Sarah met him in high school through a friend. She was 16, he was six months older. Soon he became the love of her life. The relationship lasted ten years. They had two kids, both boys.
But during their decade together, he started abusing her emotionally and verbally. "He would tell me things," the 27-year-old child-care aide recalls. "Tell me that I'm ugly and stupid. Tell me just degrading things and made me feel like he was the best I could do, that he would be the only one to love me. And there were different incidences where he would push or hit me.
"Over time I became accustomed to it, since this was the only relationship I'd ever had. I just thought it was normal. I guess I was blinded to it - blinded by love, basically, or what I thought was love. My ideas were based on his ideas. And he had a way of just manipulating me into thinking that's OK."
Still, Sarah started missing work and sleeping all day long. She was sad most of the time and didn't know why. Her self-esteem was at an all-time low. In short, she felt herself shutting down. But she also knew she had to endure and follow the example of her parents, who had been married for more than 30 years.
"I always had this idea that it would be best for the kids to have their dad here and see us together," she explains. "And I put up with a lot because I was trying to make it work. I was trying to have that family, and my older son was especially attached to his father.
"But it got to the point where the kids were even saying, 'Why don't you leave Daddy?' because they saw how miserable I was. They saw when he didn't come home. They saw us when we argued. So when they were telling me this, I knew it was time to move on."
About this time, Sarah also found out that her partner had been having an affair with another woman. She kicked him out, but reluctantly agreed he could watch the boys after school and evenings while she was working and also see them on weekends.
"That's when it got really bad because he was so angry at me for leaving him, 'cause he said we were supposed to be together forever, and I was just supposed to accept everything that he did," she says. "I could ask him, 'How's the weather outside?' and he would call me every name in the book."
Then in April 2006, she found out he was making and selling drugs in front of the boys. So the next time he came around wanting to take their younger son to the park, Sarah put her foot down. She said no and asked him to leave.
Instead he beat her up, hitting her face and head, knocking her to the floor, then picking her up by the hair and smashing her head against the wall. When she managed to follow him to his car, he turned around and choked her neck with both hands until she started blacking out.
The good news was the police showed up right then. The bad news was Sarah and her sons were evicted from their San Fernando Valley apartment, and a whole new life struggle began. For the first few months, they lived in motels, then with friends. When Sarah left her job to take better care of her kids, the situation got even worse. For two days, all they had to eat was bread and peanut butter.
From time to time, her parents would help out, but they believed their adult daughter needed to be responsible for her own children. So there were more short stays at friends, motels and a shelter. Finally, after almost a year, a social worker at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority referred Sarah to a place called the House of Ruth.
Traumatized kids
Sister Jennifer Gaeta has run the Los Angeles House of Ruth since 1993. During those 14 years, she's seen a number of women like Sarah, though Sister Gaeta describes Sarah as a little less traumatized and a little more motivated than the typical client.
"But she's not unusual," the Sister of Social Service points out. "I think probably her being really ready to stop the insanity of what she was going through and getting accepted here kind of coalesced nicely.
"When that happens, it's wonderful. If it happened every time, it would be really great. We had an opening, and she was ready to make the move."
Most of the women who wind up at the Los Angeles House of Ruth, which opened in 1977 and was operated until 1993 by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, are in the beginning timid, nervous and afraid, according to Sister Gaeta.
As they become more relaxed and comfortable in the facility's 30-to-90-day emergency shelter, housed in a two-story, 1926 Victorian-like house, the clients usually start letting their guard down. It's only then, when they open up to what the program has to offer, that healing can actually take place.
Most children are likewise traumatized when they arrive with their mothers. Many are confused about where their father is. Instinctively, they know something's terribly wrong, but they don't want their family to break up. Most of all, they wonder - and fear - what's going to happen to them.
"Women come because they're desperate," Sister Gaeta reports. "They are very desperate. They've been psychologically and financially dependent on their abusive partners, often for years. He's controlled them. They're isolated and don't see any way out.
"The biggest reason clients are here is because of our economy and poverty," she stresses. "There have always been battered families, but we didn't see homeless families 30 years ago. So that's a new phenomenon that we have - women with kids who have no place to go."
Still, the social worker quickly rejects the notion that battering is a problem found mostly in low-income and poor families. She points out that women from the Westside often prefer to "hide out" at the House of Ruth on the other side of L.A. because nobody's going to recognize them.
For wealthier women, there's probably more of a social stigma associated with being battered and beat up, she notes. Many shun shelters because they have the resources to stay in motels or with relatives, until they can make a clean break from their abusers.
Sister Gaeta also doesn't buy the idea that the so-called abuse "can't be all that bad" or the woman would have left long ago. "I'd say that's a naïve statement," she observes. "People put up with tremendous abuse. If you're a woman and you're being beaten and you have kids, what's your option? Getting in your car and going where?
"Sometimes you'll see the mother leave when the abuse begins to focus on the child. That will be the drawing line: 'You can hurt me, but not my child.' But I think women don't leave sooner because they are trapped and feel they have no alternative."
If battered moms with kids are lucky, they wind up at a place like the House of Ruth through referrals from social service agencies, cops, physicians, schools and even women on the street.
The problem in recent years, though, is its emergency shelter and two nearby transitional shelters, housing four families each for at least six months, are usually filled.
"The education and public awareness about battering is helping women get out of it sooner," Sister Gaeta explains. "We're seeing more domestic violence cases coming for help as opposed to just hiding it. Our concern is to try to add beds rather than losing beds, because every year it gets busier and busier."
Case management
As Beatriz Velazquez opens the bedroom door on the second floor of the transitional shelter, she points out how the bunk beds have a full mattress on the bottom and twin on top. There's also a fold-up day bed in the corner for a second child. By bringing more temporary beds into the large room with off-white walls, a mother with five children can be accommodated.
Then she takes a visitor next door to a large rectangular room that does double duty as a child-care center during the day and a living/dinning area after 5 p.m. On this Thursday morning there are eight toddlers playing with plastic toys and stuffed animals under the watchful gaze of a young female staffer.
Back in her cozy office, decorated with photos and cards from former clients, Velazquez talks about the challenges, as well as joys, of working with battered women.
The case manager points out that every family is interviewed before being accepted to the Los Angeles House of Ruth to make sure "our service is what they need and we can service them." She says this separates their program from pure emergency shelters, who accept battered families on the spot fleeing from abuse.
If accepted, a more detailed assessment is done of the family's problems and needs Then a specific case plan is designed for the mom and children.
All mothers are required to go to counseling and to enroll in some kind of vocational training, go back to school or, if already qualified, find a job. They must attend nutrition and budgeting in-house sessions. And they're required to save all of their earned money in an account managed by the House of Ruth.
With the guidance of one of the three case managers, complex legal, credit and custody issues are also tackled and, hopefully, resolved. School-age children attend local schools.
The overall idea is to help every woman figure out how she got into her horrendous situation and what she needs to do to stay out of it. The specific goal is to get clients into a stable, self-supporting lifestyle, which usually means having a steady income that will pay the rent and other bills.
"The hardest part is after working with the women, unfortunately, a lot of them do go back to the batterer," Velazquez reports. "They say that battered women are going to leave seven or eight times before they're really ready to leave. So that's kind of hard.
"And right now the biggest obstacle that we as case managers have is actually finding affordable permanent housing for these women," she adds. "That's very hard. But we've been working with owners who know us, and we advocate for the women. Still, it's challenging to find something they can afford, even when they get a Section 8 [government] voucher."
According to Velazquez, however, the joys of her job easily outweigh these disappointments and difficulties. She talks about a client who left the House of Ruth more than a year ago with her young family. Recently, they moved to Arizona, where the mother found a job and her kids are doing well in school.
"Every little thing that she does, she calls, and that's great," Velazquez says, smiling and picking up a greeting card from her desk. "She wrote, 'Sometimes it helps just to have someone who will listen.'"
Safety and stability
Sarah, the single battered mom, agrees.
Tomorrow, she and her two boys are moving from the emergency to the transitional shelter next door. For at least six months, they won't have to worry about where they're going to sleep or how they're going to survive on peanut butter and bread. And her sons can keep going to the same elementary school in Los Angeles.
"The House of Ruth has given us peace of mind," says the articulate, outgoing woman. "We've had stability for two months without worrying. We've felt safe. Towards the end when we were homeless, we were moving from hotel to hotel every day, and we didn't know where the next meal was going to come from.
"And now that we're moving into the transitional shelter, I'll be able to sleep every night," she adds, grinning. "I'm hoping to get Section 8, so I'll be able to obtain stable and permanent housing. I don't have a college education, so any job I can get is just barely making ends meet. So I also want to further my education and just to better my life in general."
For a moment, Sarah glances around the porch where she is sitting. "I'm looking on our stay here as an opportunity to grow," she says. Jennifer Gaeta at P.O. Box 33288, Los Angeles, CA 90033. |