When domestic violence survivors escape their abusers, that’s a strong first step toward a new life. Across the country, shelters and safe havens provide a soft landing spot to those who have fled. That’s only the beginning, however.
Once survivors find their feet, they need to look to the future. Shelter organizations may offer stable housing, legal assistance, credit counseling and financial literacy training, mental health counseling and children’s services to help people do well as they come out on the other side.
Leaving a Live-in Nightmare
A hug from Vickie’s boyfriend wasn’t an endearment — it was a threat. He’d say, “Let me hug you,” oh-so-affectionately and then hold Vickie so tightly she couldn’t move or breathe. “It was a manipulation,” she says. “You knew the intention was to hurt you.”
By 2007, the relationship between the couple, who lived together in California, was following classic patterns of control and abuse. Vickie, (who requested her real name not be published) realized her then-boyfriend had an alcohol problem. He became verbally abusive if she spent time with family members or angry if she went out with friends.
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The turning point came when Vickie, defying him, told a friend about the hugging-to-hurt episodes. “That is not normal,” was her friend’s response. She asked if Vickie had ever met any of his family members (she hadn’t) and suggested taking a closer look at his background. The friend talked to some contacts and did some digging, which revealed that Vickie’s live-in boyfriend had a history of violent behavior. She realized it wasn’t safe to stay.
As Vickie tried to break free, she became depressed and had trouble sleeping. However, she wasn’t ready to ask for help. “Coming from an Asian culture, it’s difficult to reach out,” she says. “Also, there’s shame and humiliation and you just don’t want to say: ‘I am in trouble.'”
A friend who knew about a shelter called My Sister’s House encouraged Vickie to visit and offer to volunteer. Meeting the team there, Vickie says, brought a warm, welcoming feeling of “Come in and join us.” Although she was hesitant about discussing her own situation, she was happy to help others.
Eventually, Vickie confided to the staff about what she was going through. They asked if she was safe where she was and if she needed a place to stay. First she declined. But later, 24-year-old Vickie realized she needed a safe place to heal and entered the shelter as a resident.
“I received legal services, food and shelter,” Vickie says. “Other than that, there was just encouragement to move forward and do the right thing and take care of myself.”
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Based in Sacramento, My Sister’s House provides services to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking. “We’re one of the few culturally responsive domestic violence shelters in California,” says Nilda Valmores, executive director of the nonprofit group whose founding mission was to serve Asian-Pacific Islander women and children.
The group’s emergency shelter only holds six beds. “We feel this is more welcoming, especially for immigrant women and children, who have told us they felt the largest shelters were not welcoming, especially when no one understood them,” Valmores says. For people who struggled to leave their original family homes, she says, going into an institution-like setting wasn’t helpful.
The shelter is largely staffed by Asian-Pacific Islander women who are bilingual and bicultural. The homelike way it’s decorated, the foods served and even the aromas are reflective of Asian culture, Valmores says, as is the six-bed transitional house. Transitional housing is considered a stepping stone toward self-sufficiency.
Every ethnicity has been represented there, Valmores points out, with the board’s mission revised to include other underserved women and children. A Spanish-speaking group was created for those women seeking services.
My Sister’s House also provides counseling and legal services, and offers a Women to Work program. Depending on their needs, clients receive services such as health information and transportation, child care, housing assistance and employment and career guidance.
A mentorship program is led by domestic abuse survivors who serve as role models and pass on their wisdom for succeeding.
This kind of support is much needed. “Once a survivor leaves her crisis, her traumatic situation, she needs to figure out how she is going to be able to live independently, so she doesn’t have to go back to the abuser or find another abuser,” Valmores says.
Although Vickie had a few distant relatives in the area, she felt they judged her for her choices. Her parents lived outside the country. One of the biggest advantages she gained from the shelter was having stable people in her life, whom she trusted would still support her even when she left roughly eight months later.
Once living independently, Vickie made it work. She’s now passionate about her job with a local nonprofit where she helps others in need. She’s also made time to earn a master’s degree.
Philadelphia Freedom
Some 20 years ago, Marie Dunham lived in an explosive environment. Her husband was physically abusing her at home, in front of her 6-year-old son. “Then, a lady on the bus had given me a little card from Women Against Abuse,” she says. “So I called, and that’s what brought me to the shelter.”
By that time, Dunham says, “I was in fear for my life. I didn’t think I was going to survive another day. So it was desperate.” After a carefully orchestrated escape, she and her son left their Philadelphia home and were met by shelter staff members in a preplanned location.
Leaving was unsettling for her son, Dunham says. “But we were close — we are close,” she adds. “He just wanted to make sure that I was OK. He was not [a victim of the] abuse but he’d seen what was happening to me. So for us to be away from that, he was OK.”
After the shelter, the pair moved into transitional housing in Sojourner House, which provides apartments for women and children for up to 18 months.
Having their own apartment was “awesome,” Dunham says. An on-site office worked with them as she looked for work and placed her son in school. Eventually, the staff helped her find permanent housing.
Women Against Abuse has a two-pronged mission, says Jeannine Lisitski, the group’s executive director and president: providing safety services to survivors and leading the struggle to end domestic violence. Safety services include the Philadelphia Domestic Violence Hotline, two separate 100-bed safe havens and 15 transitional beds at Sojourner House.
Finally, a residential program called Safe at Home pairs affordable housing with trauma-informed case management. “We talk about rebuilding, but at the root of it, there’s a lot of healing that needs to happen because of trauma,” Lisitski says. Longer stays are really positive, she says, because that seems to cut down on people recycling through safe-haven beds.
The program does aggressive outreach throughout the Philly legal system to find domestic violence victims who might need free representation through the program’s large legal center in “protection for abuse” (similar to a restraining order), custody and support cases.
On-site services are an important piece of the program’s model. “People can come in and make immediate plans for long-term housing, perhaps a career, education, what they need to do for their children, including get them behavioral health support,” Lisitski says. A little chillingly, she adds, staff can also help residents plan where children can go to school and avoid kidnapping by violent perpetrators.
[See: 10 Concerns Parents Have About Their Kids’ Health.]
All these years later, Dunham says she and her son are doing “wonderful.” To address lingering emotional challenges, she wrote a book: “Yeah, Though I Walk: A Journey of Survival and Deliverance,” which she had published last year. She has also become a minister, spiritual counselor and a community outreach representative for Women Against Abuse. “So I have come back into myself,” she says.
If you need help, the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 is available to callers 24/7. To find a shelter near you, click on domesticshelters.org, an online, searchable directory of nearly 3,000 programs in the U.S. and Canada.
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Reclaiming Your Life After Domestic Violence originally appeared on usnews.com
