing, social work, law, and medicine will be available to professionals attending any session. F
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Northern Connection | October 2014
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