“I'm going to be killed,” a woman too fearful to give her name told the Ulster County legislators. “Look me in the face. It's my life on the line. I'm one of the ones you're letting down.”

More than two dozen victims of domestic violence spoke to Ulster's legislature Tuesday night, their tales personal ones of the most horrifying sort. They spoke not just of verbal, financial and physical abuse from partners but of police, judicial and bureaucratic indifference and worse.

They came to impress on legislators the urgency of the issue. They said that the cops ignored them. The courts ignored them. Social service agencies ignored them. People didn't believe them. People didn't take them seriously.

The legislature's regularly scheduled business unfolded that same night. Bonds were approved, new laws had hearings, and a proposal to act as lead agency on a New Paltz battery energy storage project on Paradies Lane was postponed.

But the greater part of the meeting and virtually all its emotional weight was that of the aggrieved women and their words, a groundswell provoked by Ulster County's recent spate of domestic violence-related deaths.

“Five women have been killed in intimate-partner or domestic violence in our county in less than two and a half years,” Helen Garber, one of the protest organizers, said in a statement. “Those numbers cannot be ignored.”

The first was in the Town of Rochester, where Alberta Dale was murdered and hacked to pieces by her partner Damon Foy in April of 2024. A year later, in Kingston, Kaleigh Griffin was killed by her husband in a murder suicide, May 5.

Then Ellenville’s Nicole Izabella Perez, 29, was killed by Michael David Carman, 28, on March 31, 2026. Carman was arrested in Florida less than a month later and charged with murder. On August 21, Mindy Brugger was shot dead in Plattekill by her husband, Fire Chief James Brugger, 66, who then killed himself – a crime after which the county’s official reporting led to backlash about them minimizing domestic violence.

The fifth victim was not far behind. On September 1, 2026, Brianna Sue Wittl, 33, was shot dead in her Esopus home following a dispute with her fiancée, 47-year-old William F. Dearden. Police arrested Dearden who has been charged with felony murder and criminal possession of a weapon and remanded to Ulster County Jail without bail. He awaits trial.

“Our comparison using FBI crime statistics indicates that Ulster County’s recent domestic violence homicide rate is approximately three times the national rate,” Garber said.

So rapt were legislators by the stories the session's normal two-minute limit on speakers was forgotten. Many survivors testified spontaneously so it seemed, not having signed up to speak, like at a camp meeting. The revival vibe carried over to a candlelight vigil outside the county building afterwards, a capstone to the evening, fifty or so survivors and their supporters communing in the flickering lights.

“It was incredibly powerful, but being heard is only the beginning,” Garber commented. “We are asking for survivors to have a meaningful seat at the table. We are asking for public hearings, an examination of the systemic failures being repeatedly reported, and concrete reforms and accountability.”

The womens' extraordinary display of concern came together organically, according to Allison Cramer, the late Melinda Brugger's daughter. “There has been tremendous outreach,” she told Kingston Wire. “Where some of these things originated, I'm not even sure anymore, I need to make myself a spreadsheet because so many people have reached out to me with their stories.”

The evening's speakers offered no specific, detailed demands of the legislature. Neither did they take much note of the county's existing efforts to address domestic violence.

All the same, Legislator Dominick Marino of Highland/Marlborough — whose proposal to establish a countywide Lethality Assessment Program (LAP) protocol for emergency responders to domestic violence situations was adopted by the Legislature unanimously last month — called the speakers “courageous” and Allison Cramer's account of her mother's “number of reports and incidents over the years...eye-opening. We need to listen and learn from what happened.”

County Executive Jen Metzger isn't just sitting on her hands regarding domestic violence, according to Ulster County Crime Victims Assistance Program (CVAP) Supervisor Jessica Jones.

“This is going to be a complex process as we try to come up with a solid plan that will work on a county wide level,” Jones told us by email. Specifically, she referred to LAP training undergone by Saugerties police, an updated version of which she expects. the Governor to sign into law. “The training informed officers about the LAP model, how it is a beneficial tool, while also breaking down the responsibilities of officers when filling out the LAP screener (completing it fully, taking time to look into behavioral queues and not just physical indicators, and addressing some high lethality concerns including strangulation and stalking).”

“The goal of these trainings are not just to familiarize officers with the LAP model and the tool.” Jones continued, “but also allow us to see where potential gaps may arise when working with numerous LE agencies within the county that function independently from one another.”

Jones will herself take a deep dive into the innermost workings of LAP screening in November, a training that will prepare her to, in turn, train her staff at CVAP. “Once a victim is identified as high risk from an officer who completes a LAP,” she said, “our office will be able to do a more expansive assessment to see exactly where those high-risk indicators are and what resources will be needed to increase safety and decrease risk of lethality.”

“Something changed last night,” Garber said the day after the protest. “Survivors who have been afraid to speak stood up and told their stories. Our elected officials listened. Our community showed up.”

Allison Cramer's take? “There's still so much that needs to be done with training police departments and also the follow-up agencies and advocates that then work with people,” she told us. “Because if you do a lethality assessment and say, 'Yep, you're in danger,' but there's no safety net below that, then the assessment is useless...My goal is to continue working with the folks in the community who have had this experience and who have way more knowledge than I do to try to roadmap collectively.”

If you need help, here are some resources for domestic violence:

Family of Woodstock’s 24 -hour hotline (845) 679-2485. Spanish hotline 9 a.m. - 8 p.m. (845) 679-5460.
Ulster County Crime Victims Assistance Crisis Hotline: (845) 340-3443 Mon - Fri, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

(845) 340-3442 nights, weekends and holidays