The Berrien County Trial Court’s Family Division has been hard at work implementing a new program to address youth domestic violence against parents.
The Berrien County Board of Commissioners on Thursday heard from probation supervisors Jenna Eavey and Hope Leach about the new Family Violence Program. It’s been a two-year process to get the initiative running, and it’s now been launched with two programs for handling youths age 12 to 17 who have been violent with parents or caregivers.
Leach said one of those programs is Common Ground, a more informal response to these situations.
“The Common Ground program will be for those lower risk families where they have isolated incidents of domestic violence or domestic battery,” Leach said. “These would not be the kids that have repeatedly come back. These are kids that maybe we’ve never seen before and we can do some sort of intervention.”
The program relies on guided dialogue and doesn’t require the involvement of a judge. The more serious cases are handled through the other program, Step Up.
“The step up program will be for kids that are treated formal through our court process. So these kids that are having the more escalated issues will actually be scheduled for hearings in front of our jurists.”
Juveniles in that program have had repeated incidents and score higher on the Family Court’s risk assessment tool. Step Up involves a 21-week group therapy program and cognitive behavior exercises.
Eavey said Berrien County in 2025 had 89 recorded incidents of youth domestic violence against parents. Most of those didn’t rise to the level of requiring detention at the juvenile center. Court staff are hoping that with this new initiative, repeat incidents can be avoided.
Trial Court Family Division Administrator Elvin Gonzalez told commissioners he’s pleased to get the program running and offered to report back on outcomes in six months.
