The Texas Governor’s Family Violence Criminal Homicide Prevention Task Force, a 21-member panel, is mapping out the top causes of domestic violence fatalities across Texas. The group includes survivors, law enforcement, advocates and health professionals who are combining experience and data to advise the legislature. Heather Bellino, CEO of the Texas Advocacy Project, is a visible voice in the effort as the task force tackles stalking first before moving on to strangulation and firearms. Local outlets like KSAT have followed the process and the task force will deliver a set of legislative recommendations in late 2027.
The task force was created by law to study how victims are killed and to suggest changes lawmakers can use. Its membership brings a mix of lived experience and professional expertise, which members say is crucial to spotting patterns that paperwork alone can miss. The mandate is clear: find the common paths to lethal outcomes and recommend practical fixes that can be funded and implemented.
The team’s opening focus is stalking, an issue survivors and advocates say often escalates into deadly situations. “Someone said that it can be described as homicide in slow motion, and that was one of those moments that stopped me in my tracks,” said Texas Advocacy Project CEO Heather Bellino. That characterization stuck because stalking is rarely a single act; it’s a pattern that quietly tightens control until escalation occurs.
Stalking can look harmless to outsiders but terror to someone who has hidden a new address or a new life. “Receiving flowers to a new home address might be viewed as a lovely gesture to someone who has never been stalked; however, if a survivor receives those flowers at an address they worked hard to keep secret from their abuser, the gesture becomes terrifying.” Understanding context is essential to spotting the threat early.
Technology has widened the ways abusers can watch and follow victims, and that complicates detection and proof. “That pattern might not look as frightening if you don’t know what they’re saying between the lines,” Bellino said. “We’ve had so many victims come to us that say, ‘I don’t know why or how he knows where I am,’” Bellino said. ”There could be a tracker in your car, there can be a tracker on your phone.”
State law was changed in September 2023 to raise the stakes for stalking and to broaden what counts as stalking under the Penal Code. The crime is normally a third-degree felony, but it becomes a second-degree felony if the actor has a prior conviction under the same section, increasing the potential prison term from 10 to 20 years. The law also lowered evidentiary hurdles, but advocates say the burden still falls too heavily on victims to document the pattern of harassment.
Proving stalking often requires logs, records and documentation that survivors are expected to collect while they are coping with trauma and sometimes still in danger. “If you’re being stalked, you need to keep a log of it. You need to be able to show proof. All of it is the onus on the victim,” Bellino said. ”We want to create easier ways for victims to be able to document the harm that they are feeling, and wouldn’t it be great if we just stopped people from stalking?”
Advocates told the task force that early belief and intervention save lives, and one near-term strategy is public awareness. “It can prevent future violence from occurring,” Bellino said. “We need to be able to recognize signs, we need to be able to understand for stalking that it’s pattern-based abuse.” Funding and resource allocation are the obvious but necessary levers to put those plans into action.
“Apply the funding and the allocation of resources,” she said. The task force is scheduled to move from stalking into strangulation and then firearms before compiling a formal report for state lawmakers in late 2027. “I think that there’s a lot of promise that we can really move the needle and prevent future homicides,” she said. “We’ve all been in this work for quite a long time, and yet there’s still the aha moments that occur where we see there’s a gap in service.”
If you or someone you know needs immediate help, call 911. For local wrap-around services in San Antonio, contact Family Violence Prevention Services at 210-733-8810 or the Bexar County Family Justice Center at 210-631-0100. For statewide legal and social services, call the Texas Advocacy Project at 800-374-HOPE or apply for help online through their organization. KSAT maintains a resource list and a Domestic Violence webpage that can help connect survivors to local services.
