Ask the Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Services Employee

In My Humble Opinion
1

I think I never did this before. I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while.

I work for a fairly large nonprofit domestic violence and sexual assault services organization. We offer a wide range of services to survivors including emergency shelter, counseling, forensic examinations and survivor advocacy in the immediate aftermath of sexual assault. We also provide legal advocacy, PPOs and Prevention Education as well as a wide range of wrap-around services.

I think I’m in a unique capacity to answer programming and general advocacy questions across the board because I work on the development team as a grant writer and I write about our programming all day long.

I am happy to answer any general questions about issues surrounding sexual assault and domestic violence, the way things work at our organization, the types of services we provide, and anything you want to know about making a nonprofit tick. I do not work directly with survivors. I am not an expert on all of the dynamics involved. My education is specifically in the area of development, non-profit management, and other large-scale approaches to social justice issues. I have no formal education in sexual assault or domestic violence advocacy beyond general orientation and seminars provided at my work. I have picked up plenty of insight from working there, and I am myself a survivor, but I claim no formal expertise.

I will not provide personal information about anyone staffed or receiving services at our organization, anecdotes about survivors, or detailed financial information about my specific organization. I speak as an individual and my opinions are not necessarily representative of my organization. I would prefer this not become a forum to argue about the prevalence of sexual assault or false accusations or any number of other issues that could easily derail such a thread. Let’s try to stick to basic education.

Ask away!

2

Does your organization offer services to male victims, or referrals to appropriate, equivalent services? What is their policy on keeping families with teenage male children together in the shelters?

3

We do offer services to males. We say we will serve anyone ‘‘regardless of gender’’ because that includes non-gender binary folks and trans men. People who identify as men make up approximately 1% of our shelter residents and maybe 3% of our sexual assault forensic exam cases. They are usually housed somewhat apart from the women (but sharing common areas) because shelter victims have a tendency to form rapid attachments and try to have sex a lot. (Also an issue we have with male staff, and female survivors developing romantic attachments to them.)

(Note: While the shelter is primarily for domestic violence survivors, sexual assault in intimate partner violence is incredibly common, so there is a lot of overlap.)

The issue of male sexual assault/DV is incredibly vexing to me. I have read studies indicating that if the definition of rape were expanded to include being forced to penetrate, the number of male victims would rise dramatically. Obviously, men are also victims of domestic violence. The problem is these men aren’t coming forward. I don’t know anything about them, or how their experiences differ, or the special issues that come into play, or what sort of impact it has on their lives. This lack of knowledge, and thus lack of acknowledgment, and thus lack of access to treatment, bothers me a lot.

Teenage male children stay in shelter all the time. Because of the population of kids we serve in shelter, about half of our shelter residents are male.

4

Does your shelter allow people to bring their pets, or is there a shelter where the pets can stay while their humans are getting help? I’m asking this because an organization in my city built a no-kill shelter a few years ago, because some people (not necessarily DV survivors) would not go to shelters because they couldn’t guarantee they would get their pets back.

I’m also happy to see that teenage boys can stay with their mothers. Several years ago, my local NPR affiliate had a Q&A with the head of the local DV agency, and one question was, “Do you ever have male clients?” They said that they did, and if he needed shelter, they had provisions for that - the same thing they did for situations where a woman’s abuser might know where the shelter is. They would give motel vouchers, and even had some brave people who would allow victims to stay in their homes. She also added that, at least at that time, their male clients were mostly in gay relationships, but not always. Many of the men who contacted them didn’t need help for themselves, but were asking what to do about a sister or an ex-wife, and in the latter case how to get custody of their children.

5

Yes, actually. We are a little unique in that regard. The pet shelter was recently constructed more or less in our backyard. Up until that point, we had a deal with the local animal shelter. (From a funding perspective, I can tell you that pets are a far more popular choice for donations than say, children’s services.)

Threats against pets are a common tactic of abusers. Indeed, a frequently cited reason that victims chose not to come to shelter in the past was due to concern about their pets.

I should note that our shelter is intentionally visible. Security is very high but the location is not a secret and the building is clearly marked. This was a philosophical decision as much as anything else. We don’t want domestic violence to be a secret, shameful thing. We do a lot of stuff on the advocacy end besides providing direct services. But as a I said, security is state-of-the-art where I work and we have close ties with the local law enforcement. We aren’t sacrificing safety for visibility.

6

Whats your policies with respect to housing and care of teen and young adult males? IME thats often problematic; too vulnerable to be left with the older men and too dangerous to be housed with the females.

How do you guys deal with what we call “sandwich” or “trickle down” abuse, (A abuses B who abuses C)?

What practice and procedures do you have to assist victims to regain lost dwellings, businesses, movable properties?

(Its your party, and will remain, but as I have also worked with vulnerable and abused persons, I am interested in how you guys deal with these issues).

ETA: DV is extremely shameful. For the perp.

7

In my old town, they had two shelters; one was in the upstairs of their office building, and of course heavily secured, and then they had one with a secret location for women who needed to go into hiding. I thought I had figured out where the secret shelter was, but it turned out to be an MR/DD group home that had a brick wall and high fence around it in case a resident tried to wander off.

The only time I ever saw a school that was on permanent lockdown with a guard who I’m pretty sure was armed was also in that town. It was a K-3 school in a quiet middle-class neighborhood, and the guard was there because it was the school attended by the children that age who were staying at the shelter. The guard was a contracted employee of the DV agency, and was there whether any shelter children were there or not.

8

(Didn’t make the edit window)

Another question. Do you have any policy regarding clients who contact the abuser? I’ve heard that this is the #1 most common reason why (usually) women are kicked out of the shelter. The first time I heard of it was about 15 years ago, when I worked with a woman who had stayed at a shelter in the Phoenix area several years earlier. One item on the list of rules was that contacting the abuser would lead not only to them being asked to leave (no, MADE to leave) and they could not receive services from that agency for 6 months. :eek: I was horrified, as have other people to whom I’ve told this story, but she explained to me that they did this not only to keep the shelter’s location secret, but also because they had limited resources and needed to use them for people who would actually benefit from them.

9

How bad do things usually get before a victim goes to a shelter?

And along of what **nearwildheaven **said, ISTM that a “don’t you dare contact your abuser” policy has the perverse effect of deterring victims from seeking help.

10

They stay with their (usually) mothers in the shelter. I honestly don’t know much beyond that. It seems when problems arise they are treated on a case-by-case basis, but I don’t think the standard is to assume that problems will arise. There’s not a default attitude here that men are inherently problematic/likely to abuse. In the case of violent behavior, the kid would not be able to stay, but I am certain alternative arrangements would be made to ensure the child is safe.

I’m assuming you mean (for example) Dad abuses Mom, Mom abuses child? We don’t work with perpetrators of abuse, and in cases where the child has been abused, we refer out.

We provide legal advocacy (not advice, but general information) and connect survivors with free legal services when possible. We also have our own PPO office at the local courthouse. That said, the main focus of our legal advocacy department is walking survivors through the court process particularly around DV arraignment and sexual assault proceedings. As I understand it, a large part of their job is supporting survivors through the stark realization that they probably won’t see justice. They also work directly with law enforcement… frankly, we have done some incredible work with law enforcement, forming local task forces, and helping to develop law enforcement protocol that decimated the DV-murder rate in one county. I know some of this work was around police escorts and getting safely back into the home in some cases. We have a department whose entire role is to connect survivors with whatever services or assistance they need, and reclaiming property would fall under that category. We can provide space for legal consultation on site. We do not have lawyers on staff (well, we do, but they don’t provide legal services, they head the advocacy program) but we do have access to a network of volunteer lawyers.

A whole part of our schtick is based on the Family Justice Center Model, which is to provide as many services as humanly possible under one roof. We have our core services but we have scores of community partners who provide services (housing, legal, financial, medical) on site. This is because the amount of services that people in this situation typically need is insane. I think the average is something like 32 different places, and they have to go through the whole abuse story every time, and it’s kind of terrible. So we want to minimize the red tape that the survivors have to go through just to get back on their feet.

Oh, feel free to jump in. As I said, I don’t work directly with survivors so my understanding has limits. I’m a development wonk. My job is focused on getting money to run these programs. I talk with program staff on a regular basis and I certainly see survivors around, but I’m less privy to the daily challenges of shelter life. My general impression is that it is absolute chaos.

11

I don’t believe we have any such policy. It’s a core tenet of our philosophy not to make decisions for the victims, just to get them thinking about their options and want they want out of life. Yes, it’s frustrating, but telling someone what to do about their relationship is basically just transferring control from the abuser to the counselor/org, is it not? These people need most of all autonomy and the empowerment to know they can trust their own judgment.

One possible exception I can see is if the contact with the abuser represented a potential threat to others in the shelter. Some of these guys are fucking insane and the lengths they will go to try to get to their victim are pretty intense. One local case we had (not at my shelter) an abuser was posing as a volunteer at a bunch of different shelters to try to get to his victim. The safety issue can complicate everything.

12

Pretty bad. And shelter space is limited, we never have enough beds. We have a 24-hour crisis line where victims typically call and receive an assessment. We have been really big into high-risk assessment (and training local professionals, police, lawyers, etc. to use the tool also) which evaluates the victim’s risk based on statistically known factors to significantly increase danger. The greatest of these are: strangulation (it is absolutely crazy how high a correlation there is between strangulation and gun violence - not only against the victim but police as well!), owning a weapon, threatening with or using a weapon, recent escalation of violence, or the victim being pregnant. If a victim scores high on this assessment they are generally considered a good candidate for shelter. We provide a number of other resources for people deemed a lower risk. It’s not a perfect system but it’s a hell of a lot better than subjective measures like ‘‘how upset the victim seems’’ (which is a fairly common decision factor for untrained people and does not in any way correlate to actual risk.)

In summary, people most often go to shelter when there’s a good chance they might be killed.

I agree. It’s my NSHO that the place where I work is pretty extraordinary.

13

That’s one of the reasons why the clients were told not to contact their abusers.

I’ve heard that the story you described is a big problem when dealing with domestic violence in lesbian relationships.

14

Another issue with the LGBT community is that in most towns it is quite small, so you have a really tight social network where everybody knows everybody, which creates a lot of social pressure for people to stay together or at least remain in contact.

Also, particularly for trans folks, part of the pattern of control used by the abuser may be threats to out them to employers or family, along with the general horribleness of degrading them or making them feel worthless because of their trans status.

15

What’s the usual trajectory of your clients after leaving the shelter? What do you consider a “success story”?

16

This is a wonderful concept, because it enables people to get other services sooner, and with less assault on their dignity.

17

Was your training mostly OJT, or did you go through NOVA (National Organization of Victims Advocates) or something?

18

I think it largely depends on the needs of the client, but for the most part, the goal of our organization is to walk people through that point of first crisis and lead them into financial and emotional stability in a place that’s safe from their abuser.

So for a generic example, the trajectory might be, a lady calls the crisis line, is evaluated as a high-risk situation, and moves into the shelter. During her stay in shelter, she is assigned a case manager, who learns that she faces a number of challenges preventing her from leaving her abuser. Among them, the fact that she has no work history and her car is broken down, along with an untreated mental illness. The case manager would work first on immediate safety planning and the client would receive counseling for her trauma. Our service coordinator would provide assistance with career development, would teach her how to search for possible jobs online and apply, would assist with the resume, and would provide seminars on-site from partner organizations that address marketing job skills or financial management. We would also arrange transportation to and from a psychiatrist so that she could be evaluated and prescribed medication if necessary. Finally, we might issue a small grant so that she could have her car repaired, enabling her to attend job interviews, higher education, or a job.

Meanwhile, she would be working with a counselor on long-term stability plans. I’m not privy to a lot of what counseling does, but a part of it would be emotional (How do I cope with this fear and sense of helplessness?) and a part of it would be pragmatic (Where am I going to live, how will I support myself?) Once she has secured a safe place to stay and has addressed the whole picture through case management and therapy, she leaves the shelter (usually after 30-45 days.) She would continue to receive counseling services as long as she felt she needed them, and would continue to use our service coordinator as a resource for whatever practical challenges she faced along the way.

In the absolute best case scenario, she would become a court advocate or join our speaker’s organization and become a part of the advocacy movement. We have survivors who speak regularly about their experience for the purposes of awareness-raising and advocacy. We have some who visit politicians. Some people feel really empowered after the experience to attack the problem on a broader level.

I have been with my current organization for two years. My training as it pertains to domestic violence and sexual assault has been entirely on the job. As I mentioned before, I don’t do direct service work. So beyond general orientation, I have attended mandatory seminars on a wide range of topics, from serving LGBT survivors to strangulation and high-risk assessment. Every month during the all staff meeting, one of our departments will present on an issue specific to their division. In this way, we all learn from each other about the myriad factors going into the work.

My formal education is in macro social work (MSW.) Macro social work is a pretty broad field that covers multiple big-picture strategies for achieving social justice. These would include advocacy, policy, community organizing, fundraising, community development, and of course nonprofit management. My expertise is in the area of nonprofit management and particularly development (raising money.) My official job is grants coordinator. I work on a development team with coworkers who do things like plan fundraising events, launch capital campaigns, and handle day-to-day interactions with regular donors. I’m a bit of an odd one out because grant writing is separate from all that. I identify potential foundation or corporate prospects and prepare written applications asking them for money. I also participate in a lot of the fiscal strategic planning with regard to program funding streams. In short, we keep the lights on.

I wasn’t actively seeking out working on DV and sexual assault issues, I just sort of fell into this great opportunity. At the time I took the job I didn’t consider how close the issue was to me, but it has since become a major part of my personal and professional identity. One of the reasons I chose to go the macro route is because I don’t believe I could sit down with survivors day after day, without being affected or burning out quickly, both due to my high empathy and PTSD. In a development capacity, I can work on the issue and really make a difference without getting too entangled in the emotional drama.