District Attorney Marian Ryan of Middlesex County asked the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure to give favorable consideration to House Bill 323 and its companion, Senate Bill 200, which would require salon-service licensees in Massachusetts to complete a one-hour free online training on domestic violence.

Ryan told the committee that salon professionals are well positioned to notice signs of intimate-partner violence and to provide resources to people who might not disclose abuse elsewhere. “People often tell their hairdresser or barber things they don’t tell anyone else,” Ryan said. She added that trained professionals can spot physical markers such as “marks around the throat, missing hair at the back of the neck, and small petechiae in the eye.”

The program Ryan described — known in Middlesex County as “Cut It Out” — has been offered free to cosmetology students and professionals since 2009, she said, and the county has trained more than 3,000 professionals. Ryan noted the program’s local context: Middlesex County, with about 1,800,000 residents across 54 cities and towns, recorded no traditional domestic-violence homicides in 2024, a statistic she tied to community partnerships and outreach efforts including this training.

John Patrick Walsh, former president and CEO of the Elizabeth Grady Companies, supported the bill on personal and professional grounds, describing national domestic-violence statistics and saying the training could prompt victims to seek help sooner. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” Walsh said in urging lawmakers to act.

Colleen Dunbar, commander of the Lexington Police Department detective bureau and a former domestic-violence detective, told the committee that leaving an abusive relationship is often a process and that salon professionals can provide a crucial point of contact. She recounted a case in which a trained aesthetician safely left a pamphlet and the detective’s card with a client; that client later reported leaving her abuser and relocating out of state.

The witnesses asked the committee to advance the bills; no committee vote took place during the hearing. The committee did not take formal action on the bills during the session.