Lifting the veil of secrecy on women's shelters – Part Two

June 7, 2:02 AMDomestic Violence ExaminerTrudy Schuett

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By 2000, what is sometimes known as “the women’s shelter movement’ already had 30 years to establish itself in communities all over the country. Those who’d spent much of their lifetimes, and often entire careers in this field were regarded as experts that knew the subject better than anyone. The thinking of the day was that surely they knew what they were doing, and had the absolute best of intentions. If they didn’t have the answers to this unpopular and uncomfortable issue, then nobody did. Doing something was certainly better than doing nothing at all, so governments at all levels, private charities, and later, corporations gave these respected experts free rein to manage the issue as they wished. Governments enacted laws and provided funding, private charities used their expertise in other matters to establish centers and shelters, and corporations helped with promotion and even more funding.

After nearly four decades, it has become not only politically incorrect, but sacrilegious to question the methods or motives of any agency or program in the vast network of women’s shelters and batterer programs. Anyone who questions must either hate women or not understand the severity of the problem. Anyone who questions must not want equality for women, and to set society back hundreds of years.

Some, with nothing to lose – no votes to worry about, or bottom line to consider, have asked questions. What they get in answer is a litany of excuses, with plenty of evasion and sometimes outright lies. One begins to wonder if perhaps these agencies have not begun to confuse the issue of client confidentiality with a larger concealment that applies to agencies themselves. After all, what other helping agency could get away with concealing the location and refusing access to its base of operations even from funding sources? Yet often shelter programs do just that.

There is a sticky morass of prevarication and half truth here that is difficult to comprehend, let alone explain to anyone who hasn’t been studying this issue for some time. So we’ll pick an arbitrary point that will serve as the beginning.

What happens when you look for help

There may be a number in a local phone book, a pamphlet picked up in a doctor’s office, or even a website. If you’ve looked at a website or pamphlet, the information will be something to the effect that anyone who believes they are in a situation of domestic violence can call this number and be directed to help. Keep in mind that shelters try to be independent in some ways, and the size and management of  programs will differ. These elements may not apply to every shelter, every occurrence, but generally this is what happens.

What you find if you call are things like these:

If you are calling a referral number, such as National Domestic Violence Hotline or your state’s coalition, you may be referred to services and programs that either do not exist, or are not at the time providing the services you were led to believe they do.

If you are calling an agency directly:

If you are a woman you will be presumed to be a victim; a man will be presumed to be a batterer.

If you are a man who is a victim, and are able to convince them that is the case, you will be told there is no shelter program for you. You may be offered a motel voucher in some areas.

If you are a woman who is employed full time, then you will also be told the shelter program is not open to you, and offered that same motel voucher.

If you are a woman who has male children over the age of about 12, you are welcome but not the boy or boys. You have the choice of finding alternate accommodation for the offensive children, or that motel voucher again.

Since the emphasis is on shelter programs, alternative solutions that do not involve a shelter are few and far between. So it is most often the motel voucher, or nothing.

Oddly enough, shelter workers will insist that the motel voucher (for one to several days) is equal in every way to the shelter program, (which varies according the provider in length from anywhere from two weeks to six months) which offers security, meals, group activities, access to counseling and a “continuum of services.” You are intended to perceive them to be equal for no other reason than that they say they are.

The excuses given for apportioning their services in this way have been given as:

“We don’t have the capacity to serve any more people than we do.”

“We’ve never had enough calls from male victims to warrant providing services.”

“Battered women are terrified of all men.”

“Older boys may already have learned battering behavior from their fathers. They may injure someone.”

"Working women may be followed from work to the shelter. Their batterers may cause trouble.”

Let’s take another look at the excuses and learn a bit more;

“We don’t have the capacity to serve any more people than we do.”

If it was a true issue of capacity, then those many shelters that have expanded over the years would have made some effort to provide service for those previously denied. Yet time and time again, an expansion only provides more beds for the same limited group of women.

At one time it was suggested that programs could screen applicants in some way to determine whether their claim of needing shelter was genuine, and the shelters reacted negatively. Their variety of reasons why they would refuse to do this were generally these: No woman would ever lie about this situation, to question applicants was tantamount to “blaming the victim,” or to institute this kind of process would be “too hard.”

Even though shelter administrators have to know that some women abuse these services, and recognizing that restricting access by those who misuse services could significantly reduce the need for space, programs continue to produce ever more excuses for their refusal to do so.

“We’ve never had enough calls from male victims to warrant providing services.”

We’ve also noticed statements in news articles and other sources by long-time veterans of programs to the effect that they’ve seen very little evidence that there are any male victims who may need assistance. A story last year in the Arizona Republic on A New Leaf, one of the few organizations that makes any effort to shelter men, made a point of mentioning that the beds in their Autumn House shelter that are reserved for men, were empty and had been so for some time.

One director of a shelter actually told us once, “I’ve been in this business thirty years and have never seen a male victim.”

Of course she wouldn’t. Let’s put it another way. If you asked someone who’d been a coach for the NFL 30 years how many basketball players he’d worked with in his career, the answer would be zero. In both cases, the question is about populations they do not work with. However, the NFL coach would have no reason for suggesting that basketball players do not exist, while shelter workers/advocates jump through plenty of hoops trying to pretend that male victims of domestic violence do not exist.

Meanwhile, programs do everything possible to discourage men from even asking for help. The phrase, “women and children” is used frequently, and may even be part of the name of the program, i.e. Bright Horizons for Women. Despite extensive outreach campaigns, representing millions of dollars in public funding, there has never been any serious attempt to include men in these programs. Again, shelter advocates will insist that they do their outreach. Unfortunately a few words such as “men are victims too” in a pamphlet that otherwise devotes all its attention to blaming and shaming men, or a single statement, never repeated in a presentation, is not considered to be effective outreach.

“Working women may be followed from work to the shelter. Their batterers may cause trouble.”

The location of a shelter is generally top secret, to avoid conflict, claim the powers that be. Never mind that in reality, often those who abuse intimate partners do so because they haven’t the courage to act out against others, who may be in a position to retaliate. If a batterer was going to follow a woman from work, wouldn’t sending her to a motel, away from the supposed security of the shelter put her in a potentially dangerous situation? Or do they simply have a greater degree of concern for some women?

There is also the issue of the poor relationship cultivated by shelters with law enforcement. Many of those so-called experts mentioned above have frequently blamed law enforcement for not responding properly to domestic violence calls, and continue to make those claims, disregarding the major changes law enforcement agencies have made in their policies and procedures. There have been occasions where police called to a shelter by shelter workers have been denied access, because that’s their policy.

We believe the reasoning behind this business of secret locations is nothing more than paranoia, combined with ignorance, and perhaps a bit of need on the part of the shelter administration to function without too much observation. Certainly these programs are less than forthcoming in other areas.

“Battered women are terrified of all men.”

 “Older boys may already have learned battering behavior from their fathers. They may injure someone.”

Considering the wide variety of situations considered to be domestic violence, and the myriad reasons why women choose to go to shelters, the idea that their clients would all be terrified of all men makes little sense. In this case, we feel shelter advocates are projecting their own attitudes on the way women “should” feel about their situations.

If even they believed that “battered women are terrified of all men,” then how do they justify turning away any women, and sending them to a place where they will certainly encounter men?

These excuses are based in misandry, and the guiding principle that remains behind the majority of services today: men are the problem. They don’t want to have men anywhere near their shelters. Often the higher-profile individuals, such as those in charge of PR, or sometimes board members or administrative staff will be men, taken on for the sole purpose of giving the illusion of equality, but men in day-to-day operations are not welcome.

Inexplicably, feminist writers have often said that if men want shelter services, then they should “fund their own”. This of course, ignores the fact that everyone pays for these existing programs with their tax dollars at all levels, from federal to local.. It has been suggested that shelters that restrict access based on gender are operating illegally if they receive federal grants. This is probably the reason for the programs’ spokesmen insisting that everyone can get help, and that the motel voucher is equal to a residential program, despite obvious evidence to the contrary.

We have not encountered a single brochure, website, or any other materials for public consumption that clearly states what services are available and to whom. It would appear they really don’t want anyone to know, and that desire outstrips any responsibility they may feel to the community at large to provide the services they claim.

We do know that this veil of secrecy extends to funding and granting agencies. We’ve seen funding proposals for shelters that provide only the most vague and nonspecific information. Granting agencies are often refused access to the physical site, or any ability to speak with clients to see how they are treated, or even if the building is properly maintained. Still, the money keeps flowing, and no one questions. Perhaps it is too dangerous these days for too many people to insist on accuracy and transparency.

What do shelters really do?

One could be forgiven for thinking, incorrectly, that shelter services are some sort of “magic bullet” that will help victims deal with their problem. There has been no research to date concerning whether this approach is helpful to women in freeing themselves from the cycle of domestic violence in their lives. We have no doubt that any research of this type would show negligible or no result. Even the national agencies would likely agree with us on this point. That’s because shelters and their accompanying “continuum of services” are not designed to deal directly with the issue. They never have been.

All a shelter does is provide a victim time away from the designated abuser. They may provide divorce assistance, legal assistance in getting a restraining order, support during court proceedings, perhaps some rudimentary job training and even aid in finding housing. Anything else is up to the client.

If you take a look at any website for a shelter program, other than the impression that they will help all comers, what you will see displayed prominently is something about divorce assistance. That’s the feminist “magic bullet” – divorce the bastard. Then run away as far as you can, and make sure he never sees his kids again. Don’t, however, forget to leave a forwarding address so those support and alimony checks can arrive without hindrance. Pursuing criminal charges against an abuser is also a prominent  theme. It is not explained to prospective divorcees/victims that an incarcerated ex-husband will not be able to provide for her financial needs in the same manner as before, as there is an unspoken suggestion that there is some kind of magic fountain that will keep the money coming.

They often make the divorce process seem simple, even desirable. They don’t tell prospective clients that divorce can be emotionally and financially devastating, and in the cases where there are children, drag on for years of acrimony with effects extending outward to other family members and friends. We’ve seen cases where fictional abuse, contrived for the purposes of leverage in court, became a reality. Relatively minor cases of abuse, which might have been addressed had other ways been available, have become violent and out of control.

Divorce is seldom any kind of solution to the problem. Still, it is the only one offered.

Other dubious “services” provided by shelters include a barrage of feminist propaganda, and “education” for younger boys on how they, evil males that they are, can avoid becoming batterers themselves. Girls of any age who accompany their mothers are not given the prevention indoctrination, though we suspect it wouldn’t be too far off base to suggest they are included in the feminist instruction given their mothers on embracing their victimhood, and leveraging it for maximum personal benefit.

It should come as no surprise that the federal government recognizes that these programs are “not performing” or “results not demonstrated.” What should be surprising is that apparently little or nothing has been done since this 2004 judgment other than creating some pilot programs, holding some meetings, and continuing services essentially in the same way as before.

NEXT: Evidencing the need