Bridge to a More Secure Life for Battered Women

It has been four months since TV’s “The Burning Bed” came into living rooms and made real the plight of battered women. For hours, perhaps days, the collective consciousness was raised; crisis lines were jammed with calls; contributions poured in; a few more women sought help. Then the urgency of today’s crisis pushed aside yesterday’s issue.

But for Judy Samuel and her 11 counselors at Haven Hills Shelter for Battered Women in the San Fernando Valley, “The Burning Bed” made a difference; people for the first time began to understand the enormity of a crime which, according to the National Coalition on Battered Women, will happen to one of every two women in their lifetimes.

Haven Hills is a short-term sanctuary for the worst cases; there, eight families, mothers and children, can be housed in clean but shabby two-room units. There is one room set aside as a school. In the small central courtyard, women and children are often seen with black eyes, cuts and bruises.

Mary, 35, a former resident of the shelter, had been the victim of a number of battering incidents and was suffering from a concussion when she arrived at Haven Hills. She knew that the repeated beatings were getting worse and believed that the next time both she and her children would be killed. “I wasn’t in touch with any feelings. I felt like a stone, but I knew that I was safe, he wouldn’t find me,” she said. “Being away, without any contact with him, gave me a chance.”

Mary, not her real name, still has some fear of being sought out by her ex-husband. She is an RN and currently enrolled in a master’s program. She expressed great optimism for her future and deep gratitude for the Haven Hills staff members who helped her in the first days away from her husband. “They’re so supporting, caring and willing to let you vacillate. They let you be human and make you feel OK to be a human being.”

Nightmare of the Past

Sue, 36, came to Haven Hills out of a 14-year upper-middle-class marriage. She reminisced on the nightmare she left two years ago. “I knew that if I didn’t get out, he would kill me. My children were too much involved and the last time my son jumped out of a window and ran for help while my husband tried to break down the door to a closet where I was hiding. He had a dowel and I knew he would have killed me.”

Now an apartment manager and part-time employee on the shelter’s crisis line, Sue said, “I knew I was safe from the moment I arrived. I was told that whatever I was thinking was OK. I found out I was not the only woman who has been battered. I learned about what battering is, and that it was not my fault. I got so many answers that it was like a huge puzzle that came together all at once.

Reflecting on the counselors, Sue added, “Any time I would see any of them, they would be so warm. It was so nice to see a bright, cheery face.”

Currently, the shelter houses five women and eight children. The ages of the five range from 20 to 55 with an economic spectrum ranging from a woman on welfare to an upper-middle-class housewife who arrived penniless because her husband had cut off all her access to money.

One of the women, who finds it difficult to believe she is safe, constantly searches her surroundings for a husband who for three years relentlessly tracked her from New York to South Carolina. She finally fled once again, this time to California. She said she has been beaten more than 50 times.

Like the 17 other shelters for battered women in Los Angeles County, Haven Hills, founded in 1980, is a bridge to a healthier life for victims of physical violence. Funding for the shelter’s $390,000-a-year budget comes from private donations, United Way and city and county grants specifically set aside from fees for marriage licenses and birth certificates. The largest amount, about $130,000, comes from the City of Los Angeles, with additional money given by the county under grants for outreach and child abuse services. A staff priority is letting women know that battering is not their fault, that no one deserves to be beaten.

Rebuilding Self-Esteem

In the safety of the shelter, counselors also work to rebuild the women’s self-esteem, to divert their focus from the violent men and to break down the sense of isolation most battered women feel. Director Samuel, 39, who has a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University, works on the premise that a woman must be made aware that she has choices and is able to make them.

“It’s so hard not to be affected by the levels of violence we deal with,” said Debby Niemi, 31, for three years a counselor at Haven Hills. “After seeing it constantly, you begin to ask yourself, how can people do this to each other? When we feel that way we can always turn to each other for support.”

Weekly staff meetings are a release valve for counselors, sort of therapy sessions for the therapists.

Steve Miller, 23, the only male counselor at the shelter, observed, “it’s important for the children to have a man around who will be sensitive to them.”

At a recent staff meeting, one subject of discussion was a former college instructor who endured five years of progressively intense battering. She came to Haven Hills after having the blood vessels in one ear ruptured in a particularly savage attack. Other cases included a woman who had been asked to leave the shelter because she kept returning to her husband and risked exposing its location. She was liked. There were expressions of dismay from the counselors, who too often see women choose to return to a situation where battering is almost certain to recur.

‘Hard to Watch’

“On the average,” Niemi said, “it takes six episodes for a woman to leave the battering environment for good. Some stay for years and some, a few, leave after the first or second incident. It’s hard to watch but we try to let these people know that they have choices, that they have power. We have to support them even if they choose to go back.”

Samuel added, “If there is to be any real hope, the power basis of the relationship has to change. This means really that both the man and the woman have to get help.”

Samuel described the nature of battering: “There are three stages. There is the tension-building stage, the blowup stage where the battery occurs, followed by the honeymoon stage where the husband is sorry and promises things will get better. Our experience is that the honeymoon stage always leads back into tension-building unless there is some kind of intervention.”

Counselors at Haven Hills work under Samuel’s direction for $6 to $8 an hour, which, according to Samuel, is slightly higher than average in the field. The work is hard, she said, and emotionally draining.

Assisted by volunteers who answer phones, the Haven Hills staff receives 150 crisis calls a month. Each month, in group sessions, they see 30 non-resident battering victims; the shelter houses about 90 women, with or without children, each year.

Haven Hills sets stiff standards for admission. “Now,” Samuel said, “we can generally find a bed when we need to. But that is only because we’ve made it tougher to get in. We really only see the worst cases.”

Problem of Burnout

She works out of an office a few miles from the shelter and, unlike her counselors, she does not deal with tragedy on a one-on-one basis every day. But she is aware of the problem of burnout, of counselors “having nothing more to give emotionally. The people we deal with are generally used to being dependent. You have to be on your guard not to encourage that. You’re nurturing and at the same time you’re pushing them out.”

There was a precocious 7-year-old girl in the habit of sitting on everyone’s lap. On her first day at the shelter she calmly walked to the refrigerator where counselors’ lunches are stored and took one bite out of each. The counselors felt both amusement and affection toward the child, but they recognized, too, the need for discipline at some point.

Miller, who works primarily with the children, said, “We try to set limits. We want them to know that hitting is not OK. Four-year-olds come in modeling the behavior of their fathers. A 4-year-old boy sees Daddy hitting Mommy and that’s what he does.”

Other children, consumed by fear, simply make an effort to become part of the wall.

Counselor Nikki Stone, a single parent who described herself as a pacifist, observed, “The children are damaged emotionally, even if they aren’t battered . . . . There are not enough shelters, not enough beds, not enough therapists, there’s not enough sensitivity on the part of law enforcement, welfare and other agencies. But it’s getting better.”

Violence as a Social Issue

Niemi, a divorced woman who is a senior counselor studying for a degree in psychology, sees violence as “a social issue. Men are trained that violence is a way of controlling their environment. I don’t see how we can begin to talk about world peace as long as we practice violence in the home.”

The work at Haven Hills has made deep changes in Niemi’s life. “The first six weeks I worked here I was absolutely enraged. I can’t laugh anymore at feminist jokes. It has changed the way I look at relationships forever.” Niemi contends that males are victims too: “They need to be able to cry, to express their feelings. But the women and the children suffer the worst. We’re talking about broken noses and cracked ribs here.”

Miller reflected on the changes in his own life since coming to the shelter several months ago: “People tell me that I’m different from other men they meet. It has made me look at me. For the batterers, the issue has to do with a man and himself. It’s a self-esteem issue. I guess I see it as an aspect of control and the violence comes from a man’s own insecurities. The object with the children is to break the generational cycle of violence.”

Michael C. Ruppert is a free-lance writer and former Los Angeles police officer living in the San Fernando Valley.