Most couples argue over money, but in tough economic times, those fights have a greater chance of somebody—usually the woman—ending up with a black eye. Or worse.
That’s the conclusion of Tracey Lutz, executive director of The Retreat, an East End organization devoted to sheltering and supporting battered women. As of last week, the shelter was more than 100 percent full, with calls to the Retreat’s hotline up dramatically over this time last year, Ms. Lutz said. October, the month during which the roiling economic crisis is hitting the country full force, just happens to be Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Meanwhile, East Hampton Police are seeing an increase in domestic disturbance calls between this time last year and this year. Between January 1, 2007 and October 6, 2007, police received 222 calls; the number for the same period is 273 this year.
“There is a direct correlation between the worsening economy and the number of calls we get for help when people are struggling financially,” Ms. Lutz said last week. If an abuser has lost his job and already is in a stressful situation, he is going to take it out on the closest target—his partner, she said.
The Retreat, which serves the East End area between Brookhaven on the west and Montauk and Orient on the east, and has administrative offices in East Hampton, was founded in 1987. It receives funding from Suffolk County, New York state, East Hampton and Southampton, and through fund-raising. Its budget is about $2.29 million.
It not only provides shelter for 18 women and children, it also offers nonresidential services for thousands of women seeking support in domestic violence crises. Those services include a hotline (631-329-2200), legal advocacy, counseling, support groups, educational services and referrals.
In 2007, shelter occupancy was 86 percent of capacity and the Retreat responded to 1,751 hotline calls. It received 2,581 police reports of domestic violence on the East End and provided about 2,162 counseling services.
“But we’re feeling the pinch ourselves
right now because we have to raise half our budget each year and all of our fund-raising events this year fell short of the mark, plus donations are down,” Ms. Lutz said. “So we have to cut back on staff and our program. The thing is we are a crisis center and we can’t turn people away. Obviously, this is very stressful for us because we want to provide the best services we can. So we are feeling the stress of the financial situation in the country, too.”
The shelter employs about 35 people, including therapists, social workers, case managers and administrative staff. Trained counselors answer the hotline. “The hotline is the first point of entry into the Retreat,” Ms. Lutz said. “Sometimes the women who call in just want to talk, so we listen to them and give them some guidance but they may not be ready to come in just then. But each time they call, they get a little stronger and then we can get them to come in.” The shelter gets cases involving women with children and single women. Each case is unique, but the women’s problems—in addition to being victims of abuse—are often financial, especially as the whole country suffers from an economic meltdown. They have been dependent on their husbands or partners, and have been afraid to leave their homes because they’d be penniless. Often, when they do finally leave, they find themselves with little but the clothes on their backs.
Take the case of 40-year-old Fiona. After suffering for a year at the hands of her boyfriend, she finally took refuge in a shelter for abused women in September. (In the interests of protecting her identity, Fiona is not her real name and the shelter where she is staying is not being identified.)
“I’m so grateful that, every day since I’ve been in the shelter, I wake up and feel safe. I go to bed and don’t worry about anybody coming in that window,” Fiona said last week.
She had been living with her boyfriend for about a month when the abuse started. Although the boyfriend worked, he refused to let Fiona work, so finances were tight.
“There were problems with money,” she said.
“Like any relationship at first, it was all roses, candles and trinkets. He came to visit my family and he was on his best behavior. I saw only his good side. But within the first month he began speaking to me differently, harshly. He began leaving me alone for long periods of time. I made excuses for him. I’ve learned that’s what many women do when abuse first starts.”
A few months later, Fiona’s boyfriend started grabbing her, choking her, and pulling her arm behind her back. He began holding onto her pajamas when she was sleeping and following her to the bathroom when she got up in the middle of the night.
His family, with whom they were living, also kept tabs on her every move. “I was not allowed to go anywhere by myself; I had to have an escort,” she said.
She said she couldn’t leave the house because the whole family conspired to keep her inside and eventually his sisters began knocking her down and hitting her. They took the phone out of the house and took away her cell phone.
She was trapped.
About a month before she escaped, the abuse escalated. While his sisters held her down, the boyfriend hit Fiona over the head with a frying pan. She was bleeding profusely but the boyfriend and his family refused to take her to the doctor.
Finally, with finances tight, Fiona suggested to her boyfriend’s sisters that they go to the nearest welfare office. Once there, she broke away from the sisters and ran to a security guard, blurted out that she was being held against her will, and he took her to an office in the building, where social workers contacted a local shelter for abused women.
The shelter has been a godsend, she said.
“The counselors here really separate their lives from their jobs,” Fiona said. “When they are here, it’s all about us. If my face is down, one of them will say, ‘Fiona, let’s talk. We are such a family here.’”
When Fiona went to live with her boyfriend, she left her family behind in Pennsylvania, taking little with her but her clothes. Today, at the shelter, she has next to nothing and doesn’t know what the future will bring. But she does have a goal.
“I want to be part of the solution of domestic violence. I’d like to get financial aid so I can go to school and come back and help these women. People just don’t know about domestic violence. This is happening to their daughters and they don’t even know it because we hide it so well.”
Fiona doesn’t want to press charges against her boyfriend because she is afraid he will harm her family, which includes sisters, brothers and grown children. “I have to give this over to God because I can’t put my family in danger,” she said.
Her own family doesn’t know where she is because she hasn’t had the heart to tell them.
But at the shelter, she is gaining coping skills to find the words to tell her family of her ordeal. Meanwhile, she finds the routine there comforting.
“We have had groups and one-onone sessions and the women talk and cry among themselves,” she said. “One thing you learn is that your story is not unique. And the staff is helping advocate for me; they’re helping me find a neurologist that takes my insurance. I have to see him because of the bruise on my head. I suffered a concussion when my boyfriend hit me with a frying pan.” Fiona said her biggest worry is what will happen when she leaves the shelter. Welfare would give her $309 a month, clearly not enough to provide for herself. “I’ve been worrying about that the last couple of days,” she said, “but I am learning to take things a day at a time.” One counselor at the Retreat, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the work, said that when women first come into a shelter, they are filled with so many emotions, it can be difficult to sort them out at first. “The victim has had to curb her emotions in the relationship, so when she expresses her feelings to us, it begins to facilitate the healing,” she said. “When they can finally say, ‘I feel safe’ or ‘I feel sad,’ they are actually taking control of themselves and their lives again instead of letting an abusive partner dictate how they are going to live.”
The counselors help to validate the victims’ feelings, she said.
Tracey Lutz of the Retreat says women like Fiona often move to transitional housing, and, like many abused women’s centers, the Retreat helps with placement. From there, the women can begin to look for jobs and learn to be financially independent.
The Retreat does more than provide 90-day shelter; it also has non-residential services for women who are not yet in crisis but struggling with an abusive relationship and need help sorting out their options. At the Retreat, these services include legal advocates (someone who helps explain how the criminal justice system works or how to get an order of protection), counseling, support groups, referrals, and community outreach, said Ms. Lutz.
“We touch and impact over 16,000 people annually through our hotline, advocacy, counseling services, education programs, and shelter,” she said.