Laurel House
A six-part series on domestic violence in Montgomery County, PA.
Part I: Planting The Seed
It’s not particularly cold inside the emergency room of Mercy Suburban Hospital in East Norriton on this early April afternoon, but Erin (not her real name) clutches a white blanket close to her chin as she curls in the bed, staring blankly at one of the nearby medical monitors.
As nurses and aides float in and out of the room, Erin groans slightly as she rolls over, trying to find a comfortable position. Neither her neck brace nor the contusions on the back of her head are making it easy.
Sitting in a chair next to the bed, Ashley Thompson — an advocate with the Domestic Abuse Response Team based out of the Montgomery County domestic violence agency Laurel House — gently touches Erin’s hand and speaks in a soft, comforting voice that belies the urgency of her message.
“Remember earlier when I asked you if you wanted to leave him and you said yes?” asks Thompson. Erin looks at her and nods ever so slightly. “So, I mean, it might be hard for the kids right now, but do you think it might be harder for them if their mom’s not around, because you’re dead?” Thompson continues. “I know that’s harsh, but … .”
Erin nods again, gripping the blanket tightly.
“It’s your decision, and it’s a hard one to make, but you’re a survivor,” says Thompson. “I know right now maybe it seems easier to forgive it all and to try and go back, and he’ll probably do the apologizing thing again and probably give you something nice, but what happens after?”
“The same thing again …,” Erin murmurs.
An hour or so earlier, after Thompson arrived at Mercy Suburban at the behest of hospital personnel, Erin, who’s in her 20s, told her the story. The night before, she said, she’d been at the home of her on-again, off-again boyfriend of several years. They have young children together, and there was a history of him mentally and physically abusing her, she said. One time, he threatened her with his handgun, she told Thompson.
She said that last night they were hanging out, drinking. Talking. Then arguing. Then, she said, he attacked her — putting his hands around her throat and squeezing tight and then punching her repeatedly in the back of the head, knocking her out. The next thing she remembered, she said, was waking up in pain that morning. He was still in the house, along with their kids. She got dressed as if she were going to work, left the house, got on the bus and went to the hospital instead.
She hadn’t contacted the police — yet. She was still thinking about it. For the most part, though, she was thinking about her children, wondering what would happen to them, and to her, if she called the police on him, if she set things in motion.
“You don’t have to decide it all today,” says Thompson. “The only thing you need to do today is decide to go into the shelter, and we can make that happen. You want to do that?”
Erin’s quiet for a few seconds.
“OK,” she finally says.
Thompson grins and pulls out her cellphone to dial the Laurel House shelter. First, though, she shows Erin a photo of her 2-month-old niece that’s on her phone.
“Awwww,” says Erin, her mouth easing into a half-smile. In light of everything, it’s a small victory. But Thompson will take it.
A nurse’s aide comes in to administer an EKG test. Thompson leaves her phone with Erin and steps out into the hallway.
“I don’t know what she’s gonna do, but I think maybe it all kind of clicked for her today,” says Thompson. “I let her see the danger assessment I did, which indicated that the next incidence of violence could potentially be lethal, and she was shocked, like, ‘Oh wow.’”
Thompson looks over in Erin’s direction. “So, I hope that, along with having a support system that she’s never had before, it’ll work. Fingers crossed.”
For more than eight years, Laurel House’s DART program has existed as a lifeline for victims of domestic violence who are drowning in an ocean of abuse, isolation and fear.
DART staffers and volunteers — equipped with training, information, compassion and hope for their clients — are on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to handle crisis situations throughout Montgomery County. It’s one of only a handful such programs in the nation.
Sometimes DART calls will come in from police officers who’ve responded to a domestic violence crime scene and need a DART advocate to counsel a victim in the home (once the scene is cleared) or back at the police station. Other times, such as with Erin’s case, advocates will get calls from hospital staff or other health providers to meet with victims in emergency rooms, whether they’ve been transported there from a crime scene or gotten there on their own accord.
DART members have also been known to go to parks, mall food courts, coffee shops — “wherever we need to go that people feel comfortable and safe to talk to us,” says DART manager Stacy Sweinhart.
In all cases, domestic violence victims are first informed by emergency responders — police or medical, depending on the situation — that the DART program is available to provide support. If the victim gives the OK, the call is placed to DART’s main number (215-852-9826) and then transferred to the cell phone of whichever team member is on duty at that time.
Once a DART advocate arrives at the scene, they can provide both emotional and logistical support as needed.
They can arrange for emergency shelter or child services.
They can help fill out the application for a temporary Protection From Abuse order — alternately known as a “restraining order” — which is thick, complicated and sometimes difficult for a person either physically injured or in a fragile emotional state to complete.
They can provide domestic violence information to help people understand what they’re dealing with and how things could escalate in the future (such as showing the “Power and Control Wheel,” a standard tool that displays the most common behaviors and tactics abusers employ).
They can reassure a victim that they’ll be on hand to help navigate the legal system as prosecutors work on convicting the abusers.
They can explain how to craft an escape plan —including how to put together a “go-bag” filled with documents, money and other things, and where to stash it — in the event of another incident.
Or they can just be there to listen to someone’s story, without judging.
“What we’ve seen is sometimes that face-to-face, immediate connection helps the person make a change and it helps them walk through that change,” says Beth Sturman, executive director of Laurel House. “Sometimes they’re not ready to make that change but it plants the seed, so the next time something happens they remember, ‘Oh there was that nice, supportive, encouraging, knowledgeable person who offered these resources to me, maybe I can reach out to them again,’” she continues. “I think it helps break down some of the isolation that abusers set up for people.”
And when it comes to supporting domestic violence victims in Montgomery County, there is little doubt there’s a need for DART.
News headlines recently trumpeted a U.S. Department of Justice study from November 2012 which found that “from 1994 to 2010, the overall rate of intimate partner violence (i.e. domestic violence) in the United States declined by 64 percent.” At Laurel House, they take that figure with a grain of salt.
“We don’t give much weight to it because we are not sure how it relates to our local jurisdictions,” says Tina Reynolds, Laurel House’s senior director of community programs and support, adding that “domestic violence is one of the most unreported crimes.”
Reynolds and Sturman instead point to the long-held Centers for Disease Control statistic that one in four women has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime. And they cite the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence’s annual Domestic Violence Fatalities in Pennsylvania reports. According to the PCADV’s 2012 report, there was a total of 141 domestic violence-related fatalities in the state last year —110 victims, including three in Montgomery County, and 31 perpetrators who mostly died by suicide. The report noted that although the death count had dropped — 2011’s total was 166 fatalities — “regrettably we cannot report any decrease in the brutality and senselessness of the deaths that did occur.”
Meanwhile, according to statistics provided by Sgt. Jane Robertson of the Hatfield Township Police Department, Hatfield police responded to a total of 296 domestic violence calls in 2010 (28 of which resulted in a criminal arrest); 319 calls in 2011 (37 of which resulted in a criminal arrest); and 309 in 2012 (27 of which resulted in a criminal arrest).
“We’ve been kind of holding steady,” says Robertson, who also served on Laurel House’s board of directors from 2006 to 2012. “It’s absolutely still a problem. It’s unusual not to go to a domestic disturbance on any given shift that we work.”
Citing similar annual statistics from his own department, Montgomery Township Police Lt. Gerry Dougherty says, flatly, “Around here, domestic violence is not going away.”
By the early 2000s, Towamencin Township Police Lt. Jeffrey Kratz — who’s been a cop for 28 years — had already known for a long time that his and other area departments simply lacked the manpower and resources to provide domestic violence victims with additional support beyond making an arrest. After removing an offender, taking a statement and gathering any evidence, that was it — there was paperwork and processing to do, and then you moved on to the next call.
“The minute our people leave, the victim starts to go into a series of thought processes,” Kratz remembers thinking at the time. “‘What just happened? What’s going to happen next? They just arrested my significant other, husband, boyfriend — how am I going to provide for myself and my children?’ And it just continues to snowball, and unfortunately the victim starts to dwell on these things and starts to gravitate away from continuing the process of holding the abuser accountable or extracting themselves from that environment and protecting themselves from further violence.”
Other police officers feel the same way. “We’re basically firefighters,” says Montgomery Township Police Chief Scott Bendig. “We can’t always be there to work through it with victims. We’re on to the next fire. We have to. That’s the nature of our job.”
On top of that, police are already plenty stressed responding to domestic violence calls. “It is easily one of the most dangerous calls that an officer can go on,” says Dougherty. “It’s a volatile situation. If you’re going into someone’s home, they know the layout of the house and you don’t. Are there weapons present? What’s the mindset of the people there? Are you potentially helping a victim that doesn’t want to be helped? If you take her husband into custody, what’s her reaction going to be?”
So with all of that in mind, a half-dozen North Penn police departments — Towamencin, Hatfield, North Wales, Lansdale, Upper Gwynedd and Montgomery Township — formed an alliance to figure out how to ease those situations, how to comfort and counsel victims, and how to encourage victims to follow through with the cooperation necessary for prosecutors to eventually secure domestic violence convictions.
Though Kratz was already spearheading that effort, a particularly horrendous double-homicide in Towamencin in 2003 steeled his resolve. On March 18 of that year, Kratz was one of three officers who responded to a home where Ian Wireman had strangled his 23-year-old girlfriend, Evyonne Patterson, and her 4-year-old daughter, Nila.
“When we located the bodies, they were stashed in containers — the adult female was in a hope chest and the girl was actually in a Rubbermaid tub and she was packaged up in several garbage bags just like you would put your trash in,” says Kratz, his jaw tightening. “I was the one who found her, the 4-year-old, and just opening that container and opening those trash bags and seeing a little girl in there, you know, right away I could see my daughter’s face superimposed on this little girl and it just really, really hit home and I just couldn’t believe that someone would treat any human being, let alone a child, like this, like common trash to be bagged up.”
“It’ll be forever in my mind,” he continues. “To this day I can see that little girl curled up in a fetal position just like it happened yesterday. And what it did do, it made me more committed to making sure that we as a police department and as a community, that we do a better job of trying to help victims in domestic situations to get help earlier so that we don’t see it come to these types of violent circumstances that end very badly.”
The North Penn departments reached out to Laurel House, which they knew had been assisting battered women with shelter services, counseling and other programs since 1980. On Jan. 1, 2005, DART was established with Reynolds in charge. For the first year, she was DART’s sole advocate.
“I was on call literally 24/7 because we were just building the program, so you can’t have volunteers come in if you only have one call every three months,” she says. By 2006, the program had expanded beyond the North Penn area and the first handful of volunteer advocates signed up. Many, like Heather (who chose not to disclose her last name out of privacy concerns), were drawn to DART because either they or a loved one had been a victim of domestic violence in the past.
“My first relationship in high school, he was abusive,” says Heather, 32, who’s DART’s longest-serving advocate aside from Reynolds. She explains that at 19, a punch from her then-boyfriend landed her in the hospital. “At the time I was like, ‘What do I do to get out of this? What did I do wrong?’” she says. “If I had known what I know now, it would have made a huge difference for me, so now I couldn’t be happier helping people.”
In the summer of 2010, Reynolds handed over the DART reins to Sweinhart, who has a degree in criminal justice, and the program continued to grow. These days, DART is effectively county-wide, working in tandem with 50 of Montgomery County’s 52 police departments and most of the hospitals and trauma centers throughout the county.
Sweinhart, 24, works at Laurel House full-time. When she’s not responding to calls, she’s usually at early-morning police roll calls helping train and update officers on DART protocols and procedures. Thompson, 27, a part-timer who holds a Master of Social Work degree from Temple, is DART’s medical advocate, meaning that when she’s not working directly with clients she’s doing training similar to Sweinhart’s with area doctors, nurses and other health providers. They’ve got a base of nine volunteer advocates who are on call nights and weekends (Sweinhart and Thompson are on call from 9 a.m until 5 p.m. during the week, and occasionally provide backup at other hours).
DART calls typically come in for the more serious physical domestic violence incidents — where an arrest has already been made, or is likely — as opposed to verbal spats, though sometimes officers will call DART if they believe an intervention could prevent a physical altercation down the line, or if it’s a location police have been to more than once.
Calls are increasing every year. Sweinhart cautions that it doesn’t necessarily mean an uptick in domestic violence — it could be the result of having worked with more and more police departments and health providers each year, or a growing awareness of DART’s existence and services, she says.
Sweinhart says that for the fiscal year 2011-12, there were 70 total DART calls, 17 PFAs granted to their clients and a 73 percent success rate for criminal charge cooperation — in 33 cases where criminal charges were filed, 24 of the victims cooperated with police when a DART advocate was involved. For the fiscal year 2012-13 (which is ongoing), there have been 56 total DART calls thus far, 23 PFAs granted to their clients and a 65 percent success rate for criminal charge cooperation — in 14 cases where criminal charges were filed, nine of the victims cooperated with police when a DART advocate was involved.
“I think this shows the effectiveness of having an immediate, in-person advocate out there at the time of the incident,” says Sweinhart.
“I know for a fact that DART has helped certain cases that we’ve had and helped victims out,” says Dougherty.
“DART has been a godsend,” says Robertson. ‘It’s an immediate response and it really is an advocate. Just to be able to say to a victim that there’s someone that’s compassionate who can come and help them and it won’t be judgmental, just a way to remedy the situation, is huge.”
To become certified to go out on calls, DART staffers and volunteers are required to complete 45 hours of JARS (Justice Autonomy Restoration Safety) domestic violence advocate training that’s managed by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, plus at least eight hours of training each year thereafter — including attending trauma, mental health, drug and alcohol and first-aid seminars.
Advocates learn to give victims advice and information without being pushy, because the last thing a person who’s had control and decision-making snatched away from them by an abuser needs is yet another person telling them what to do. They learn the reality that domestic violence knows no boundaries — rich or poor, white, black, Hispanic, Asian or otherwise, everyone’s at risk. And they learn that victims might not be “perfect” or an “innocent” — they might have criminal histories themselves, or drug or alcohol problems or other issues, but that doesn’t mean they deserve to be abused.
“Before starting with this program, I definitely had the thought that it was only a certain type of woman that this affects, even though it happened to me,” says Heather. “My first call was at a house that was amazing, and I’m looking at this woman with a Mercedes and a BMW and she was kept at home with no access to any money and he beat her constantly.”
And though DART’s clients are overwhelmingly female (statistics show that approximately 85 percent of domestic violence victims are women), they are encountering more and more male victims. “It happens, although it’s still underreported because there’s a stigma around it,” says Reynolds. “But all the shelter and counseling and other services we provide for women we can also provide for men.”
Yet that training can only prepare an advocate so much, Sweinhart says.
“I always tell our new people that this isn’t like any other kind of volunteering — you’re going to see some stuff that you don’t necessarily want to see or ever hope to see,” she says. “You’re going to hear things and see things that might trigger some stuff for you, because a lot of our people have had their own experiences with this. Sometimes you sit there and you have to hold back crying. We warn people that you’re going to be confronted with some things and it’s going to be tough to remain unaffected and provide the information that they need.”
Between the two of them, Heather and Sweinhart have been on hundreds of DART calls over the years, and they — like all DART advocates — have seen plenty of harrowing, gruesome and heartbreaking things.
Such as the woman who moved to Hatfield Township from the West Coast, along with her 2-year-old daughter, to be with her boyfriend. He began physically abusing her, it got progressively worse, and when she finally decided to split — buying a plane ticket and telling her boyfriend she was leaving the next morning — he picked up a kitchen knife and attacked her while she had her daughter in her arms, missing her and plunging the knife two inches into the little girl’s leg. When police arrived, they found the woman running down the street, crying hysterically, the little girl bleeding profusely with the knife still sticking out of her leg (the girl survived).
Or the woman who lived in Limerick whose husband had beat her for decades, going to jail several times for assaulting her. To escape him, she had moved around, even changed her name, but when he got out of prison after one particularly long stretch he tracked her down, stalked her, broke into her house and savagely beat her while she was sleeping.
“She had to have facial implants put in just to make her face look like a face,” says Heather. “I have never seen anyone in that kind of condition ever.” The potent image that sticks with Sweinhart, who also responded to the call, is that of the woman’s pit bull which, along with the woman’s son, helped get the husband off of her before he could kill her — the white dog was pink and red from head to tail, soaked in the woman’s blood.
Sweinhart says sometimes it’s the little details that are the most upsetting, such as the physical abuse survivor whose abuser killed a bird the woman had rescued. “This little bird had followed her around the apartment, and he got angry one day and threw the bird out the window into a snowstorm,” she says. “Here was this woman with this little bird she invested so much in, this one little thing that she cherished, and he knew how much what he did would hurt her. I think she would have rather had him punch her in the face than lose that little bird.”
Those experiences certainly take their toll on advocates. “One thing they always tell you is to keep one foot in the water and one foot out of the water,” says Sweinhart. “To be engaged but to make sure you can kind of step back and go home and not take your work with you,” she says, though she admits that’s easier said than done.
Reynolds says that Laurel House provides in-house counseling, and advocates lean on one another for support. “We can’t do this job if we don’t take care of ourselves,” she says.
And, of course, they’re buoyed by the happier endings to terrible situations.
Rita (not her real name), one of Sweinhart’s former DART clients, nearly lost her life two years ago when her abusive boyfriend came to her workplace, where she was a receptionist, dragged her out of the building by her hair, threw her in his car and tried to drive away, but she managed to jump out of the car and came within inches of having her head crushed by the vehicle. After the incident, law enforcement put her in touch with Sweinhart, who helped her deal with the aftermath, including accompanying her to terrifying court hearings where she had to confront her abuser.
“I was crying every day and once Stacy came into my life, oh my God, I felt like something heavy was getting out of me just talking to her,” says Rita, adding that her abuser got a significant jail sentence and she was able to relocate to a different county and start her life over. “Stacy came in and was all the time next to me. She is my angel.”
Still, says Sweinhart, “I always prep our advocates for disappointment.” Many times they work with a client, see progress, and then the client disappears, often going back into the abusive environment.
It’s frustrating, Sweinhart admits, but, she says, “It takes an average of seven times for a woman to finally leave an abusive relationship. It takes time for people to build up the courage to leave if they’ve been in a bad situation for years, and a lot of times, if there are kids or financial issues or they’ve been cut off from their family and friends by an abuser, it’s not easy for them to just leave.”
“You have to be able to accept that and work with people and think long-term and big picture,” she continues. “You learn from the very beginning to gauge your successes differently than you normally would. Not every success is that she got out and got a new man and a new life. Sometimes it’s just developing a safety plan, or getting someone into counseling, or even if someone just makes a phone call — the fact that she even reached out is a success. And the really good ones carry you for a while.”
Things seemed to be moving in the right direction for Erin. After being discharged from the hospital that evening, Thompson got her into Laurel House’s shelter. The next morning, they went over to the county courthouse in Norristown and Erin got a temporary emergency PFA against her abuser — in effect until a proper PFA hearing scheduled for one week later, when she’d have to face her abuser in a courtroom, in front of a judge who would either grant or deny the PFA.
Erin was talking about finding a new place to live, getting a new start. Thompson felt hopeful.
And then Erin abruptly left the shelter after a couple of days. Gone.
“Ashley’s pretty upset,” Sweinhart says the next day. “But like I said, it takes an average of seven times for a woman to actually leave a relationship and that might have been the fourth time for her. So it sucks because she was doing so well and there was really momentum and Ashley really busted her butt.”
Sweinhart is quiet for a moment. “That’s the way this stuff goes sometimes. We don’t know where she is. Maybe she went back to him, maybe she didn’t. But at least she got familiar with us. She knows who we are now.”
“She has the hearing coming up; we hope she’s there,” Sweinhart says.
It’s the morning of Erin’s PFA hearing. She’s supposed to be there at 8:30 a.m. Thompson’s standing in the hallway outside the fifth-floor courtroom, nervously tapping her foot. Other women and men are arriving for their PFA hearings, lining up to get their numbers for their turn before the judge. No Erin.
“I don’t think she’s coming,” says Thompson, a dejected look creeping across her face. At 8:45 a.m. she takes a quick walk around the fifth floor, then comes back, shaking her head.
“I guess I’ll give her until 9,” she says.
Nine o’clock comes and goes. Erin’s not there. Thompson types a few text messages, looks around and sighs deeply. “It’s not happening,” she says.
And then Erin comes around the corner. Thompson’s face lights up, she lets out a “Heyyy!” and for a moment she looks like she’s about to burst out of her shoes with joy before she grabs Erin and pulls her toward the courtroom.
There’s still a long way to go, but maybe the seed has been planted after all.
Part II: Fighting Through the Fear
For Rita, the events of June 2, 2011 will be forever burned into her mind.
That was the day that the man she had been dating for two years — the man she’d met through her best friend and had fallen madly in love with, the man who’d moved into her home with her two kids, the man who started to grow more jealous and controlling six months earlier, the man who forbid her to wear makeup or sandals out of the house, the man who began pulling her hair and hitting her during fights, the man who took her cell phone away and started driving her to and from work every day and following her during her lunch break to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere he didn’t want her to go — nearly killed her.
Around three in the afternoon he came, enraged, to the office where Rita (not her real name) worked as a receptionist. He went behind her desk, grabbed her by her hair, told her to come with him or he was going to kill her children, and then started dragging her toward the front door.
“I was screaming, and then one of my co-workers came out to help and he told her, ‘Back off, I have a gun,’” says Rita. He dragged her out of the building and shoved her into his car. They wrestled inside the vehicle as he started it up and tried to pull out of the parking lot.
The car door was wide open as he drove. “I jumped like I was diving into a swimming pool,” she says. She hit her head on the car door, and then her head hit the pavement. “My skull felt like it exploded into a million pieces, like a glass hitting the floor,” she recalls. For a few moments she was unconscious, under the car, the tire just inches from her head, when a co-worker rushed over and pulled her out. On her feet and awake again, Rita started running away from her attacker through the parking lot, screaming “He’s gonna kill my kids! He’s gonna kill my kids!”
As he got out of the car to chase her down on foot, another co-worker ran out of the building, grabbed him, knocked him to the ground and held him until police arrived and hauled him off to jail.
Rita says she escaped the incident with only bruises and a concussion. But that was hardly the end of her terror.
“I was real bad,” she says. In the ensuing weeks, she was constantly sick to her stomach with fear and lost 40 pounds off her already slender frame. She had nightmares that he was under her bed, or waiting outside the front door of her house.
And then Rita got a call from Wallis Brooks — “Walli” to her friends, to domestic violence victims and advocates, and to her colleagues at the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, where as an Assistant District Attorney she heads the Domestic Violence Unit — informing her she had to go to court for her abuser’s preliminary hearing. She’d have to see him for the first time since the assault.
“I was crying, I was like, ‘Please, please, I don’t wanna go, I don’t wanna see him, I’m scared of him,’” she remembers. Brooks gave her the phone number for the Domestic Abuse Response Team (DART) program at Laurel House — the Montgomery County domestic violence agency — and Rita got in touch with DART manager Stacy Sweinhart.
“She said, ‘I’m here to help you, do you want me to go to the preliminary with you?’” says Rita. “I was going to go myself; I don’t have any family here, so I said yes.” Sitting in the parking lot of the district courthouse before the hearing, “I started crying and shaking and shaking and shaking,” she recalls.
She went inside, told them what case she was there for, and sat down in the lobby. “I had my sunglasses on because I didn’t want anyone to see me crying, and then someone mentioned his name and I started crying hysterically. And then Stacy came in, came over to me, and I hugged her and she was like, ‘Don’t worry.’”
“I couldn’t stop crying for nothing,” Rita says. “I was like, ‘Please, please, please, don’t make me do this.’ I just wanted it over. I had too many feelings — I felt like, ‘What did I do for him to get that angry?’ I felt bad because his sister was my best friend, I felt like I was hurting her, and hurting his mom. All this stuff was in my head and I told Stacy, ‘I think I’m gonna drop the charges.’ And she was like, ‘Don’t do that — look at all you’ve gone through.’”
Sweinhart stayed with her for hours at the courthouse, comforting and advising her, walking her to her car when it was all over. “She was so supportive,” says Rita. “She talked me through it. She said, ‘If you don’t go through with this he’s going to get out and maybe do something even worse to you.’ If it wasn’t for her, I definitely would have dropped the charges.”
In 2012, Rita’s abuser went to trial. He was convicted on assault charges and got a two-year jail sentence followed by three years’ probation. Rita’s since moved from Montgomery County to a different location in Pennsylvania with her kids, and has started her life over. She still talks to Stacy once in a while. “I know she doesn’t have my case anymore, but she is the best,” says Rita. “I told her, ‘I’m sorry, but I love you and you saved my life and I’ll never forget that.’”
Since its inception in 2005, the DART program has provided crisis response services to victims of domestic violence in the hours immediately following an incident. But DART also exists to help survivors navigate through their often difficult, anxiety-ridden, time-consuming and traumatic journey through the legal system — including Protection from Abuse (i.e. restraining order) hearings, preliminary hearings, status hearings, trials and more — with the ultimate goal of holding abusers accountable for their crimes.
DART advocates connect with clients either by responding to crisis situations and sticking around for the subsequent legal process, or by coming in later in the process through referrals from prosecutors, such as in Rita’s case.
“There’s something to be said for the consistency of knowing there’s a person there that’s going to go through the process with you — a shoulder you can lean on, someone to talk to, someone to ask questions of and who can shed light on what can be a very confusing and frustrating process,” says Brooks.
“My sad reality is that I have so many (domestic violence) cases, and when a hearing is done on one, frankly, I’m usually pulled quickly into another one,” says Assistant District Attorney Alec O’Neill, who works alongside Brooks in the Domestic Violence Unit. He estimates that DART advocates are involved in about half of the hundreds of cases the unit handles annually. “(DART) picks up the slack or fills that gap where I wouldn’t be able to go back and talk with a victim for a period of days or weeks. They’re there for that and to offer that kind of counseling and support.”
The process that can be overwhelming for just about anyone, but particularly so for those for whom the court system is completely foreign. “(Domestic violence) can happen to anyone, and if it reaches the point where someone is arrested and charged, a lot of the time a victim will have no idea what’s coming next and what they need to do,” says Tina Reynolds, Laurel House’s senior director of community programs and support.
In one sense, the direction DART can provide through the system is literal. “The (county) courthouse (in Norristown) is so frightening,” says DART advocate Ashley Thompson. “It’s big and it’s cold and it’s ugly, and then you get into the courtrooms and they’re ugly and the people are nice but they’re not friendly. And then you have to sit there by yourself — people look so alone and small all by themselves at that big (plaintiff’s) table.”
“That courthouse is a huge facility and if people have to find their way and walk the hallways several blocks deep to get to their courtroom, if they have to do that alone, that’s a very intimidating set of circumstances,” agrees Towamencin Township Police Lt. Jeffrey Kratz, who helped found the DART program. “Prosecutors and police can’t always be there to escort them.”
DART’s guidance is also deeply informational. Though DART advocates are not attorneys and thus cannot legally represent their clients (Thompson says advocates are barred by law from sitting at the plaintiff’s table during hearings), they’re adept at explaining procedures and protocols and legalese, intricacies and nuances, and can advise clients on the pros and cons of pursuing certain legal avenues. One example is the PFA. While DART typically recommends abuse victims seek a PFA (which is a civil proceeding, though violations of the provisions of a standing PFA can become a criminal proceeding), there are times, Reynolds says, where “applying for a PFA is not the best thing, it’s not for everybody.”
“A PFA can stop the behavior, sometimes it lessens it, but other times it agitates people,” Sweinhart clarifies. “Not to mention that you have to be there with your abuser in open court for a PFA hearing. If you’re fleeing someone, hiding somewhere from them, that could jeopardize your safety. What if he follows you after the hearing?”
DART advocates will explain some of the things to expect at a preliminary hearing — the demeanor of the particular judge and what kind of questions that judge might ask, or how some of the negotiations between prosecution and defense attorneys might play out. In many cases, they’ll decipher what just transpired following a hearing.
They’ll also enlighten clients about some of the services available to them beyond the courtroom, such as recently created PA-SAVIN: The Pennsylvania Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification system, which provides up-to-the-minute status of any offender housed in a county jail, state prison or under state parole supervision in Pennsylvania, and sends alerts via phone or e-mail regarding an inmate’s release, transfer or escape.
“Anyone can apply for it,” says Sweinhart, “and when you tell people that this program exists, you can see the relief on their face.”
It’s that kind of solace, that feeling of emotional support, that DART clients may need the most. “We’re not really pushing or nudging them what to do, but we’re saying, ‘We’ll be there for you and we’ll go with you,’ and sometimes that’s all people need to hear,” says Thompson. “Just sitting with them, finding out how they’re doing, prepping them. A lot of times we see victims who don’t want to testify — they’re embarrassed or fear that they’re gonna get in trouble with the abuser once this is all said and done, or they’re afraid a lot of things from their past will be brought up by the abuser’s lawyer while they’re on the stand in an attempt to discredit them. But having an advocate there can calm some of those fears and you can say, ‘Yes, that might happen, but you need to also think about what he did to you.’”
Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman says there’s a world of difference between how domestic violence cases are handled now and when she began her prosecutorial career in 1993. “You would have a case and it was your expectation that the victim would be calling you at some point to say that she did not want to prosecute,” Ferman recalls.
“I think a lot of times victims saw no value in it,” she says. “Many of them endured months and years and lifetimes of abuse without ever thinking they could have an escape mechanism, and I don’t think that back then anyone looked at the criminal justice system as that escape mechanism. In fact, to the contrary, I think they looked at it as a system likely to generate more abuse. The fear was, ‘If I prosecute, nothing’s gonna happen to him and I’m just gonna get hurt more,’ so it was easier to just maintain the status quo.”
If a victim came to prosecutors requesting that they not proceed with a case, “our approach was, we’re going to respect their wishes,” says Ferman. “It was just accepted. You were never looking to bolster the victim. It wasn’t even part of our lexicon back then that you could provide support so she could come through the system. If you look at files from back then, you had a lot of charges dismissed based on the victim not wanting to proceed.”
That mindset began to change in the mid-1990s, Ferman explains, as domestic violence became more of a public issue through awareness and education campaigns, and organizations such as Laurel House began to establish support programs for abuse survivors. Rather than simply acquiesce to a victim’s decision to drop charges made out of fear or weariness, the approach — which Ferman has maintained and advanced further under her watch — became “to give them the resources so they can stand up and not tolerate the abuse,” she says. “It’s to help give them the strength and the support to go from being victims to being survivors, and to be able to continue with the prosecution of the case.”
DART advocates, Ferman says, can be a rock for abuse victims at that crucial moment “when they’re worn down emotionally and it’s easier for them to say ‘never mind.’ They’re decent, compassionate people, well-trained in dealing with the issues that someone who’s been victimized is going to face, and they make a difference time after time after time.”
Yet even with that institutional shift and progress, Brooks — who estimates she’s handled approximately 4,000 domestic violence cases since joining the unit in January of 2003 — says that “the single biggest issue in domestic violence is still the reluctance of victims (to cooperate). Sometimes getting them on board is tough.”
O’Neill notes that prosecutors don’t always need victims to testify against their abusers in court. In Rita’s case, surveillance video cameras captured her abuser’s assault on her at her workplace, enabling prosecutors to win a conviction without putting her on the stand. Sometimes there’s a family member, neighbor or someone else who witnessed an incident of domestic violence and is willing to testify; other times, hospital records, photographs of injuries and testimony from cops who responded to an incident might be enough.
But, he says, “It’s probably fair to say that at some point down the line (victims are) going to have to testify. Unfortunately, we can’t get away from the fact that they’re the victim and they’re always gonna know the story better than anybody else, other than the abuser. Oftentimes we have to worry about what a jury is going to want us to show, and all too often they’re going to want us to show the victim’s perspective. But we do try not to have a victim testify any more than they absolutely have to, in order to avoid further traumatizing them.”
On a recent Monday morning, Brooks’ point was proven in Courtroom 6 of the Montgomery County Courthouse. A 30-year-old defendant was facing two counts of felony aggravated assault and related charges for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend in their Norristown home last August. DART advocates were not involved with the case.
According to the police criminal complaint, the woman — who was approximately four-to-five-months pregnant at the time — told investigators that the defendant threw a suitcase at her, pushed her down a flight of stairs and punched her in the face and stomach. And when she cried out that she was pregnant, the complaint states, the defendant said to her, “I don’t care. I don’t even care about the baby.”
Police said that the woman managed to escape the house and get the attention of a passerby, who gave her a cell phone to call 911. When cops arrived, according to the complaint, they observed that she had a black eye and was “visibly shaken,” and she was flown to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Upon her discharge, the complaint states, the woman told investigators about other incidents of physical abuse at the hands of her boyfriend. She claimed that last May, after she’d retrieved her cell phone — which her boyfriend had taken from her — and hid it under a sofa cushion, he pointed a gun at her face and said, “I’m going to blow your head off if you don’t give me my phone.”
In court, though, the woman told Brooks she didn’t want to testify, didn’t want to proceed with the case.
“I never thought it was going to get to this level we’re at right now,” the woman said from the stand as the defendant stared straight at her. “It’s just that I was pregnant at that time and I was very emotional,” she continued. “He is the father of my child…I don’t have any other family that can help me.”
“You understand that you had injuries that were visible to the (responding) officer, you understand that?” Brooks asked her.
“Yes,” she replied softly, crying into a tissue.
“You understand we’re dropping the felony charges here?” said Brooks.
“Yes,” she said.
Without her testimony or cooperation, Brooks had little chance of a felony aggravated assault conviction, which could have meant a sentence of up to 20 years. The defendant pleaded guilty to misdemeanor simple assault and misdemeanor recklessly endangering another person, with a recommended sentence of 23 months in jail and an additional year of probation.
“It was the best I could get — I got her three years of protection,” Brooks says afterward.
“I just try to work with the situation and do the best we can and hopefully prevent another incident, and that’s all you can do,” she says. “Because ultimately we’re trying to prevent more serious incidents and possibly a homicide.”
Would DART presence have helped? “It’s hard to know for sure,” says Brooks, but she mentions other, similar cases in which DART advocates made a difference. One young woman, she says, “didn’t want to prosecute, she was scared, she was young, she didn’t know what was involved. And Tina (Reynolds) worked with her and we got through the hearing, and he wound up with a felony aggravated assault conviction and he went to jail.”
There are many reasons why a victim will decide that they don’t want to go through with domestic violence-related charges, says Brooks — they’re still “in love” and he says he’ll change; they want to stay together for the sake of the kids; she may be dependent on his paycheck. One of the biggest reasons is the fear factor, that there’ll be some sort of reprisal, perhaps lethal, from the abusers — especially if they’re free on bail pending the outcome of legal proceedings.
Victim intimidation during most stages of the journey toward a domestic violence conviction feeds that fear.
Outside a county courtroom where PFA hearings were being held on a recent morning, a dozen women stood together waiting for their turns before the judge on one side of a hallway — anxiety and trepidation etched on their faces — while the men accused of abusing them stood or sat on the other side of the hallway, glaring at the women, unfazed by the presence of the two armed officers standing nearby.
“It’s a terrible set up there,” says Sweinhart.
Meanwhile, DART volunteer advocate Heather (who declined to give her last name out of privacy concerns) says she’s seen even worse during preliminary hearings and trials. During one case of a man who’d been in and out of jail for repeatedly abusing his wife, and was again charged with savagely beating her, Heather says, “in the courtroom, with all those police officers there, he tried to intimidate her again, staring her down and doing things like this at her” — Heather draws her finger across her neck in a throat-slashing gesture. “They had her surrounded with police officers and he still had these outbursts where he’d yell horrible things at her. In court she said, ‘I think it’s actually going to take him killing me before he doesn’t get out of jail again.’”
Ferman believes that most of the intimidation happens outside of court. “It’s the anxiety of preparing to go to court, the not knowing if something you say will trigger a violent response after court by the person against whom you testified. People are generally on their best behavior in court, but we’re not there when the victim leaves court and goes home and starts to doubt themselves. When they ask themselves, ‘Am I doing the right thing? Is he going to come attack me and kill me?’ They question whether or not it makes sense to move forward, and often that becomes, ignore it and it will go away.”
Based on the countless thousands of domestic violence cases Ferman’s handled or overseen, “It rarely just goes away; it only gets worse,” she says.
“Sometimes they say, ‘How can you possibly protect me?’ and I can’t get upset with them for saying that,” says Sweinhart. “If someone could absolutely guarantee that they’d be safe, I’m sure we’d see all the cases go through. But we can’t guarantee that. I know how hard it is for them, I get it. We can help them with a safety plan, we can be there for them whenever they need us, we can try to reassure them and help build up their confidence and their courage, but it takes a lot of strength sometimes to get past that fear.”
But, as Rita can attest, DART can help mitigate some of that fear.
In the year between her abuser’s arrest and his conviction, Rita says that “every time I was feeling sad, feeling this pressure in my chest, every time I thought I was doing the wrong thing, I would call Stacy and she was always there for me, talking me through it.”
“I’m honest with them, but I tell them that things really can get better for them once they get past all of this,” says Sweinhart.
Likewise, Thompson says she never sugarcoats anything for the victims she counsels, explaining to them that going through the court system may be scary, but that they just need to focus on telling the truth, on telling what happened to them. “I can’t promise anyone that they’ll get the outcome they want, but I tell them the fact that many, many times, abusers get significant sentences,” she says.
“I tell them, you need to understand that what he did to you is a crime,” she says. “And to help them remember that they’re a victim of a crime and that’s not something to be ashamed of, but something to get justice for.”
Part III: In a Good Place
At first glance, the front door of the nondescript three-story house in Montgomery County doesn’t look all that special.
But for many of the thousands of women and children who’ve walked up to it over the past three decades scared, scarred, desperate, dispirited and drained, the door to Laurel House’s emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence represents more than a temporary refuge from the trauma and pain. It is the promise — no matter how hard to imagine at first — of a life freed from the shackles of physical and emotional abuse.
That’s the life Tramell wants for herself.
On a recent Friday morning, sitting in a chair inside the shelter, Tramell (who chose not to disclose her last name) is slowly, quietly explaining how she came to reside there. Her tears speak volumes. So does the bruise on one cheek.
But her wan smile illustrates the latest chapter of her story in heartrending fashion — several of her bottom teeth are missing, the result of a punch to the face three days earlier by her boyfriend of more than two years. That assault sent her fleeing from his home to the shelter with nothing more than the clothes on her long-battered frame.
“I don’t like being hit, but I don’t know … maybe it’s because I talk too much, I don’t know, I can say things out of my mouth …” she says, her voice trailing off as her eyes well up again. After a few seconds, she wipes the tears away with her fingers and sits upright in the chair. “But I know it’s not right,” she says. “I’m just trying to find myself again and stay strong. I was always a strong, independent person, but for some reason, I don’t know what happened.”
“When I came here, dag, I felt worthless, hopeless, like nothin’,” she continues. “But when I came through that door, it was like a sigh of relief. I just felt comfortable and more safe here. I felt a little more of my confidence level came back.”
Tramell still thinks about him. Part of her still loves him. Part of her wants to go back. “But I can’t keep doing this,” she says. “I’m 50 years old; I just want to cut it and go. I can see myself goin’ somewhere, you know what I mean? Get my own place. And then I’m gonna come back and tell the people what I’ve been through. Let them know it’s OK — that I got through it.”
Each year, an average of 200 women and 200 children (from toddlers to teens) come through the shelter — a nine-bedroom converted Victorian duplex that Laurel House purchased in 1981, a year after the domestic violence agency was founded (for security reasons, Laurel House doesn’t publicly divulge its location). For many women and their kids, it’s the necessary first step in a multi-phased, often-long process that Laurel House advocates hope moves survivors past months, years, sometimes lifetimes of abuse.
With its nine private bedrooms and four shared bathrooms, the shelter can accommodate a maximum of 27 people, though it rarely reaches that number due to comfort and privacy concerns, says Jenny Boyer, senior director of housing and operations at Laurel House. “We’ll double up single women in a room, but we won’t put different families together,” she explains. “So if you’re a mom with one kid and the room we have available has three beds in it, it’s just going to be the two of you in there.”
Very infrequently, says Boyer, men contact Laurel House for emergency shelter, “but it’s hard to bring a male into the shelter the way it’s set up. We can’t really bring them in here, but if there’s a male who needs safety we’ll figure out a plan to make that happen, whether it’s a hotel or some other kind of housing situation.”
The bedrooms are sparsely furnished — beds, maybe a dresser or some shelves, a lamp, and that’s about it — but they’re clean and homey; the antithesis of the widely held (and sometimes true) image of a shelter as a gymnasium or other large, open space jammed with cots.
Shelter stays are limited to 30 days. Although, in extreme cases, residents can apply for a brief extension while staff tries to secure transitional housing or find other shelters in Montgomery or neighboring counties where people can go.
“We don’t have infinite space and people can’t stay forever,” Boyer laments. “That’s just the unfortunate reality. We’re very clear with people that we cannot guarantee any kind of housing in 30 days, and it’s tough because we don’t want to discourage people from coming here to be safe and stay alive, but they need to understand the reality and that’s very, very hard.”
“But we do the best we can here,” she says. “We work really hard to help people move forward with their lives, and many times we are able to find places for people to go so that they don’t have to go back out on the street or back to their abuser.”
Most of the women who stay at the shelter are between 22 and 26 years old, says Boyer, although it’s not rare to see residents in their 50s and 60s. Boyer remembers one woman from a few years ago whose 50th wedding anniversary occurred while she was staying at the shelter.
“He’d been abusive to her in so many ways,” Boyer recalls. He’d put Vaseline on her eyeglasses to make her think she was going blind, and chemicals in her shoes so her feet would burn but she didn’t know why — all these little things to make sure that ‘you don’t have any control over this and I can get you at any time.’
“At one point I think he knocked her walker out from her and it caused an injury that sent her to the hospital,” says Boyer, explaining that’s how the woman learned of Laurel House. “You’d think after 50 years, what breaks you? Maybe it was knowing the resource, having someone at the hospital say to her, ‘You know, you really don’t have to put up with this anymore.’” Boyer says the woman escaped her house while her husband was at a doctor’s appointment, and stayed at the shelter for nearly three months until they found somewhere else for her to go. Boyer has no idea where or how the woman is now. Most of the time, that’s how it is — women and families come to the shelter, stay for a few weeks, then move on, and advocates don’t know if there’s been a happy ending or not.
“I hope she’s OK,” says Boyer.
Most of the people seeking emergency shelter from domestic abuse connect with Laurel House through the agency’s toll-free, 24/7 hotline number (1-800-642-3150), although some are referred to the shelter via Laurel House’s Domestic Abuse Response Team (DART) — advocates who go to the scene of domestic violence incidents to comfort and counsel victims.
When a hotline call comes in, it’s answered by one of Laurel House’s approximately 20 full- and part-time staffers, volunteers and interns, all of whom are certified after having completed a mandated, rigorous training program overseen by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Not every one of the more than 100 hotline calls Laurel House averages in a month is from someone seeking shelter, explains shelter manager Erinn Fortson. “Some people just need someone to talk to about their situation, or they’re a mom or a friend or a counselor who doesn’t know what to do in a situation as far as helping someone else,” she says. “So we can get anything on that hotline.”
The very first thing shelter staffers will ask a hotline caller is if they’re safe. “That’s the number-one priority — are you safe, can you talk,” says Fortson. “Sometimes they’ll call from another room while their abuser is still in the house and that’s not safe for them, so we discourage that and often we’ll say, ‘If you’re calling me while he or she is still in the house, then we can’t speak to you.’”
Once that safety is established, a screening process begins to determine if an individual is in imminent danger and if they need to come to shelter — although given the limited space, screeners will first try to determine if there are other, better options.
“A lot of times when people call, they’re in a kind of frazzled state of mind and they don’t realize they have other resources,” says Fortson. “Sometimes I’ll say, ‘Do you have other family, maybe in another state? Have you ever thought about maybe going out that way and getting away from this situation?’ It’s kind of getting them to think outside the box and making sure they’re going to the best situation next.”
Many times, callers have no idea what they should do to get out of their situation, and while screeners have a form with a series of pre-determined questions that they’re supposed to go through with the caller — when was the last abusive incident, has the victim pursued legal options, does the batterer have weapons, etc. — Fortson encourages screeners “to have a conversation with the individual, find out what’s really going on, instead of just asking question after question after question.”
Sometimes, Boyer and Fortson say, it becomes evident over the phone that a person needs to come to the shelter, but they’re balking for various reasons. “Yesterday I was talking to a woman who didn’t want to leave her job,” says Fortson, “and I said, ‘I get it, it’s hard to pick up and leave and start over, but if it means that you’re safe, then it’s worth it.’”
“If you’re dead, then the greatest job in the world doesn’t matter,” says Boyer. “Even more so than the job, it’s, ‘I don’t want to take my kids to a shelter.’ Well, I wouldn’t want to either — nobody wants to come to shelter, I totally get that. But better to be in a shelter than you be dead and them not have a mom. That’s not always the reality of domestic violence, but sometimes it’s the reality, and putting it bluntly like that, it often gives them the information they need to make the best decision they can.”
“What I’ve found is, when you do more listening than talking during the call, you’ll find that they’ll often talk themselves into coming to shelter,” Boyer continues. “When they’re telling their story out loud and they’re hearing themselves say it — sometimes for the first time in their lives — they often are like, ‘Ohhhh, crap. You’re right, I do need to do this.’ That’s when they realize, ‘I know I need help but this is a little more scary and dangerous than what I thought. I think I need to come in.’”
Shelter staffers have seen people from just about every walk of life walk up to that front door. “Low income people to people of means,” says Boyer. “That police officer, that really rich and connected businessperson, that politician — over the years we’ve had all of those things. Sometimes, if you’re wealthy and you’re trying to hide, quite frankly, no one would ever think to look for you here. But we are here for everybody, and we see everybody.”
Fortson says she’s also seen the full spectrum of emotions on women’s faces when they pass through the door for the first time.
“They’re scared, or they’re exhausted, emotionally exhausted,” she says. “Sometimes they’re relieved because they’re finally in a safe place. My biggest thing is making sure they’re OK. It’s not just doing an intake, getting their information; it’s bring them in and saying ‘Are you hungry? Do you want to rest? Do you want to watch TV?’ Little things like that can put people at ease.”
Typically, if a woman has come to a shelter with her kids, either the shelter’s children’s advocate, Amanda Kelley, or another staffer will take the kids elsewhere in the house — the upstairs playroom or living room, or the sprawling playground out back behind the shelter — because “some of the stuff we talk about is inappropriate, if the women get into their abuse history,” says Fortson. “A lot of times they do want to share everything as soon as they get here. Some women don’t.”
“The playroom is also my office,” says Kelley. For the younger kids, “I bring them in there, get them accustomed, show them around, try to make the transition as easy for them as possible,” she says. “They seem to adjust pretty quickly because it’s a fun environment for them a lot of the time.” For older kids, it can be a little more difficult, “but they usually have a deeper understanding what’s really going on, so I can have good conversations with them,” Kelley says.
Meanwhile, the women are eventually asked to fill out some forms and go through shelter orientation — a process that takes about half an hour. All of the various support services available during their 30-day stay are explained — trauma counseling, legal aid, employment and housing resources and more, all overseen by a Laurel House advocate serving as case manager.
The rules are also spelled out: There’s a 9 p.m. curfew, and failure to return to the shelter for an overnight period can result in your bed being given to another survivor. There are daily household chores to be divided among residents, including meal preparation and clean-up, laundry, vacuuming, and scrubbing and mopping bathrooms. Drug or weapons possession, or threatening or physically assaulting anyone in the shelter, is grounds for eviction. There are no locks on any of the bedroom doors, but each woman is assigned a storage locker. Nightly house meetings are held from 9 until 10 p.m. and residents are “strongly encouraged” to attend.
Security procedures are discussed. The shelter has several surveillance cameras around the perimeter of the house, and the local police department — with whom Laurel House has had a very long and close relationship, says Boyer — includes the house in its regular daily patrols and can be there within minutes of an emergency situation.
Still, residents are instructed not to tell anyone the address of the shelter. Boyer says that there have been only a couple of occasions where an abuser has shown up on the front steps of the house looking for the significant other or kids. “I tell them, ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about but what I need you to do is get off the property or I’m going to have to call the cops,’ and then they leave. And if that woman is here, we relocate her because it’s unsafe.”
Women and kids are also warned about the dangers of using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other popular online and mobile apps because of geotagging and other ways their exact location could be pinpointed. “Technology has not been great for domestic violence,” says Fortson. “Everybody uses cellphones and Facebook, and a lot of people don’t know how to turn off or disable programs that show where you are.”
While safety is of paramount concern, residents are hardly on lockdown after they move in to the shelter. The women who have jobs go to work — provided they don’t fear that their abusers are searching for them and might come to their workplaces. Kids go to school — either their old school, if it’s safe, or a new school in the district near the shelter (federal law requires transportation, whether bus, taxi, or other means, to be provided for free to kids who want to continue attending their old school, regardless of the distance). Everyone’s encouraged to pursue activities outside the shelter, as long as it’s safe and they’re back by curfew.
It’s all about trying to maintain as normal a life as possible for residents, despite their worlds having been turned upside down by domestic violence.
A recent mid-morning trip to the shelter revealed relative normalcy. Two young children, who seem blissfully unaware of the chaos that brought them to this place, run through the big, comfortable living room, furnished with overstuffed sofas and wall art, including a framed poster of late Caribbean-American poet and human rights activist Audre Lorde and one of her quotes: “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
A few women amble through the hallways or up and down the stairs — the fading smell of bleach throughout the building a remnant of the morning chores. One woman sits at a computer downstairs, another watches TV, while two more youngsters gallop from the yellow-walled playroom: a colorful, cluttered oasis of kids’ artwork, plastic toys, bins overflowing with crayons, fingerpaints and other art supplies, and “Hands Are Not For Hurting” activities books.
Downstairs, in one of the offices, a couple of women sit with advocates working on what they’re going to do after their 30 days in the shelter are up.
“Before anything, it’s about seeing how they’re feeling, how they slept last night, are they feeling depressed, are they stressed, and start from there,” says shelter advocate and case manager Peggy Krier.
“Then it’s about working on trying to get them employment, welfare, housing,” she says. “It gets really busy and it’s very stressful — the housing part is really difficult.”
In addition to the emergency 30-day shelter, Laurel House currently has 12 transitional housing units — furnished apartments of varying sizes, seven of which the agency owns and five of which are transition-to-permanent and exist through arrangements with different landlords — scattered throughout Montgomery County. For the women and/or their kids who need and qualify for transitional housing, Laurel House provides a rent subsidy, on a sliding scale, for up to two years.
After two years in the Laurel House-owned units, the resident ideally has achieved more stability — emotionally, financially and otherwise — and is in a position to move out and find their own housing, says Boyer.
With the five units not owned by Laurel House, she explains, “They’re going to come in and sign the lease with the landlord and we provide the subsidy, and then after two years, if everything is going well, then it becomes their place and we’re out of the picture — permanent housing is achieved, and we reach out and try to find another unit to replace it.”
Still, there’s far more women and families coming through Laurel House who need transitional housing than the agency can provide, so advocates spend much of their days searching for housing programs around the region.
“The little housing that’s available, everybody’s applying for the same places,” says case manager Carolyn Coleman, who says she’s a survivor of domestic violence and proof that it can be overcome. “It’s really hard, but as a survivor, I won’t accept ‘no’ for an answer,” she says. “I make a lot of phone calls, just digging and digging endlessly, being persistent, trying to find housing and resources and programs for these women to help them succeed.”
Case managers also spend time teaching the women a plethora of life skills — things such as how to balance a checkbook, or how to use a computer. “You give them short-term goals each week and see what kind of progress they’ve made and you build on that,” says Krier. “It’s a slow process, but it works and you see things happening and changing.”
“The goals thing is good,” says Lisa (not her real name), who came to the shelter a week earlier with her two kids to escape her abusive, alcoholic husband. This isn’t the first time she’s been in a shelter. “It’s hard, but I’m trying to move on because being with him keeps putting us in these dire situations,” she says.
“I’m trying to make the best of it here,” says Lisa. “Obviously it’s an adjustment after living at your own house, but it could be worse. If you have to be in a shelter, this isn’t the worst one. I don’t have a regular job or anything, but they’re helping me with some things here, and if I can get a job in the next two weeks maybe I can get a room somewhere for us. You get in these shelters and it’s not always great, so a lot of times you go back to something that’s even worse just because it’s familiar.”
“Not this time,” she says. “I’m trying to stick it out and I hope I can.”
Most afternoons, when the kids get back to the shelter from school, Kelley spends time with them, teaching them safety planning — how to call police, or to avoid getting in the middle of a physical altercation — as well as non-violent tactics for handling anger and sadness.
“You try to have as much positive influence as possible with every single interaction with these kids, because I’ll come in one day and a family will be here, and then I’ll come in the next day and they won’t be,” she says. ‘That’s the hardest part. I remember that happening to me the first time and I cried.”
“It’s always like, I should have done more, I could have done more,” she says, “and when they’re not here it’s really, really hard knowing you probably won’t see the child again. At the same time, sometimes the children are here for 30 days and then they get into transitional housing, and you’re possibly with them for another two years. But you have to think about it as making every day count.”
At night, after the kids have gone to bed, it’s the hour-long group meeting for the women staying at the shelter.
“Sometimes it’ll be more education where we want to help them learn something about their situation to help them deal with it better,” says Minna Davis, director of counseling and supportive services at Laurel House. “Sometimes it’ll be like a support group, and it gives them a chance to vent.”
Davis supervises five interns — who are pursuing advanced degrees in either social work or counseling psychology at area colleges — who provide counseling to residents (both group and one-on-one sessions). They too go through domestic violence training administered by PCADV.
According to Laurel House’s year-end report for 2011-2012, the agency provided a total of 9,106 total hours of counseling in the shelter during that period, with each participant receiving approximately 67 hours of counseling.
“Everyone who comes in to the shelter is traumatized, either from the abuse itself or because they’re hiding out or homeless,” says Davis. “It’s post-traumatic stress disorder — all the symptoms our veterans are coming back with, these women have. So our interns talk with them about how they’re feeling and we tell them, ‘It’s not what’s wrong with you, it’s what happened to you.’ That’s an important distinction. It’s about things that were done to them by people who supposedly love them.”
Tramell says she sat quiet during the first meeting, unsure of its value, but by the second one, she says, “They made me feel like I’m not alone, and when I hear something it makes me feel like I can speak what’s inside me, too. It’s like a chain reaction.”
“It makes you relate and it gives you power and energy,” she says. “A couple of the people saying how they got through it makes me think I can get through it.”
She says her case manager has already given her a few leads for housing, and once her 30 days are up she wants to continue with counseling through Laurel House, which provides both one-on-one counseling and weekly support group meetings — at undisclosed locations in North Wales, Norristown and Eagleville — for women and men whether they’ve been through the shelter or not (information on counseling is available via the Laurel House hotline number).
“I came in here with nothing, and now I feel like I got everything,” Tramell says, tears filling her eyes again. “They made me feel special, like it was gonna be OK.”
“I feel like I’m in a good place.”
Part IV: Lessons Learned
“If you know me and we’re hangin’ out and I’ve got a black eye and a broken arm, my personal opinion is that I’m about two weeks away from being murdered,” says Tommie Wilkins.
Wilkins is about 20 minutes into her presentation on domestic violence at an area school on a recent afternoon when a girl gets up from her chair, trembling, struggling to hold back her sobs.
“Here’s the thing — people who are physically abusive, they don’t want anyone to know they’re physically abusive, so he’s going to beat me where my clothes will hide it, but if you can see my injuries, he don’t care who knows, and that’s a dangerous point,” Wilkins continues, while her eyes —and the eyes of a few of the other 40 students in the classroom — follow the girl as she walks quickly to the back of the room, toward a teacher’s aide.
The aide tries to comfort her for a moment, and then leads her out of the room and down the hallway.
“I think this hit home with her,” the teacher says, in a low voice, as she steps out of the classroom for a moment. “You could see how upset she is. But we have guidance counselors here so they probably went down there. This might be the first time she actually tells somebody about something that’s going on. I don’t know what’s going on, but as teachers we see things and we know things, but they don’t always listen to us.”
For Wilkins, who as Director of Community Education and Training at Laurel House — the Montgomery County agency that provides support for victims of domestic violence — spends most of her time each week educating students about the signs and realities of domestic abuse, this kind of thing happens from time to time.
“That’s a young woman where something’s coming to the surface and she’s ready to talk to somebody,” Wilkins says later. “As a human, I’m upset that she’s upset. But as a professional I’m glad, because now she’s seeking out the help she may have never sought before. It could be about her, or about her family, or about a friend. And it might be something that’s been going on for a while.”
Wilkins has spent 17 years traveling around Montgomery County and speaking to thousands of elementary, middle and high school students (college students, too) each semester — the youngest of whom are just starting to wrap their heads around the notion of dating—and trying to instill in them what constitutes healthy relationships and what represents dangerous behavior that could potentially turn lethal.
She also speaks at churches, synagogues, mosques and other faith-based institutions, as well as Rotary clubs, various women’s groups, and just about any other community group that reaches out to bring her in.
It’s one of Laurel House’s most important missions, says Tina Reynolds, the agency’s senior director of community programs and support. “We provide a full spectrum of services, and domestic violence education is at one end of the spectrum, with our shelter at the other end of the spectrum,” she says.
“We want the community education piece to be preventative and informative so that people don’t end up in our shelter or calling our hotline,” says Reynolds.
At Upper Merion Area High School on a recent Monday morning, Wilkins is talking about isolation, harassment, humiliation, limiting independence and other aspects of dating and domestic abuse to an unruly class of ninth graders. It’s her third class of the day — she’ll be there all day presenting to kids — and the handful of troublemakers in each period.
“What is dating violence?” Wilkins asks the group.
“Punching someone in the face?” a boy in the back answers. A couple of his classmates sitting next to him, one with his feet up on the table, start to laugh.
“Yeah, when you punch that (expletive) in the (expletive) face,” one of them mutters under his breath.
Wilkins, who may or may not have heard exactly what he said, shoots him a withering gaze and then smiles. “Stand up, young man,” she says. He rolls his eyes as he gets out of his seat. The entire class turns and looks the boy. He can’t hide his discomfort as he glances at the floor.
“What else could be dating violence?” she asks, slowly walking toward him.
“I dunno, cursing at somebody?” he says, meekly.
“That’s right, cursing at somebody,” Wilkins says, wheeling around. “It’s not just physical violence; it can be mental or emotional violence, too.”
“You can sit down,” she says, as the boy drops into his seat. She’s got his attention now.
“You might think they’re not listening, but you don’t know that,” Wilkins says between periods. “Teenagers have to put on that face. I get the kids that are too cool for school, or that don’t want to participate, but I’ve seen them later on and they got it.”
“Sometimes I pick out students to mess with a little bit in class, make them stand up, bring them out,” she says. There’s a subtle learning component at play. “When I’m telling people to stand up, sit down, do this, do that, it’s like, ‘See, this doesn’t feel good, does it?’ Putting them on the spot, taking away their free will, making them feel uncomfortable … that’s what dating and domestic violence does to people. So maybe they kind of get it.”
Wilkins tailors her presentations to make them age appropriate: For fourth and fifth graders, which is the youngest student group she speaks to, the message is more about establishing basics such as how to be a good friend and “hands are not for hitting.”
For middle schoolers and older, the talks are a bit more intense and graphic. Wilkins will often tell stories about victims of domestic abuse from Montgomery County. She’ll show slides of a woman lying in a hospital bed, beaten and bruised to within an inch of her life; the happy-looking yearbook photo with a caption explaining how that person was killed; or the final text message a young woman sent to her boyfriend, complaining about how he wouldn’t let her hang out with her friends, just hours before he stabbed her to death.
Wilkins says the extent to which kids “get it” has improved dramatically from when she first started going to classrooms in the mid-‘90s.
“There wasn’t really a conversation about domestic violence on any level back then, and they would just stare at you, like, ‘What are you talking about?’” says Wilkins. “But I think the kids have gotten more aware, they’re more open.”
“Even the ones who argue the point — ‘Well, they should just leave’ or ‘She must like getting hit’ — other kids will turn around and yell, ‘No, you don’t understand!’” she says. “It was hard, but I get them on board now, and they know this stuff isn’t right.”
Evidence of that, she says, can also be spied in the submissions to Laurel House’s annual Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Poster Contest for Montgomery County high school students.
“I don’t give them any instruction, I just say the poster needs to have the dating violence hotline number (1-866-331-9474) and the text number on it (text “loveis” to 77057), and the artwork I get is like, wow,” says Wilkins. “You can tell they thought about the issue, did their research. That they really see what’s going on.”
After the next class presentation, as the kids are filtering out of the room, a boy quietly approaches Wilkins and they chat for a couple of minutes.
“He was concerned about his own behavior,” Wilkins explains later. “His girlfriend had broken up with him and he said that he was a bit clingy, like, ‘I’m jealous and still in love with her.’ I told him that was good, that he’s seeing there might be a problem and this is a good time to start working on it, because there are going to be other girls and you’re going to have to adjust your behavior.”
That sort of thing also happens from time to time, which lets Wilkins know she’s reaching kids, even if they don’t necessarily participate during the presentations or seem like they’re listening.
“Usually the kids who know of a friend going through something will ask during class, and usually the kids who are in the midst of it themselves, they’re gonna wait until afterwards,” she says. Sometimes, she adds, they approach her in the parking lot after school, or they call her at the number that’s on the educational pamphlets she hands out.
“I’ll talk to them wherever, whenever they want — I’m just happy they’re reaching out,” she says.
A couple of days later, Wilkins is at the North Montco Technical Career Center in Lansdale, speaking to several dozen girls — 11th and 12th graders — who are enrolled in the cosmetology program. Perhaps owing to age, or something else, they’re much more attentive than the Upper Merion classes.
“We see it, you know, the boyfriend that won’t let them talk to their friends — not a big deal, right,” instructor Nicole Lucas says prior to Wilkins’ presentation. “Unfortunately, we know where it’s leading. We don’t necessarily see the abuse, but we suspect it.”
Lucas has brought Wilkins to her class several times over the past few years, initially reaching out to her through Laurel House to speak to her students. As a survivor of domestic violence, she knows what’s at stake.
“I’ve gone through it, so I understand — the emotional thing, them making you feel like you’re the one that’s crazy when they’re the ones hurting you,” says Lucas. “I talk to these girls from experience. They know that I’m a strong person and I lived through it, but they don’t always want to hear it from me when I say that very rarely do people change, and if they’re doing it once, they’re going to continue to do it.”
She says that Wilkins “is very real — she’s very honest with them, she tells them how it is, and they listen. I think with her personality, the way she is, she grabs their attention so they get something out of it. I think it’s something they need.”
As Wilkins tells the class: “You may never be in this situation, you may never be a victim. But statistically, you’re absolutely going to know somebody who is.”
“(Domestic violence) is going to have an effect on their lives as professionals,” Wilkins says later, adding that that’s a point she hammers home to the college students she speaks with, particularly beyond just the social work or psychology classes she visits.
“If you’re a business major, you should care about this, too, because let’s say you get your MBA and you open up your international, multi-million-dollar company and you have an employee who’s being stalked by an ex-girlfriend or ex-husband or ex-wife,” she says.
“Let’s say they show up at your place, the company you own, with an Uzi or whatever, and they’re looking for Bill or Jane and on the way they find Tom and Jill and Susan and take out half your staff. That affects you. So everyone needs to think about this. And the more we give to people when they’re younger, they’re not ignoring co-workers, they’re not just driving past people on the street, they’re not ignoring family members who might be in these situations.”
For Laurel House, domestic violence education and outreach takes other forms, too. Such as a couple hundred men putting on high-heeled women’s shoes and marching around Norristown Farm Park on a beautiful spring morning.
Such was the scene on May 4 at Laurel House’s inaugural “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” event put on in conjunction with the Philly WAM Girls (which has organized similar walks in the region) — one of several events Laurel House holds throughout the year to raise awareness of domestic violence in Montgomery County and all the free services that Laurel House provides to the community.
It was a sight to behold: Under sunny skies, hundreds of men standing in a field — with hundreds more family, friends and others looking on, snapping photos and shooting cell phone videos — doing stretching exercises in unison and then donning their high heels in preparation for their walk through the park.
“This is a really cool event, and I also want to thank all those men who secretly dream for a day like this, when they can come out and publicly wear high heels and have an excuse for it,” host Preston Elliot — one half of WMMR’s popular “Preston and Steve” morning show — tells the laughing throng as he stands in his own red heels and purple ladies’ hat.
But for all the hilarity, this is serious business, too, Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman — one of the day’s special guests — tells the crowd. “I’ve been a prosecutor here in Montgomery County for over 20 years, and when I first came to the courthouse I prosecuted domestic violence cases … and we didn’t have all of the support that we now have,” says Ferman.
“We didn’t have the community awareness and events like this where people like you come out … when our community is willing to recognize that domestic violence does happen, and it is a problem, and we can prevent it by standing up and being heard, we can make a difference,” she says.
Elliot leads a comical demonstration of how men should walk in (and carry) high heels, and then the men are off, walking — or jogging, or stumbling — down a paved path, all joined by their significant others, families and friends for quite the procession.
“Going into it, I was like, I know this is gonna hurt, but every single painful step that I take, I want to keep in mind the people who are going through a different kind of pain but can’t get away from it, and how horrible that must be,” Elliot says.
Elliot explains that about a year ago, he read an article about how domestic abuse victims seeking emergency shelter in Philadelphia were being turned away by the thousands due to lack of space. “I literally did a double-take because I had no idea that things were that bad as far as resources for women who were having these problems,” he says. “I’ve tried to put myself into that position mentally and I can’t do it fully, there’s no way, and the thought of that just gnawed at me.”
And just as bad, he adds, “This stuff’s usually not on the front page of the paper, so people don’t really know that this is going on, so I realized that I had to help in any way that I can.”
Elliot began to read more about the issue, and then discovered Laurel House and the “Walk a Mile” concept and decided to become an ambassador, discussing the issue on the air and promoting the event to his listeners. “I thought, that’s perfect — it’s got a great angle to it. It’s novelty, it’s fun, it has a hook that’ll get people’s attention, you know, big burly men wearing high-heeled shoes. But the real cause is there — getting the word out about these things that go unreported.”
“I’ll put my footsies on the line,” Elliot laughs, before turning serious again. “I don’t care what you have to use to bring attention to domestic violence and make sure more people can come forward and there are more resources available for them.”
Beth Sturman, Laurel House’s executive director, stresses the importance of people like Elliot and the Philly WAM Girls getting involved in the agency’s crucial outreach and education efforts.
“Events like these are huge for us,” she says.
Of particular significance on this day is the fact that so many men are involved — for a long time, the issue of domestic violence was couched as a “women’s issue,” but Sturman has seen a shift in attitude, one she says Laurel House hopes to propel further with events like this.
“It helps to engage men because domestic and gender violence is not a women’s issue, it’s a community issue, and we really need men to get on board and help raise awareness,” she says.
Elliot concurs: “I’m telling you, and I don’t mean to sound sexist by saying this, but I think that as a man, part of my responsibility is to protect the women in my life, and the women around me, as best as I can,” he says.
“There are strong, independent women out there that can certain take care of themselves, but let’s face it — physically, we’re bigger, we’re stronger, and in most cases that’s why women can be a victim of men in this type of situation,” he continues. “And it’s our obligation to protect and help and educate and spread the word to other men that it’s not OK, that you can’t do that.”
Laurel House intends for “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” to join their roster of popular, well-publicized annual events aimed to help accomplish the education and outreach piece Reynolds says is so vital to the agency’s overall mission to reduce domestic violence.
There’s the “5K DASH Against Domestic Violence” run held every October near the Upper Gwynedd Township Building.
There’s the “Breaking the Silence” luncheon and fashion show each November since 2003 that’s organized by the Women’s Committee of Laurel House. Typically held at area country clubs, it’s featured fashion shows presented by Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, and its keynote speakers have included Dr. Robin Smith (the Temple grad and “Friend of Oprah”), Bruce Castor (when he was the Montgomery County District Attorney) and Tammy Reid, wife of former Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid and the public face of Laurel House since shortly after she and her husband arrived in the area.
And there’s the annual Laurel House Gala, held in the spring, during which Laurel House honors individuals and groups who have helped with their mission to end domestic violence in Montgomery County.
“These events are just so, so important for us,” says Reynolds. “We want to make people aware of Laurel House and aware of the resources available. As much as we’ve been around 33 years, there are still a lot of people that don’t know we’re here for them.”
The events also have a habit of recruiting more volunteers and advocates to the cause. “A lot of times, the people that come out year after year, they’ll bring new friends with them, so we use that as an opportunity to befriend them and educate them more about who we are and what we do,” says Reynolds.
She says that during last November’s luncheon, she met a local attorney who in the months since went through the volunteer domestic violence training as mandated by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and is now qualified to advise and assist Laurel House clients who are going through the legal system to hold their abusers criminally accountable.
“We engage with thousands and thousands of people every year, whether it’s in the schools or out in the community or wherever,” says Reynolds, “and if we can get them to understand what domestic violence is, to really think about the issue, and if we can get more people involved with Laurel House, I can’t even put into words what a huge difference that can make.”
Part V: Funding and Support
Inside Tammy Reid’s Villanova home on an early Friday morning in May, there are boxes everywhere.
That’s nothing unusual.
If you set foot in Reid’s spacious-yet-homey abode at just about any point since she arrived in town in 1999, when her husband, Andy, was named head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, you’d almost certainly find these boxes — overflowing with clothes, toiletries, cleaning supplies and more — packed up for Laurel House: The Montgomery County agency that’s supported victims of domestic violence for 33 years.
For about 13 of those years, Reid’s been the public face of Laurel House, a cheerleader par excellence, speaking passionately about the nonprofit’s mission to the local TV cameras, to her network of friends and acquaintances at country clubs and swanky soirees, to the people who’ve come up to her at the mall when she’s working a Laurel House information table or working the crowd at a fundraising event, to the people who engage her on the street when she’s out running errands.
And when the cameras are off and there’s no one around to see, Reid regularly fills her car with these boxes and hauls them either to the shelter — or to one of the two thrift shops Laurel House operates to generate funds for their numerous programs and services — where she spends time talking with staff or residents, listening to their stories and their concerns.
But this morning is different.
More than a decade’s worth of Eagles memorabilia, NFL-related merchandise and some of the Reids’ personal items stored in every corner of their home — caps, lamps, luggage, mini-footballs, cowboy boots, pool balls, jewelry, an Eagles Monopoly game, even some of Andy’s game- and practice-worn shorts, sweatpants and jackets — are stuffed inside boxes, ready to go for a yard sale the next day at nearby Harriton High School, where all five of the Reids’ children graduated. All the proceeds from the sale are slated to be split evenly between Harriton’s football booster club and Laurel House.
Eagles quarterback Michael Vick was just at the house autographing some of the items, munching on one of the cookies Reid baked as he left.
And somewhere in the house, Reid is on the phone with WIP sports radio morning host Angelo Cataldi, chatting about the sale and about Laurel House, of course — her lingering Southern lilt (she originally hails from Memphis) and bright laughter carries down the hallway.
“Can I get a Hawaiian shirt if I go out there, Tammy?” Cataldi asks. “Andy wore a lot of those Hawaiian shirts, are any of those in there?”
“No, but I did recently find his Pro Bowl shirts, but I haven’t really run it past him if he wants to get rid of them … so I thought, we’d better hold off on that,” she replies. “Maybe one day I can call you and you can put a little bid in on that.”
Standing in the Reid’s living room, Tina Reynolds — Laurel House’s Senior Director of Community Programs and Support — smiles as she listens. “I was just saying to Tammy, sometimes when we’re trying to get press for an event or if some domestic incident happened, we can’t get it, but Tammy can sell Andy’s pillowcase and we’ve got every single news outlet calling her,” Reynolds laughs.
“That Angelo, he’s so funny,” Reid says, shaking her head as she enters the room and plops down on a sofa. “Anything to get the Laurel House name out there,” she says, looking around. “I’m sorry about all these boxes, but we are moving, you know.”
Indeed — yet more of the boxes are packed with the Reid family’s personal belongings in preparation for their move later this month to Kansas City, where Andy’s been living since shortly after being named head coach of the Chiefs in January, just a few days after he was fired by the Eagles.
They’re not selling the house, and have said they might return someday as retirees — given the deep roots they’ve planted in the area. And Reid says she plans to remain involved with Laurel House, as much as she can.
“Whatever I can do to help, that’s what I’m gonna do,” she says. “I’ll talk to people and do whatever needs to happen to keep things rolling.”
“She can still make phone calls and send emails from wherever she is,” says Reynolds.
But there’s no doubt Laurel House will feel the loss. “I’ll miss her as a human being,” says executive director Beth Sturman. “It won’t be the same to not be able to meet her for lunch somewhere and not be able to talk about life.”
“And she’s obviously helped heighten visibility not only of Laurel House but the cause — having someone like Tammy out there talking about domestic abuse reaches an audience that we don’t necessarily have the capacity to reach,” Sturman continues. “She’s helped us expand our outreach as well as our fundraising.”
While Reid has assured Sturman and the Laurel House Board of Directors that both she and Andy intend to remain committed to Laurel House, and will continue to encourage their friends and contacts to support the agency, Sturman acknowledges her departure will leave a void as Laurel House faces its perennial struggle to fund the vital services it provides, and looks toward a future they hope will include expansion of those resources and better access to them.
“I can’t possibly overstate how great a spokesperson Tammy’s been for us and what she’s meant to this organization on so many levels,” says Reynolds. “I hope we can continue to grow in the way we have since she’s been involved.”
After getting an invitation to be an honorary co-chair of Laurel House’s Annual Gala fundraising event, held each spring, shortly after coming to town in 1999, Reid says she and Andy read up on the organization and its work and immediately realized, “This speaks right to our hearts; this is about helping women be safe and get stronger and this is what we’re gonna do while we’re in Philadelphia.”
Soon, her association with Laurel House became well known in the community. “I took that as a great honor,” she says. “There were a lot of conversations, people knew that’s where my heart is, that’s where I’m putting my time and my efforts and my assistance with the financial part.”
But she vividly recalls the day — just a couple of years into her work with Laurel House — when she became even more committed to the cause.
“Someone I know actually said to me, ‘Oh, you should do charity work for something else because people don’t want to get involved in that, nobody wants to hear about domestic violence,’” she says, a disgusted look creeping across her face. “I was shocked. I said, ‘You know what? That is ridiculous. Because if it were happening to you, or to someone you know, you would totally be glad that I am jumping in and trying to change things.’”
“That’s when I got even more stubborn, even more driven,” Reid says. “And I have seen a huge change from then until now, where I think domestic violence is more talked about, it’s less taboo, and people know there’s somewhere to go to get help. But we still need to change some people’s perception that ‘I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to get involved.’ We cannot sit around silently and allow this to go on.”
Her involvement throughout the years has been deep and consuming. She sits on the Laurel House advisory board, aware of every single facet of their operations and all the finances. She also went through the same 45-hour training — administered by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence — required of staff and volunteer advocates who work directly with clients.
“When I first got in, I was the person that’s like, ‘Why are you staying with that guy, that idiot?’ which is the wrong thing to do, as much as we’re all thinking it,” she says. “Going through the training helped me see that there’s a process.”
“It was very emotional for me to hear the situations and know that while this person has this horrible thing going on, the best way to deal with it is slowly and steady and not badgering them into changing,” she continues. “We all know if you’re trying to get somebody to do something, you can talk to them ’til you’re blue in the face — they have to decide for themselves to change.”
The Reids became fixtures at the Annual Gala — Tammy not only helped come up with themes and design decorations in the run-up to the event, which is Laurel House’s premier public fundraising event, but she and Andy spent time with donors. Tammy also modeled jewelry and fashion items during the popular live auction to help drive up bids (Andy also served as auctioneer during the 2011 Gala).
Tammy often showed up at other annual Laurel House fundraising events, such as the luncheon/fashion show held each fall, and presided over small get-togethers — including last year’s “Family, Faith & Football” talk at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lansdale, which drew about 65 area women who donated money and more than four truckloads of supplies for the emergency shelter.
“Her involvement and Andy’s involvement and the use of the Reid name has given Laurel House a lot of credibility over the years,” says Reynolds. “When we have someone with their status, for them to lend their name and support to us, I think people look at us in a stronger light.”
“I’m always surprised that people want to listen to little ol’ Tammy Reid,” Reid says, laughing. “We live a regular life just like anyone else and we have our ups and downs like everyone else, and I’m always honored when people think that something I have to say is worthy of listening to.”
Reid turns quiet and glances down at the coffee table for a few moments before mentioning how, after her eldest son, Garrett, died of an accidental heroin overdose last August at Eagles training camp in Lehigh, she and Andy released an obituary asking others to make donations to Laurel House in lieu of sending flowers.
“I mean, I love flowers,” she says with a half-smile, “but I would like something good to come out of something tragic, and so we named Laurel House because it was such a big part of our lives.”
“What a generous thing for them to do,” says Sturman, adding that the donation response in Garrett’s name “was just unprecedented.”
“It was humbling that people would think that much of us and our son to make such large donations,” says Reid, “and the fact that a lot of people had to have looked Laurel House up just to see what it was, that was just another part of the awareness that will only benefit people.”
Reynolds says that trying to replace Reid as the public face of Laurel House — in addition to the big and small things she’s done on a daily basis — is an exceptionally tall task. “We met with somebody this week who is of status in the area and a little less familiar with Laurel House,” says Reynolds.
She says she can’t divulge that person’s identity just yet, but “We were able to meet with him and talk with him and discuss how we may work together in the future, and Tammy helped to open that door because of her name and the example she’s set.”
“If I can get someone bigger than the Reids to just help out or to get some deeper involvement in it to make some change, that would be a great, great thing,” says Reid. “Especially people who are in the upper echelon of Philadelphia and have some influence to help raise the funds that Laurel House needs to keep going.”
For the fiscal year 2012-2013, Laurel House’s total operating budget is $1.7 million, of which 38 percent, the largest chunk, goes to running the emergency 27-bed shelter and the agency’s hotline, according to figures provided by the agency.
The rest of the money goes to the agency’s crisis response, transitional housing, counseling and community education programs, as well as fundraising, event and administrative costs (which includes essentials such as liability insurance, auditing and accounting services and office utilities and maintenance).
The Laurel House budget — determined each year by the Board of Directors based on historical funding sources and what they can predict for the year ahead — has ranged between $1.6 million and $1.8 million since Sturman took over as executive director seven years ago, she says.
“It isn’t a lot of money,” Sturman says with a sigh, “especially because the shelter is very, very expensive to run.”
The agency currently has 17 full-time staffers, 10 part-time staffers, and 5 “relief staff” members (who work a total of about one week a month, mostly in the shelter) across all of its programs and services; the rest are volunteers or interns.
Government funding — administered through both the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence (a mix of federal, state and county money) and the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (federal money that comes through the state)— makes up 40 percent of Laurel House’s annual revenue, according to Sturman.
She says that government funding has either been flat or slightly decreased for the past dozen years — which holds true for domestic violence agencies throughout Pennsylvania — and estimates that Laurel House has lost at least 10 percent of the government funding they received 12 years ago.
“If there’s limited money and lots of need, how do you figure out who gets what?” says Sturman. “As much as it can be frustrating in my position to see elected officials cut funding, I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes because how do you decide between battered women, sick babies, kids who need education, seniors who are homeless…how do you figure all of that out? There’s a lot of need out there.”
Sturman says Laurel House has seen some of the biggest cuts in federal housing dollars — money the agency designates for its transitional housing program. For example, an annual $100,000 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant for supportive services, such as legal assistance, was eliminated in 2007.
“Funding cuts hurt tremendously, we’ve lost a lot of staff through attrition, but more important is that the whole safety net that we refer people to has been cut,” Sturman laments. “So people who come to us with needs — maybe they need more intensive mental health services than our counseling can provide, or they need job training or affordable child care or subsidized housing, all those things that victims of domestic violence may need to get out of their situation, that’s all been cut, and people really feel it.”
Sturman was encouraged by Gov. Tom Corbett’s pledge in late March to boost spending on domestic violence-related services by $1.3 million — to nearly $14 million — in his proposed 2013-2014 state budget, though she claims that if passed, the increased funding Laurel House would see would amount to less than $5,000 for the year.
“Any increase is significant so I don’t want to minimize it,” she says. “I’m very grateful for any funding, and to me it’s also a symbolic recognition of the need for the services.”
Laurel House’s next-largest revenue source is monies raised from special events — such as the Annual Gala, the 5K DASH Against Domestic Violence held in Upper Gwynedd each October and the annual “Breaking the Silence” luncheon and fashion show held each November at area country clubs — which accounts for 25 percent of the budget.
Sturman says last year’s 5K raised $20,000 and last month’s Gala netted about $130,000, which “just about met” what they had hoped and budgeted for, she says.
Additional funding comes from private foundations such as The Philadelphia Foundation, The Verizon Foundation and the Mary Kay Foundation; area businesses such as Merck — which Sturman says contributes about $55,000 a year to Laurel House through optional employee payroll withholding and matching company funds; and both the North Penn United Way and the United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey.
Linda Abram, North Penn United Way’s Director of Community Impact, says that NPUW is currently providing a three-year grant of $10,000 annually (which began in 2012) for Laurel House’s Domestic Abuse Response Team, which dispatches advocates to the scene of a domestic violence incident to assist police or EMS and provide comfort, support and resources to victims.
Abram says that Laurel House has been “a strong partner agency“ with NPUW for more than a dozen years. “We feel that folks at risk of domestic violence need the support of our organization, and Laurel House is very well known in our community and they offer tremendous services,” she says.
“They work tirelessly,” she says, “and we’re blessed to be able to award them dollars. They’re in the trenches, responding to the need and being advocates for people. The dollars are always shrinking — they always say, ‘Oh, health and human services, they’ll find money elsewhere,’ but right now that’s not the case. We do the best we can, but there’s always a greater need than what the funds can support.”
Laurel House derives about 4 percent of its budget from sales at its two thrift shops — Marian’s Attic, in the Valley Forge Shopping Center (255 Town Center Road) in King of Prussia, which has been open since 2006; and Laurel’s Loft, at the Pennwood Plaza (1801 N. Broad Street) in Lansdale, open since last year.
The rest of the funding comes from individual donors, community groups and small local businesses — about $100,000 annually, says Sturman.
“People in this region are so generous and we could never do what we do without their support,” she says, noting that money comes from churches, synagogues, book clubs, bridge clubs and more, as well as “everything from someone on a fixed income sending $10 a couple times a year to people writing large checks — every bit of it is important to the people who need our services.”
In order to keep the doors open and the lights on at the shelter, the modest offices and the transitional housing units that Laurel House owns — and to keep all of their programs and services operational — says Sturman, the agency relies greatly on volunteers, including individuals who’ve done vital maintenance and repairs for free.
Sturman also finds creative ways to get by with less through meetings in Harrisburg a few times a year with other domestic violence agency directors in Pennsylvania; get-togethers facilitated by the PCADV. “It’s a good opportunity to sit around and say, ‘So how are you handling this latest round of budget cuts?’” she says. “At least we can pick each other’s brains and see what’s worked and what hasn’t worked.”
And even in these perennially challenging, cash-strapped times, Sturman has high hopes for the future. “Our dream someday is to have a newer facility that’s easier for the people we serve to get to and to navigate, where our offices, our counseling services and our shelter — a shelter with more beds for sure — are all on one campus rather than spread throughout the county,” she says.
“That’s a dream we’ve had for several years, and a goal we’re planning for and working toward,” says Sturman.
Tammy Reid couldn’t agree more. “We need a bigger shelter,” she says. “They’ve made it so you feel private and safe and secluded there, but we need to be able to house more people.”
“I think what we need is a Laurel House commercial,” she continues, turning to Reynolds. “People maybe don’t want to see that commercial, but you know, when you see that animal cruelty one and it makes you real sad…that can work.”
“That’s true,” Reynolds replies.
“Whatever it takes,” says Reid. “We need to continue to raise awareness no matter what. I’ve already been to one of the domestic violence dinners (in Kansas City) and, you know, I’m just grateful that the Chiefs are getting involved and they’re like, ‘Will you help us?’ Of course I will!”
“But I’m not forgetting about Laurel House no matter where I am,” she smiles. “I have a vested interest and I’m gonna keep at it until we reach the pinnacle of our goal.”
Part VI: Standing Up for Victims
“Close your eyes for a moment,” says Gary Gregory, his voice trembling as he paces back and forth in front of several hundred people inside the Green Valley Country Club.
It’s the evening of April 20, and all are gathered for the Annual Gala benefit event thrown by Laurel House — the Montgomery County agency that supports victims of domestic violence.
Gregory’s only a couple of minutes into a talk about his sister, Ellen Gregory Robb, when he makes the request of the audience, but already, few eyes are dry — most are moved to tears by Gregory’s difficulty holding back his own, as well as the anticipation of what virtually everyone in the room knows is to come.
“Imagine the enthusiasm that you would have as you would drive up to that house, imagine you’re going to get a loved one, they’re going to begin a new life, ” he continues, struggling to maintain his composure. “And then you drive up and what do you see? You see police tape. You pull over. You jump out. ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘I’m Gary Gregory, the brother of the woman who lives there.’ He checks on the radio. ‘Your sister is dead.’ And then they put a body in the ambulance and away she went.”
Gregory exhales deeply. The scene he’s creating in the mind’s eye is Robb’s murder in her Upper Merion home in December of 2006 — beaten to death so savagely with a metal bar that responding officers initially believed she had been shot in the face with a shotgun.
Her husband, Rafael Robb — then a University of Pennsylvania economics professor — was arrested the next month and charged with her murder. Authorities said he tried to cover up the killing by making it look as if there had been a burglary. He was convicted of the crime in 2007 after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and received a five- to 10-year prison sentence.
“My sister, while wrapping Christmas presents, had been bludgeoned beyond recognition by a man she used to love,” Gregory says, explaining that Robb had suffered emotional and physical abuse for most of her 16-year marriage and had told her husband, as well as family and friends, that she was planning to leave and seek a divorce.
“That’s the nightmare of domestic violence,” Gregory says.
But that nightmare, never far from Robb’s family’s mind throughout the past six-and-a-half years, resurfaced in a different form at the beginning of this year when Gregory received a letter that Rafael Robb had been granted parole and was slated to be released in late January.
Desperate, Gregory called Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman for advice on trying to get the decision reversed. “‘Gary, it’s a long shot; I don’t know if you can do it. I’ve never seen it overturned, but if it’s gonna make you feel better, if it makes you feel like you’ve done all you can do, go for it,’” Gregory says Ferman told him, giving him her blessing to go to the media to raise awareness of the situation.
The media jumped on the Robb family’s message: “Letting a killer go for what was deemed the most horrific and heinous and brutal killing in the history of Montgomery County in the past half-century, he shouldn’t be set free after five years,” as Gregory puts it.
That’s when state Rep. Mike Vereb (R-150th District) jumped in.
‘“I contacted Risa and said, ‘My God, what is this?’ and she said, ‘It’s a travesty and we’ve done everything we possibly can,’” Vereb says.
That same day, Vereb ran into Gov. Tom Corbett at an event in Philadelphia and explained the situation. “I said, ‘There’s no way this parole board should have done this and we have to stop the release of Rafael Robb.’”
“The governor said, ‘Look, the (parole board) chairman (Michael Potteiger) was appointed by me and I will ask the chairman to contact the people involved in the case and reach out to you,” Vereb recalls.
Vereb and Robb’s family members, including Gregory, met with Potteiger and brought with them a letter from retired Judge Paul Tressler, who presided over Rafael Robb’s trial, strenuously objecting to the parole decision.
Still, the family was permitted to discuss only parole process with Potteiger — state law currently dictates that crime victims (or their representatives) cannot directly testify before the parole board tasked with making parole decisions. They can only do so via written, electronic or video testimony or by direct testimony to a separate parole hearing examiner.
And yet, within two days of that meeting, Rafael Robb’s parole was revoked. He won’t be eligible for parole again until September of 2014. “None of this happens unless we have a governor willing to say, ‘This doesn’t seem right,’” says Vereb, “and the lesson here is that we’ve got to change the system.”
“We’re going to fight again next year and every time we have to, to keep him in prison,” says Gregory. “Hopefully they can do something in Harrisburg to make that fight a little easier.”
“There are some good laws in Pennsylvania, and nationally, relating to domestic abuse,” says Beth Sturman, executive director of Laurel House.
She points to the reauthorization earlier this year of the federal Violence Against Women Act (originally enacted in 1994), which commits hundreds of millions of dollars annually to law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute domestic violence crimes and to various state and local agencies to provide comprehensive support for victims.
“But there are still some things that need to be done on the state level,” says Sturman.
Laurel House and its Harrisburg-based “parent agency,” the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence — a network of battered women’s support organizations that first coalesced in the mid-1970s around grassroots work to help pass the state’s landmark Protection from Abuse Act of 1976 — ardently support a number of state legislative efforts aimed at supporting victims of domestic violence and holding their abusers more accountable for their crimes.
“Our work in ending violence against women and their children remains a grassroots effort where local communities really formulate what the public policy should be and advocate for its passage with our elected officials,” says Peg Dierkers, PCADV’s executive director.
Vereb’s recently introduced House Bill 492 — inspired by the Robb case — is one such policy change advocates are getting behind enthusiastically.
Co-sponsored by dozens of state legislators from both sides of the aisle — and many from Montgomery County, including staunch Laurel House supporters Rep. Todd Stephens (R-151st District), Matthew Bradford (D-70th District) and Marcy Toepel (R-147th District) — Vereb’s bill would modify the language of the Pennsylvania Crime Victims Act of 1998 to allow victims, or the victim’s representative (in cases where the victim is deceased) to appear in person and provide testimony before the parole board prior to parole release decisions.
Introduced in March, HB 492 unanimously passed in the House and currently sits in the Senate Appropriations Committee — Vereb expects it will go to Corbett’s desk next month to be signed into law.
“The day this governor signs this bill, it will change the playing field for our victims,” says Vereb, who says that victims of domestic violence would be able to testify before the parole board “without defense attorneys and criminals present and none of their testimony is public information.”
“During sentencing, both the victims and the defendants have an opportunity to present testimony in court, so how come only the perpetrator has rights once they’re in jail?” says Vereb. “This lets the victims talk to the parole board and then the parole board talks to the criminal. It cannot be any fairer than that.”
Dierkers agrees. “(The bill) gives victims of domestic violence more rights, so we absolutely stand behind it,” she says.
There have been a handful of other domestic violence-related bills introduced during the current legislative session.
One of them — House Bill 27, introduced by Rep. Ron Marsico (R-105th District) — would change the Pennsylvania criminal code to enhance the grading the crime of harassment by one degree when committed by someone in violation of a Protection from Abuse order (otherwise known as a “restraining order”).
That means that in some cases what would normally be a summary offense, which carries a maximum penalty of 90 days in prison, could get bumped up to a misdemeanor that could mean up to a year behind bars.
Marsico’s bill currently sits in the House Judiciary Committee, with no vote scheduled.
There are also bills dealing with funding: Toepel’s House Bill 545, which currently sits in the House Gaming Oversight Committee, would distribute 12.5 percent of the estimated $1.2 million annually that is Montgomery County’s share of gaming revenue generated by the new Valley Forge Casino Resort to Laurel House.
That would amount to approximately $150,000 a year in the agency’s coffers—significantly enhancing its overall budget, which is $1.7 million for the fiscal year 2012-2013. That budget, says Sturman, “isn’t a lot of money” given the myriad services and programs Laurel House provides.
Meanwhile, Bradford’s House Bill 1260 would increase from $10 to $15 the fine currently imposed against those who have been convicted of domestic violence crimes and/or rape — money that goes to victim services agencies like Laurel House.
“With tight budgets over the last five years or so, one of the things we look to do is increase some of the court fines and target that money for organizations that need it,” says Bradford. “This is a way, frankly, to come up with revenue in a fairly innocuous way, and hopefully it will get broad support,” he says of the bill, which has been in the House Judiciary Committee since the end of April.
And then there’s the somewhat more contentious Senate Bill 486 — known alternately as “Robin’s Law,” named in honor of Robin Shaffer, a Quakertown woman murdered by her estranged husband in 2004 — introduced by Sen. Lisa Boscola (D-18th District). It would create a Megan’s Law-style statewide registry, maintained by the Pennsylvania State Police, of those convicted of domestic violence-related crimes; offenders would be kept on the registry for 10 years, and failure to register or to provide a change of address would be a third-degree felony.
Though a similar law already exists in other states, Boscola has been trying to get “Robin’s Law” legislation passed in Pennsylvania for several years but has so far been stymied. Pushback has come over privacy issues, as well as concerns that inclusion on such a registry could provoke retribution against a victim by their abuser, or lull people into a false sense of security if someone’s name is not on it, since many abusers are never actually convicted of their crimes.
“To be honest, our membership comes down on both sides of that issue,” says Dierkers.
Stephens says that he finds the idea of a registry intriguing. “I’ve heard from women who end up dating someone and they’re abused and they find out later that the last person this guy dated was abused, so why should they have to learn the hard way?” he says. “There’s been a lot of discussions about things along those lines, and I’ll take a look at and consider anything that will protect victims of domestic violence.”
A former Montgomery County prosecutor who put away child abusers and rapists and dealt with his share of domestic abuse situations, Stephens is a zealous supporter of Laurel House and has sponsored or co-sponsored a number of domestic violence-related bills, including Vereb’s parole bill and Bradford’s funding bill.
He was also the one who suggested Laurel House as one of the prime beneficiaries of Toepel’s casino revenue bill, and during his time in Harrisburg he’s fought against efforts to cut funding for state domestic violence programs, sometimes running afoul of leadership in his own party.
“My first budget in 2011, I had only been in office for six months and when the leaders put out the budget proposal they sent it out with an admonishment, ‘We would like for this not to be amended,’” Stephens recalls. “And when I opened it up and saw there was a proposal to reduce funding for domestic violence, what did I do? I filed an amendment.”
“It didn’t go over so well,” he laughs, “But I will say this — I worked with our leaders and in the end, none of that funding was cut.”
“I can’t say enough good things about Rep. Stephens,” says Sturman, “He’s really been a friend to Laurel House.”
Stephens says he’s looking into several issues surrounding domestic violence, with an eye toward possible future legislation or at least education. One, he says, is the relationship between domestic violence and gun violence — according to the PCADV, between 2000 and 2012, 59 percent of the state’s 1,320 domestic violence fatalities were the result of firearms.
“When you add a firearm to a domestic violence situation it’s throwing a match on a powder keg,” he says. “Our PFA law permits the seizure of firearms, although you’ve gotta make sure people are afforded due process. But it all comes down to educating the judges (who are ruling on PFA orders) about the seriousness of a gun in the hands of someone who commits domestic violence.”
“You may have a situation where somebody is abusive with their hands and a judge may say, ‘Well I don’t see any reason to take this person’s gun because they’ve never threatened to use the gun,’” Stephens continues. “Well, as a lot of folks in the domestic violence field know, domestic violence is very often an escalating thing, so just because you didn’t use a gun before doesn’t mean you’re not going to use one if it’s available to you.”
Stephens says he also recently met with the Pennsylvania State Police about ensuring that PFA orders barring individuals from purchasing or possessing firearms are properly submitted to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. “They currently are, but there’s sometimes problems with the identifying information for the defendant, and if you don’t have that, then it’s really worthless,” he says.
Additionally, he intends to investigate ways PFA orders can be strengthened — perhaps by increasing the penalties for violating a PFA, as domestic violence advocates from Laurel House and others have suggested.
Currently, the law provides only for an indirect criminal contempt complaint for someone who violates a PFA — that person can be fined up to $1,000 and/or sentenced to up to six months in jail. In some states, violating a PFA can result in a felony charge.
“There are different degrees of PFA violations and we might want to give the judges some latitude,” says Stephens. “All violations are serious, but those that are particularly egregious could be treated more severely, and that’s something I’ll definitely look into.”
“I’ve been through PFAs that have been violated before, and I can count with very few fingers how many people who violated a PFA actually went to jail,” says Vereb, a former cop who Sturman also hails as a fervent supporter of Laurel House and domestic violence issues. Vereb has worked closely with Stephens on several domestic violence-related bills, and says he’s for overhauling the PFA system.
“We need to put teeth in these orders to really protect people in the cases that become dangerous,” he says. “I happen to feel that when a permanent PFA is granted by the court, there is no reason why a person with a PFA against them should possess firearms.”
“I think that any person who violates a PFA ought to be sent directly to incarceration pending charges— we have to figure out how to remove people from the streets,” Vereb continues.
“I’m also a firm believer that once a permanent PFA has been granted, it should be published somewhere. Yes, we have to look at the rights of everyone involved. But we have to craft something that fixes the system, because I can tell you that the disbelief at the failure of our PFA system seems to be recurring and we need to see what we can do,” he says.
For the most part, say several legislators, domestic violence initiatives get strong support in Harrisburg from both parties.
Further evidence of that bipartisan spirit can be seen in the effort on both sides to change a recently modified Norristown Nuisance Ordinance (Ordinance No. 12-15) that imposes fines on landlords if police respond to three disorderly behavior calls in connection with one of their tenants in four months.
Last month, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a Norristown woman who said she was a victim of repeated domestic violence at the hands of her abusive ex-boyfriend, but after calling the police several times to get protection from him was threatened with eviction under the ordinance. According to the lawsuit, the woman then decided not to report future assaults — including one in which her abuser attacked her with a brick and another in which he stabbed her in the neck with a broken glass ashtray, resulting in her being airlifted to the hospital — out of fear of being kicked out of her home.
Stephens and Vereb, along with Ferman and representatives from Laurel House, held a joint press conference in Norristown at the end of April denouncing the ordinance as it currently stands. Both legislators have pledged to work together on a bill that would prohibit municipalities from enforcing such ordinances that would doubly victimize domestic violence victims or dissuade them from reporting such assaults.
“When we do things, we need to look at it from the victim’s perspective, and this ordinance deters people from dialing 911 when they need to,” says Vereb, who along with Stephens, intends to bring forth a bill that would insert specific language into the ordinance that says the law doesn’t apply to victims of domestic violence.
Bradford, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee with Stephens, says he would support such a bill. “I think an explicit exception would be fine. These ordinances are in quite a few municipalities and they come out of concerns communities have about bad things going on at certain properties, but you don’t want victims to get caught in the crossfire,” he says.
In the bigger picture, says Bradford, “I’ve supported some of his (Stephens’) legislation in the past and as a former assistant district attorney these are issues he’s aware of, as well as Mike (Vereb), being a former police officer. I’m a Democrat and they unfortunately are not, but we’ve worked together on things that have had unanimity of support, and domestic violence issues are great examples of times we can all work together.”
“I stand with every member of the Montgomery County delegation, Republican and Democrat, who I truly think feel the same about this issue,” says Vereb. “I can tell you that Republican and Democrat, we all really want to help out the Laurel Houses of the world.”
Yet, as Dierkers points out, history shows that legislation sometimes gets held up on partisan lines when well-intentioned bills touch on hot-button issues — such as guns. The Protection from Abuse Act, for example, allows those who have had their firearms taken away from them as part of a PFA order to give them to a third party for safekeeping, rather than relinquish them to law enforcement — a compromise Dierkers says was negotiated with pro-gun legislators backed by the National Rifle Association.
“That third party could be their brother or their friend, so sometimes an abuser can gain access to them even when they’re not supposed to have them,” says Dierkers. “And what we see then is victims being killed. So sometimes the solutions are complex and in order to get most of the solution passed we make compromises because pieces of the solution have their proponents and opponents.”
Still, just as Dierkers, Sturman and all of Laurel House’s advocates say they do everything that they do with so many of the victims and survivors of domestic violence they’ve encountered, supported and fought for in mind, state legislators say they’re similarly motivated to create and strengthen domestic violence laws in Pennsylvania.
“Mike and I don’t have to read about it in the newspapers or see it on TV — we can think back to specific victims and specific abusers and think about the effect it had on their lives and all the families,” says Stephens. “You think about the real lives that you touched, and it makes it real easy to stand up and fight for these issues when you keep those people in your mind.”
“It’s not hard, we all believe in it,” says Vereb. “I saw the most gruesome of domestic violence results first-hand in my tenure as police officer. And I feel that victims, when they reach a place like Laurel House, they’re right there on the edge of life and death.”
“We’re not going to be able to stop it all,” he says. “But right when we think we’re tired or politically spent is the exact moment that we gotta stand up and say, ‘Have we done enough for our victims?’”
[The Laurel House domestic violence series was originally published in The Reporter on six consecutive Sundays beginning April 21, 2013.]
Michael Alan Goldberg is an award-winning crime reporter for The Reporter/Digital First Media. Follow him on Twitter @mg_thereporter.
