Domestic violence help available in Merced

A Hmong woman killed in Fresno this week, allegedly by her husband, led domestic violence advocates in Merced and around the Central Valley to remind residents they offer services tailored specifically for the Southeast Asian community.

Officers were called to a house on Tuesday near East Norwich and North Whitney avenues in Fresno, just east of Highway 168, around 8 a.m., where they found a woman dead with injuries to her head.

Chinnawat Vue, 23, was identified as the suspect in the death of his 22-year-old wife. He fled the scene and was arrested later near Hume Lake by U.S. Forest Service police after an officer saw a man who matched Vue’s description.

Building our Future, a campaign to end domestic violence, issued a reminder Thursday of the network of domestic violence advocates in the Central Valley. “The Hmong community is not shielded from the issue of domestic violence,” the news release stated.

In a separate incident last March, Zyang Vang, 33, was gunned down by her ex-husband, Neng Moua, 43, in the downtown Fresno pediatric office where she was an office assistant. Moua then turned the gun on himself.

In a response to that murder-suicide, Merced’s Valley Crisis Center joined together with several other domestic violence advocacy groups to form the California Hmong Advocate Network.

Advocates said the community and service programs can work together in supporting victims and in coordinating resources and services aimed not only at Hmong women and children, but all victims of domestic violence.

Domestic violence victims often experience abuse many times before they leave their abusers, according to the release, and women attempt to leave at least seven times on average.

There are 39,000 Hmong in California, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 American Community Survey. In the 160 domestic violence-related homicide cases from 2000 to 2005 in 23 states, there were 226 deaths among Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander families, according to the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence.

The advocates stress that people experiencing domestic violence should seek help outside their family network.

The Hmong community can seek help from any group in the California Hmong Advocate Network:

• Valley Crisis Center in Merced, 24-hour hotline: 209-722-4357
• Haven Women’s Center of Stanislaus, 24-hour crisis line: 209-577-5980
• Marjaree Mason Center in Fresno: 559-233-4357
• Centro La Familia Advocacy Services in Fresno: 559-237-2961
• My Sister’s House in Sacramento, 24-hour hotline: 916-428-3271

This story was originally published March 11, 2016 at 6:33 PM with the headline "Domestic violence help available in Merced."