‘Safety, accountability and prevention’: Harris County DA expands domestic violence team

Mary McFaden, a longtime prosecutor and now chief of the Domestic Violence Bureau at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, was not always intent on working in criminal law. 

While in law school, she expected to practice family law, which includes civil matters like divorces and child custody cases. But then, during an internship, she found herself representing a victim of domestic violence. 

That experience, McFaden said, changed everything.

“There’s nothing better than that victim just looking at you and saying, ‘thank you,’” she told the Landing. 

Now among the most senior prosecutors at the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, McFaden is leading the charge on an ambitious overhaul of the agency’s approach to domestic violence cases. She heads the fledgling domestic violence bureau, a new subdivision of prosecutors, investigators and specialized social workers who will handle all of Harris County’s misdemeanor and felony domestic violence cases when fully staffed and funded. 

The bureau, which Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare previously described as a top priority in an interview with the Houston Landing last fall, represents a significant investment of resources in Harris County’s most-charged crime. Previously, a specialized domestic violence division handled only the most complicated and high-risk cases, about 30 percent of all such filings, according to Teare. The rest were distributed at random throughout the county’s general misdemeanor and felony courts.

The new bureau is expected to  relieve the overburdened prosecutors who continue to work through a longstanding case backlog in those courts and boost the agency’s effectiveness at supporting victims and holding perpetrators accountable for acts of domestic violence.

“We can really design policies and protocols and programs that will be specific to survivors of domestic violence,” McFaden said. “It really allows us a little bit of discretion to focus on accountability steps, as well as victim safety that is unique to the type of survivor we have in each case.” 

Working alongside McFaden to launch the bureau is Lauren Byrne, the district attorney’s chief of staff, who was also drawn to domestic violence cases as a young prosecutor and called the work a “passion.”

“We are here for every survivor of domestic violence,” Byrne said. “If there are people who are suffering in our community, it is our job to protect them.” 

Yet McFaden and Byrne’s ambitions for the bureau extend beyond the district attorney’s office and criminal prosecution. They hope the initiative will be the linchpin of a tighter, more synchronized system of support and accountability for victims and perpetrators, one in which law enforcement agencies at all stages of the criminal process work in tandem to achieve the best outcomes. 

“Our opportunity is not just prosecution,” McFaden said. “It’s safety, accountability and prevention.” 

‘Number one type of case’

Delmy Morales was just 18 when her ex-boyfriend stabbed her to death in Houston in 2023. Nityadevi Ramroop, 35, had nearly finalized her divorce when her husband shot and killed her in Katy that same year. And Minh Nguyen, 60, of Tomball, left children behind when her husband shot and killed her, then himself, also in 2023. 

Morales, Ramroop and Nguyen are among 38 Harris County residents who lost their lives to domestic violence in 2023, the most recent year data is available, according to a report published by the statewide nonprofit Texas Council on Family Violence. Yet these murders are just the tip of the iceberg: domestic violence is Harris County’s “number one type of case,” according to McFaden, where filings far outpace those of most other Texas counties. 

For example, in 2024 alone, law enforcement agencies across Texas filed more than 49,000 misdemeanor and felony domestic violence assault charges, according to data maintained by the Texas Office of Court Administration. 

Nearly one in four of those charges — just under 12,000 — originated in Harris County.  

Those statistics, McFaden and Byrne said, are part of why the district attorney’s new Domestic Violence Bureau is so important — and urgently needed. 

Boasting a staff of about 68 prosecutors, social workers, investigators and other support staff, the bureau currently handles all misdemeanor domestic violence cases and some felonies upon referral. However, McFaden and Byrne aim to eventually double their staff and absorb all felonies. 

“The goal is… that every misdemeanor court has its own dedicated domestic violence prosecutor and chief,” Byrne said. “Then hopefully, as we train some of these folks up and keep people here, we can then start filling out that felony (division)… so that we can then start taking all of the cases from the jump in felony.”

Ultimately, McFaden said, the bureau will take on the 16,000 to 17,000 new domestic violence cases filed in Harris County annually, a number that includes both assaults, homicides and even crimes like stalking or violating a protective order.

But an expansion does not mean solely adding more prosecutors — a critical component of the bureau, McFaden said, is its robust division of specialized social workers who support victims throughout the criminal process. 

The division includes a team that represents eligible victims in securing protective orders, even in the absence of criminal charges, community outreach specialists who work in multiple languages and a “high-risk team” that coordinates safety planning and support services with outside providers, such as local nonprofits that offer shelter, for victims with criminal cases pending. 

“Whenever our clients are coming in, we are going to be doing individualized safety planning,” said Norma Alanis, the high-risk team program manager. “What that’s going to look like on our side is making sure that they’re educated regarding bond conditions and emergency protective orders, but also linking them with agencies that can help that day to say, hey, how do we get this family to where they need to be safety-wise? …Building that bridge with our communities and their services is extremely helpful.” 

McFaden described the bureau’s social workers as critical to fulfilling the bureau’s mission.

“Prosecutors rotate, but these social workers have been here forever,” she said. “They are the real experts… I really don’t think that the community really realizes we have this whole area (of support services) over here.” 

Stopping the harm

For Amy Smith, senior director of communications and operations at the Harris County Domestic Violence Coordinating Council, the district attorney’s new bureau is a welcome addition to the law enforcement landscape around domestic violence in Harris County. 

“Domestic violence is such a problem here in Harris County, and anything that can help with that is wanted and needed,” she said. “The sooner you can get to (a case), the better the case can become, because the victim is still engaged.”

McFaden and Byrne cautioned that the bureau is far from complete, with many roles yet to fill and a slew of junior prosecutors to train for specialized work. Yet Teare is confident the initiative will eventually make a meaningful impact on the outcome of the county’s domestic violence cases. 

“All of the survivors in these cases will be handled in a better fashion, in a more consistent fashion, with trauma-informed prosecutors, with social workers that are all saying the same thing, with victim advocates that are all marching in the same step toward whatever the resolution is,” Teare told the Landing last fall. “If it saves one person, it’s worth it.”

For her part, McFaden hasn’t lost sight of her core mission.

“It’s being able to help one of those victims that so many people won’t believe,” McFaden said. “If we can at least empower these survivors to stand on their own, then maybe we can stop, by our actions, the harm that’s being done by the perpetrators.”

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