In search of a safe haven -- and justice

In 1974, a time when police often considered domestic violence nothing more than a “nuisance crime,” three women in St. Paul, Minn., did something unheard of: They opened the first shelter for spousal abuse victims.

From this act emerged a grass-roots movement that saved countless lives and changed the way Americans think. By the mid-1980s there were about 700 shelters and safe houses, growing to 1,200 today.

“Shelter” (10 p.m., KCET), a documentary by Anne Lewis, traces that evolution and gives voice to several victims currently seeking protection in a rural West Virginia women’s shelter.

The film challenges persistent institutional ambivalence toward domestic violence. While women who seek it can usually find shelter, they can’t always find justice in the court system, where attackers still might end up with a slap on the wrist -- and custody of the kids.

The film makes that point forcefully, although the production occasionally shows its low-budget seams, and the interviews with women’s advocates sometimes wander onto squishy turf, such as whether the movement has become too “institutionalized” by bureaucracy.

One of the most troubling scenes is an extended interview with a local prosecutor whose attitude toward abuse victims seems blase at best. In one of those perversely funny moments that only a documentary can capture, he notes, with a straight face, that you have to be wary of any accuser wearing a T-shirt reading “So many men, so little time.”

While the American Medical Assn. has called domestic violence the No. 1 health threat to women, “Shelter” makes it clear that apathy remains a formidable enemy as well.

As victims’ advocate Tillie Black Bear puts it: “Each time a woman dies as a result of violence and each time a child dies as a result of violence, there should be an outcry, but there isn’t.”