What the HELL is WRONG with (this subsection of) humanity!
There are no words…
What do we have to do? Place armed guards at the door? I remember one of the shelters in the Ottawa-Valley (one I volunteered at with a therapy dog - the only adult male allowed on site!) - we had a few men who discovered where we were, and there were attempts at breaking in… Is there nothing we can do to protect the women and children who have escaped such horrible situations?
P.S.: As a survivor of such horrors, let me tell you this - when people say “Go to a shelter! Leave him! You’ll be safe!” and battered women respond, “Oh, but you don’t know him. He’ll find me. He’ll find a way…” we mean it.
The article says that the shelter operators chose not to keep the location secret, but instead to warn people that there was extra security. And yet the victim was the only person there at the time. :rolleyes:
I rarely hear of women being attacked at shelters by their abusers. Does it really happen that often?
Our county does not reveal the location of the shelter.
A co-worker’s wife volunteers at one and when I first found that out I asked where it was, just out of curiosity. (I had not known before asking that it was secret.) She was pretty adamant that it was something she did not reveal and I later learned that her husband (who is no more likely to abuse his wife or daughter than to grow wings and fly) was also never told the location.
That sounds like a rather brighter system than the one in effect in this story.
I don’t think it’s all THAT frequent, and shelters are obviously a far better idea than staying in a situation where you risk getting killed anyway.
It sounds like there was staff present (there would be), but that this woman and her son were the only “residents” at the time. I feel horrible for that boy…
Nope, it makes perfect sense. It’s a great way for predatory, abusive men to meet vulnerable, traumatized women, in a vulnerable, possibly even trusting situation.
In my area, the location is semi-secret. Most of the lawyers that do domestic violence cases know where it is, but it is a “need to know” kinda thing. To talk to a client staying there, even by telephone, you have to know a codeword selected by the victim at the time she enters the shelter. I’m fortunate to practice in a place where the Judges take domestic violence seriously, and we get excellent cooperation from the Courts, Sheriff’s Department, and local police. I’ve had deputies call me at home to let me know when they’ve arrested one of my defendants, so I can hustle down to the jail to get the guy served. I’ve also had Judges make arrangements to meet me halfway to hear emergency matters–which is helpful in a rural area with 8 counties in our district.
Things are getting better for the victims, but there is still room for improvement. I’d like to see changes to our divorce law to make it easier to obtain a divorce on grounds of domestic violence, and a system to allow pro se litigants to obtain a more durable restraining order–right now, without a lawyer, most pro se victims can only get an order from our lowest court that’s good for 10 days. I can take an emergency order with no notice to the Defendant in a higher court, but to make it permanent I have to serve him with process and have an evidentiary hearing within 10 days.
I work for the PA Department of Public Welfare as a clerk. When we’re doing phones or reception, we’re not allowed to even tell husbands/boyfriends if the woman had an appointment that day (unless he accompanied her to the office), let alone where her current address is. That’s pounded into us constantly, for this very reason.
Strictly out of curiousity, because I know virtually nothing about the subject, what barriers to divorce are currently in the way of abused women? How would you make it easier for them to divorce?
How often has a woman complained about her abusive partner only to be told “Why doesn’t she leave?” The real question is “Why don’t these men let go?” For some women, the only option is kill or be killed.
I do know a woman who left her abusive boyfriend and then went to court sixteen times to try to keep him away from their son. When the man killed his son in a murder/suicide, she was asked by many, many people “Why didn’t you try to get away from him?”
Thing is, though, in a small town in a sparsely populated rural county, there’s a pretty good chance that most people know one another, know what everyone does for a living, and know who lives where. I imagine it might be difficult to keep a shelter location secret in such a situation. As the police chief says in the article, the longer a shelter has been in place, the more likely it is that its location will be known.
A friend of mine worked for a few years at a battered women’s shelter in Vancouver, and even in a relatively large city like that it was still difficult to keep the shelter location secret from determined abusers. They had elaborate systems of passwords etc., but every now and then some asshole would find the place and try to get in.
I totally agree about the necessity of keeping the location secret from abusive partners. But this has caused a minor problem for me…
The house I lived in as a teenager was converted into a womens’ shelter, and of course men are not allowed to approach it. It also happens to be the place where my mother died, in the kitchen of the apartment on the right. A couple years later one of my best friends killed himself in the house in another apartment.
I’d like to stop and stand there for a moment, just to pay my respects and “say hello to the ghosts.” I realize that my mere appearance would be a threat there, so I dont even try.
If it’s the small price I can pay to endure that the people who need to feel safe do so, then I can live with that.
There was a case a while back where a judge refused to hear motions on a woman’s petition for divorce and even ordered her and her abusive husband to couple’s counseling to work towards reconciliation because the woman was pregnant and by the laws of that state (apparently) she couldn’t get divorced. I do not recall the state this occured in, but it made me seething mad. I believe the woman is currently suing over this, and I want to say the ACLU is helping her.
I know where the one in my hometown is, because my mom used to run an emergency social services referral program. A few years ago we wanted to go there to donate some clothing and bed linens, and they were VERY cagey about even letting us leave the stuff on the front step. It took a lot of talking on Mom’s part before they would even let us make a direct donation rather than donating through the affiliated larger social service agency, but we were adamant that we wanted the stuff to go directly to the shelter.
Finally, they decided that the two 5’1" women standing on the front step, one of whom knew all the details of their referral procedures, were not a threat.
This happened one county over from me. Creepy stuff. Unfortunately, the location of that county’s shelter was fairly widely known. In our county, they take great steps to keep the shelter location secret and it moves periodically. That takes time and resources that some areas don’t want to give.
This bastard was working on a degree in counseling? That is baffling.