Le Journal

An Illinois woman says she made a difficult decision to stay with her partner because of their children, despite the couple’s “imperfect relationship.” Then one night he attacked her inside their home.The woman — who spoke on the condition that she be identified only by her first name, Carolina — says her partner hit her in the face. Her 12-year-old daughter heard them fighting and called the police.After he was taken away in handcuffs, Carolina, 33, said she knew that things had to change.A judge ordered her partner to enroll in an alcohol abuse treatment and a Partner Abuse Intervention Program, which provides education to people who cause harm in an effort to reduce and prevent domestic violence.Now four years later, Carolina says the abuse has stopped and she credits the program as a wakeup call for her partner.While every survivor's experience is unique, a new report commissioned by the Michael Reese Health Trust found that expanding such programming, for those who’ve committed abuse, is essential to ending domestic violence in Illinois.“If we're really going to truly break the cycle, we need to reach partners who cause harm,” said Jennifer Rosenkranz, senior program director of domestic violence at the Michael Reese Health Trust.Experts at survivor-centered organizations, like The Network: Advocating Against Domestic Violence, agree.“You have to stop it at the source,” Alondra Montes of the Chicago-based The Network said. “They're either going to continue with the new relationship or find their way back to that old partner that they hurt.”Along with expanding existing partner abuse intervention programs, or PAIPs, the report recommends creating new “non-stigmatizing” resources,” for those who’ve caused harm, like a specific hotline similar to the one available to survivors.But to do this will require more funding and it shouldn’t come at the expense of survivor services, according to Rosenkranz.“We have the same goal in preventing and ending domestic violence,” Rosenkratz said. “We need both approaches.” Advocates said to reach that goal they’ll need to act quickly. Incidents of domestic violence are on the rise across the area. Calls to the domestic violence hotline were up in Chicago in 2024. Domestic violence homicides increased by 17.8% in 2025, even as murders and other violent crimes in Chicago declined, according to city data.‘Why aren’t there services for him?’Christine Call has been advocating against domestic violence for decades, first on the survivor side, and later pioneering some of the earliest abuse intervention programs in the Chicago area.“The work [and] why I've been so interested in this is [because] it came from the women, from survivors, who were in our program, who would say to me: ‘Why aren't there services for him? I don’t want to live with him again, but I would really like my children to have a father, I would like him to have an opportunity to change,” Call said.Her organization, the Center for Advancing Domestic Peace, is one of 27 PAIP providers in Cook County, according to the report. There were 2,025 participants referred to PAIPs in fiscal year ‘23, according to data from the Illinois Department of Human Services, which oversees the programs.These intervention programs typically involve weekly meetings for a group of 12 to 15 people, which run for six months to a year. Meetings center around a group activity, aimed at helping people better understand their behaviors, take accountability and build healthier responses to stress.“Over the years, as we've done this work, we've recognized that many of the individuals in our programs have also been victims, victims as children, victims as adults, victims in community violence,” Call said.We give them an opportunity to examine the beliefs that led them to make the decision to harm somebody else, to harm an intimate partner, and give them an opportunity to think about where did they learn that.”Almost all program participants are ordered to…

Lors d’un match de football joué en Uruguay, nous avons décelé une merveille de pénalty raté. Nous pesons nos mots. Brahim Diaz a trouvé son maître au pénalty Nous avons tous en tête la panenka savamment foirée par Brahim Diaz en finale de la CAN. Sachez que moins d’une semaine plus tard, le Marocain a... L’article Il rate complètement son pénalty, sa réaction est déjà légendaire est apparu en premier sur FFL.

Five John Hersey High School wrestling coaches including boys varsity coach Joe Rupslauk have been relieved of their duties over concerns with recruiting practices, in-season training activities outside of school, and students living outside of school attendance boundaries receiving spots on the team, officials said.The five coaches — across varsity, junior varsity and freshman levels — had been on administrative leave since Northwest Suburban High School District 214 launched an internal review Dec. 10.Rupslauk didn’t respond to requests for comment Wednesday.The probe identified residency eligibility issues and determined that “several” students who wrestled at Hersey didn’t reside within the Arlington Heights school’s attendance boundaries, district officials said Wednesday.Officials declined to say how many athletes are involved since the matter involves student eligibility and remains under review by the Illinois High School Association.For more on this story, please visit DailyHerald.com.

In the opening scene of the sci-fi movie “Dune,” the face of a beautiful young woman fills the screen, and she intones, in an accent vaguely English but intending to sound otherworldly: “A beginning is a very delicate time … ”No, not the version starring Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya — the 1984 film directed by David Lynch, who cast for that opening a very young Virginia Madsen. The tiny appearance was her first major film role after leaving Chicago, her hometown, for Los Angeles.For Madsen, realizing in her own delicate beginning that she didn’t want to be typecast as a blonde ingénue made working in Hollywood a struggle, she has said in past interviews. She stopped working for a time, went broke. Some four decades later, the movie business still has its challenges for the Oscar-nominated actress.“It’s really hard to stay in this business for this long because sometimes I just get tired. I’m 64, man. I don’t want to hustle anymore, but I do because I love what I do,” said Madsen, chatting recently with the Chicago Sun-Times from her home in the Hollywood Hills.Her latest project, “Sheepdog,” has her delivering some of the truest, most heartbreaking lines since her Oscar-nominated performance in the 2004 film, “Sideways.” In the new movie, released nationwide last week, she plays a counselor-in-training, Dr. Elecia Knox, tasked with helping Calvin Cole (actor Steven Grayhm, who also wrote and directed the film), a U.S. Army combat veteran dealing with PTSD and survivor’s guilt.The death of Madsen’s nephew Hudson Madsen, who died by suicide in early 2022, drew her to the project. The young man was a U.S. Army sergeant and son of the late actor Michael Madsen, Virgina Madsen’s brother. What she particularly liked about the script was that the characters, hers included, find a way to claw through the wreckage of their grief to a better life.“I guess I wanted to find a way to put my grief into action,” Madsen said. “That’s the terrible thing about suicide. Afterwards, there are no answers. You want to know why, a thousand times, why? But really all you know for sure is the manner in which it was done.” Virginia Madsen, left, says the death of her nephew Hudson Madsen, who died by suicide in early 2022, drew her to the film. Hudson was the son of the late actor Michael Madsen, her brother. Matt Sayles/AP Photos Researching the part — and screening the movie — involved spending lots of time with grief counselors, as well as current and retired soldiers, Madsen said. “They all said, ‘You got it right. You gave us a voice. There is help. There is hope. There is growth.’ That was so rewarding,” Madsen said.Sadly, Madsen’s brother did not get to see the film. He suffered a fatal heart attack at his home in Malibu last year. “I did have his blessing in doing the film,” Madsen said. “And he was in so much pain, and I told him that I felt like this was the story I could tell. He just said, ‘You should do it. You should do it.’”Madsen, who is married and has a grown son of her own, said she still loves to visit the Chicago area. “I miss the foliage. I miss the smell of the fall, the smell of the winter,” she said. “There is nothing like Michigan Avenue at Christmas time.”Madsen was born on the South Side and lived in Evanston, downtown Chicago and the North Shore, graduating from New Trier High school. Her father, a Chicago firefighter, died several years ago. Madsen brought her mother, Elaine Madsen, a writer and filmmaker, to Lake Geneva from California last May to celebrate the matriarch’s 94th birthday.“The day after we got there, we both got COVID,” the actress said. “We were in this beautiful hotel in Lake Geneva, and we had a balcony and we got to go out and wave. We had to stay a lot longer, and it was just awful.” Virginia Madsen said there are plans in the works to return to the Chicago area for her mother’s upcoming birthday.Meantime, she says she’s enjoying the role of the mature actress.“I get much better roles now than I did…