Spousal Sanctuary : In a Secret High Desert Location, Women Wage a War Against Abuse

As the Valley Oasis Shelter prepares for its 15th anniversary, its staff doesn’t have much time--or reason--to celebrate. In this rugged high desert area, the battle against domestic violence rages on.

Up on the front lines, shelter manager Sandra Nolan sees the casualties. One day, an abused young wife with 11 children enters the shelter, now one of the nation’s largest. The next day, it’s a 78-year-old woman, battered by her adult children.

No cease-fire seems in sight.

“I’m seeing the second generation coming into the shelter, the kids whose mothers were here and had the kids with them then,” she says with a sigh. “It kind of gives you goose bumps.”

Antelope Valley leaders are shuddering, too. Their area’s high child-abuse caseload is widely recognized. But the region is also plagued by a large number of spousal abuse incidents. Social scientists aren’t surprised: Adults are often beaten in the same families where child abuse occurs.

The issue was brought home last week during a public hearing conducted by the Los Angeles County Family Violence Task Force. Inside a Quartz Hill meeting room, high desert social workers and abuse victims pleaded for more funding and assistance programs.

During the hearing, John K. Spillane, head deputy district attorney in the Antelope Valley, acknowledged that the problem is serious. His office files about 4,000 misdemeanor cases a year stemming from spousal abuse.

Even before criminal charges are filed, however, sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors often send spousal abuse victims to Valley Oasis for protection and counseling. It is here that the Antelope Valley’s war on domestic violence is fought--day and night, year after year.

A typical skirmish starts when the hot-line telephone rings. Within minutes, a staff member may be urging a caller, usually a woman, to gather her children and personal belongings and flee when the violent abuser is away. The callers are steered to a remote desert area, a secret cluster of cottages that can house as many as 72 people at a time.

For up to 60 days, these women--and, occasionally, battered men--can live in safety with their children. They are counseled about abuse and trained in how to live independently. Their children get therapy too.

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For staff members at Valley Oasis, the work is emotionally taxing. Sometimes, they must help a frightened victim evade an angry partner in hot pursuit. They must weed out “shelter-hoppers,” who concoct abuse stories just to get free food and lodging.

Often, they spend weeks preparing a shelter client for a safer new life, only to watch her rejoin her abuser.

After more than a decade at Valley Oasis, Nolan is no longer surprised by this behavior. Yet even this hardened veteran finds a few tears welling up when she opens a file and draws out a photo of Jeanna Yetter.

In 1991, Yetter landed in a hospital on crutches after her boyfriend smashed her knee. The 33-year-old Lancaster woman spent two months recovering at the shelter. But not long afterward, she returned to her old boyfriend--who beat her to death.

“Jeanna wanted to come back,” Nolan recalls sadly. “But she was too ashamed to call.”

Events like this, on top of the unrelenting daily stress, have taken a toll.

A couple of years ago, Executive Director Patricia Overberg ordered Nolan, ailing from high blood pressure, to take a three-month leave. Shortly afterward, Overberg herself suffered a heart attack, which forced her too to take time off.

But for every setback, there are plenty of little victories.

A church counselor urged one woman to call Valley Oasis in 1987 after she described the physical and emotional abuse her husband was inflicting.

Like many spousal abuse victims, the woman--who asked that her name not be used--had been beaten by her father. Because of this, she says she did not realize her husband’s behavior was wrong and blamed herself for the family’s problems.

She “was the standard battered woman,” says Nolan, who handled her case. “She believed everything her abuser was telling her. It’s a hard cycle to break.”

After two stays at Valley Oasis, however, the woman did break away from her husband. She got a divorce and a college education. Today, she works in an office and answers the shelter hot line as a volunteer. She credits the group therapy she attended at Valley Oasis.

“That was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she says. “You think you’re the only person in that situation. . . . I’m calm about it now. I’m more healthy inside.”

Over the past eight years, about eight battered men have also been housed at Valley Oasis. Most shelters balk at the idea, citing space constraints or concerns that men might unnerve abused women.

Valley Oasis also offers counseling for abused men and women who do not need to be housed at the protected site. Chris Gordon, 37, who now lives in Bakersfield, attended therapy sessions at the shelter between 1988 and 1992. He says he sought help because he too had become a victim of spousal abuse.

“It gave me a place to get some peace of mind, to talk about what I was going through and to find out that I wasn’t unique,” he recalls. “It’s not necessarily a female problem. The dynamics are the same, whether you’re male or female.”

The program began in 1980, when Antelope Valley health care workers realized domestic violence had become a local issue. Organizers persuaded the county to provide free use of 11 aging, abandoned cottages. Local women’s organizations “adopted” the cottages and provided volunteers to repair and furnish them.

When the shelter opened, three paid staff members and a handful of volunteers helped about a dozen battered women at a time. Today, Valley Oasis has 19 full-time workers, five part-timers and more than 100 volunteers.

It now shelters about 450 people a year, including children. About two-thirds of the clients come from the Antelope Valley; the rest are referred by shelters in other cities and states, either because they lack space or they want to distance the victim from her abuser.

On July 1, Valley Oasis will begin a new fiscal year with a budget of nearly $900,000, derived from government aid and private grants. (When it opened, the shelter’s operating budget was $57,000 a year.) Some of the money will go toward an expanded child care program and more renovations, so that as many as 145 people can be housed at once.

“One of the advantages of that shelter is that it’s big and can take older kids and teen-agers and women with large families, which a lot of shelters can’t,” said Marianne Kennedy, executive director of the 10-bed Women’s Shelter Program in San Luis Obispo County. “Most of us have real constraints on space.”

Despite its size, Valley Oasis was running out of room to store clothing and household items donated by the community. So two years ago it opened a thrift shop to raise funds and train shelter clients.

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A few outsiders wonder whether Valley Oasis may be too ambitious, taking on more projects than its relatively small work force can handle.

“Yes, it’s big and chaotic,” admits Stephen Petty, a Cal State San Bernardino administrator who sends social work students to Valley Oasis for field training. “Yes, it’s a bit disorganized. But that comes with the territory.

“Yes, they’re trying to do too much. But there’s too much to do--and somebody’s got to do it.”

Executive Director Overberg, 61, is well aware of how stubborn the problem of domestic violence can be. At last week’s public hearing, she pointed to the milestone her shelter has reached and told the audience: “We hope that 15 years from now, you won’t need us anymore.”

She was less optimistic the next day, however, speaking privately in her office. She talked about growing drug problems, violence in schools and how she believes domestic violence is getting worse.

But with more grants to apply for and new programs to plan, Overberg didn’t dwell on these grim topics. “I don’t even think about it,” she insists. “I just do what I need to do to get the job done.”