For battered women, safe storage in flash drives

TAMPA - For 12 years, Lori Deloreto-Zapata says she put up with the unthinkable.

"I could have been dead. I definitely could have been dead. My children could have been seriously abused, but thank God I got out when I did," she said.

Deloreto-Zapata is a survivor of domestic violence, who doesn't want anyone to have to go through what she did.

"I tried to climb out of the window and he came up behind me and grabbed me, and I was never able to get out," she said.

The frequency of domestic violence is alarming: as a group gathered this morning for a meeting at the Family Justice Center in Tampa, statistics show two people had probably already died, victims of domestic violence.

Last month alone, domestic violence took 180 lives.

Some cases end up on the news. As in the case of Cedrick Salter, who's accused of murdering his estranged girlfriend Saquanda Simon while she held their baby in her arms.

But it's the cases on the brink of making the news you might never see -- women who battle every day, and they need every bit of help they can get.

"This flash drive right here is one piece of this," explains Casey Gwinn, President of The National Family Justice Center Alliance.

It's a small piece of hardware, but the flash drives could help save a battered woman's life. On it, a victim can store all her vital paperwork, a kid's birth certificate, drivers license information, and police or legal records. It's meant for things that, if she flees from a home, she won't have to go back for.

"It's not terribly complicated, but it's not being done anywhere in America," Gwinn said.

The Family Justice Center is sort of a 'one stop shop' for victims of domestic violence. Since they opened about three years ago, they've helped thousands of families. They hope with the flash drives, they can help even more.

"This safety deposit box program would have been amazing for me to have. I was scared to death he was going to find my paperwork all the time," Deloreto-Zapata said.

The program is already underway. The Justice Center in Tampa is one of just three pilot locations in the country . The others are in Louisiana and Idaho. Organizers hope the tiny bit of technology can make a world of difference.

The trial program will last for six months. If it's successful, The Family Justice Center hopes to make it available to victims of domestic violence all over the country.