Valleywide : Shelter for Abused Women Opens Friday

With the opening of the Family Violence Project’s new emergency battered women’s shelter Friday, the number of official safe havens for abused women in the San Fernando Valley will double.

“This is only the second such shelter for abused women and their children in the entire Valley,” said the shelter’s director, Lynn Moriarty, at a dedication ceremony for the facility.

The shelter’s address cannot be disclosed because the home is meant to be a private sanctuary for beaten women and their children. The landscaped, fully furnished five-bedroom house is located in a quiet residential neighborhood in the northeast Valley.

Moriarty’s organization, a division of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, paid for the shelter with a state grant of $450,000. The grant allows the house to be rented for two years, Moriarty said.

“This place is for women and children who believe themselves in imminent danger,” she said, adding that studies show women are abused in about 35% of all marriages.

The home accommodates up to six women and about a dozen children. It will be staffed with counselors, and women may stay up to 30 days, Moriarty said. An enclosed back yard includes a play area for youngsters.

At the dedication, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis read prayers and supervised the mounting on the doorpost of a mezuza, a small oblong case that contains a Jewish prayer written on parchment.

“I know how moved I am when I think about why I am here today,” Schulweis told a group of about 50, most of whom were women. “There is hope. There is a beginning. There is a future.”

Moriarty said the shelter is available to women of all faiths. For information, call (818) 505-0900.