Abused Women Find Solace in Each Other--and in Spanish : Social services: Las Mujeres provides counseling and legal help. It is the only refuge of its type in the Valley.

Now that she thinks about it, Maria realizes that the abuse began on the first night of her honeymoon 21 years ago. Angry because she’d refused to leave the wedding reception to have sex, that night her new husband ripped off her pearl-studded bridal gown and violently assaulted her.

The beatings became more regular over the next several years. Bruises and black eyes were Maria’s punishment for disobeying her husband’s drunken orders to rise and cook dinner at 2 a.m. A whipping with a belt was her penalty for making a sarcastic crack about his drinking. Sometimes, she said, he yanked her by the hair and smashed his fists into her face like a punching bag. Her hand became badly infected after he bit it.

On the several occasions when she needed emergency medical treatment, she told doctors and nurses that she had slipped and fallen while mopping the floor or had accidentally cut herself while washing dishes.

Worst of all, Maria said, was the overwhelming isolation. She had no one to talk to. Even her family did not understand. They did not want to hear about the horror of her marriage. “ Mi hija, “ her mother would tell her, “it is your cross to bear.”

Then Maria learned about Las Mujeres (The Women). It’s the only support group in the San Fernando Valley for Spanish-speaking women who have been physically, emotionally or sexually abused by their husbands or boyfriends. The Van Nuys-based organization offers counseling, legal information, guidance through the court system, assistance in filing restraining orders and referrals to community resources and shelters.

A therapy group for children of abused mothers is in the works, and bilingual volunteers are being recruited to staff a hot line and speakers bureau.

After his arrest, Maria’s husband was ordered to attend a batterers’ program and Alcoholics Anonymous. He quit drinking, and the beatings have stopped. He helps out around the house, occasionally cooks dinner and affectionately calls his wife “cutie.”

“He is a different man,” Maria said. “He is treating me like a person--but it is very hard for me to be a person next to him.” She still falls apart when watching movies about abused women, such as “Sleeping With the Enemy” or “Burning Bed,” she said.

Now Maria is training to become a volunteer for Las Mujeres. “I want to help other victims,” she said. “I hate to think of anyone going through what I went through.”

According to the American Medical Assn., domestic violence poses the single greatest threat to women, causing more injuries than car accidents, muggings and rapes combined.

FBI statistics show that almost a third of female homicide victims are killed by their husbands or boyfriends. A woman is battered every 15 seconds in the United States, and every six hours a woman is killed. Every five years, more women are killed as a result of domestic violence in this country than the total number of Americans who died in the Vietnam War. In Los Angeles last year, police investigated 33,323 reports of domestic violence and made 7,719 felony arrests.

Wife-battering crosses all economic, educational and ethnic lines, but the situation can be especially difficult for Spanish-speaking women. As newly arrived immigrants, they may know no one in the country except their mates. Family and friends may be hundreds of miles away. The women are often unable to speak English, unaware of their legal rights and penniless. Many are so isolated they don’t even know how to open a bank account or pay a phone bill. Almost no Spanish-language services or resources are available to abused women in the Valley.

Many Latinas are also caught in a confusing web of myths, misinformation and cultural taboos. They fear being deported or going to jail if they report the abuse to the police. Husbands threaten to hide their children with relatives outside the country. Many of the women are devout Roman Catholics who believe that marriage is forever, no matter what. Others don’t know they can obtain a divorce without their husband’s permission. Some women are ashamed and guilty, and they blame themselves for failing as wives.

“These women are not as assertive as American women,” said therapist Virginia Baldioli, co-founder of Las Mujeres. “They don’t know how to get on the phone and ask for help.”

Las Mujeres was first envisioned by Judith Kullman, a victim advocate for the city attorney’s Domestic Violence Unit. Kullman translated forms and legal information into Spanish for Latinas whose husbands were arrested for spousal abuse, but she realized that the women needed far more support. For most of them, their husband’s arrest was just the most recent episode in a long, violent cycle of pain, intimidation and fear.

“In a support group, women can care about each other and know they are not alone,” Kullman said. “English-speaking women can always share, but the Latinas were so isolated they didn’t have the input of other women. I was just appalled that there was nothing for Spanish-speaking women, nowhere for Spanish-speaking women to go, particularly in the Valley.”

Kullman took her idea to Baldioli, along with therapist Sandra Baca and cultural anthropologist Claudia Cuevas, a Chicano studies instructor at Cal State Northridge. Baldioli, Baca and Cuevas contacted Latinas whose husbands had been arrested on suspicion of assault. They posted Spanish-language flyers at churches and community centers. They obtained financial assistance and office space from the Center for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, a court-mandated program for men convicted of battering their wives. In October, 1990, Las Mujeres opened its doors.

Half a dozen or so women, some as young as 20, gather weekly in a room that is bare except for a circle of folding metal chairs and a few framed Southwest prints. They share survival techniques, tell horror stories and vent anger--in safety and in Spanish.

“They have the opportunity to talk to others who share their language, culture and values,” Baldioli said. “It’s like being in their own country again.”

Discussions at Las Mujeres meetings take the women on an emotional roller coaster. Together they worry for the woman who discovers her husband bought a gun, exult for the woman who finally orders her husband out of the house, and cry in empathy for the woman who tearfully admits her husband sexually abused her throughout their marriage. She never knew she had the right to say no.

According to Cuevas, the women easily realize when others are in danger, but they close their eyes to their own perilous home lives. “The women turn to each other and say, ‘Can’t you see what’s going on?’ ” she said. “But they don’t want to believe their husbands are capable of hurting or killing them. They deny their injuries. They deny broken bones.”

The stress of immigrating to the United States and adapting to a different culture magnifies any problems the couple had in their native country, Baldioli said. “The husbands want to be authoritarian heads of household, as they were in Latin America,” she said. “But ladies here are more open to talk about rights, laws, sex. Husbands become jealous, controlling and suspicious, and the women become depressed, angry and resentful.”

“Certainly there is a double standard in the Latino households, very much so,” Baca added. “The biggest shock to the men is that they can’t hit their women. They say, ‘Only in the United States would they give a woman rights.’ The men believe a woman is there to take care of them, to feed them, to keep their house clean, to accept their infidelities and their drinking. The culture encourages the woman to accept this. If she does something to take care of herself, she is accused of being Americanized.”

Some husbands refuse to give their wives bus fare or gasoline money to attend Las Mujeres meetings, or they don’t allow the women out of the house. Often a woman will attend one session and never return, leaving the staff to wonder and worry about what happened to her.

“If the men say ‘no way,’ there is no way the woman will attend the meetings,” Baca said. “Running the risk of upsetting him just isn’t worth it.”

The success of Las Mujeres is measured in tiny doses. The group sustains itself on little victories, said Cuevas, such as when a woman begins to develop self-esteem and believes in her self-worth. “Through these women, I have learned how much it means to be happy with yourself,” she said.

Triumphs come slowly. Happily-ever-after storybook endings are nonexistent. Sometimes the best a woman can hope for is the ending of the marriage, Baldioli said. “The women had romantic expectations, and then the person who was supposed to love and protect them becomes their enemy,” she said. “Most couples cannot get through that betrayal.

“When a woman grows strong enough to accept reality and realize he is not going to change, when she realizes she doesn’t deserve to be treated this way, when she starts to like herself and believes she is lovable--those are our rewards.”