Innovations in Interventions to Address Intimate Partner Violence

Research and Practice

Tod Augusta-Scott, Katreena Scott, Leslie M. Tutty, Tod Augusta-Scott, Katreena Scott, Leslie M. Tutty

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315532752
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Innovations in Interventions to Address Intimate Partner Violence: Research and Practice speaks to what can be done to effectively intervene to end intimate partner violence against women. Including contributions from both researchers and practitioners, chapters describe service innovations across systems in large urban and remote rural contexts, aimed at majority and minority populations, and that utilize a range of theoretical perspectives to understand and promote change in violence and victimization. Reflecting this range, contributions to this volume are organized into five sections: legal responses to domestic violence, intervention with men who have perpetrated domestic violence, responses to women who have experienced domestic violence, restorative approaches to intimate partner violence, and a section on integrating intervention for domestic violence across systems. The book highlights advances in practice which will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, policy makers and students.

Part I
Responses to Women Abused by Intimate Partners

1 “A Place To Go To When I Had No Place To Go To”

Journeys of Violence Against Women’s Emergency Shelter Residents¹

Leslie M. Tutty

Emergency shelters for women are often seen as society’s major resource to address intimate partner violence (IPV). Although shelters are commonly used as sites to access women to study the nature and consequences of IPV, little research has focused more holistically on women’s experiences in shelter. Canadian evaluations support the importance of violence against women’s (VAW) shelters in providing safety and assisting the transition to a life separate from an assaultive partner (Tutty, 2015a; Tutty, Weaver, & Rothery, 1999). Similarly, American studies generally conclude that shelters are helpful (Bennett, Riger, Schewe, Howard, & Wasco, 2004; Chanley, Chanley, & Campbell, 2001; Grossman & Lundy, 2011; Ham-Rowbottom, Gordon, Jarvis, & Novaco, 2005).

In Canada in the year ending March 31, 2014, 60,341 women were admitted to 627 shelters (mostly VAW specific), according to Statistic Canada’s Transition House Survey (Beattie & Hutchins, 2015). Different forms of shelters provide services for various lengths of time: the 281 first stage emergency shelters described in Beattie and Hutchins have residency of from one day to eleven weeks, with an average limit of about three to six weeks; 123 were second stage shelters with occupancy from three to twelve months.

While VAW shelters are available across Canada, most are clustered in urban areas. Many VAW shelters provide additional services such as crisis phone-lines, outreach support for women who are not shelter residents and follow-up programs for former residents who have moved into the community (Burczycka & Cotter, 2011; Tutty, 1996; Wathen, Harris, Ford-Gilboe, & Hansen, 2015). In 2010, 64 percent of all shelters reportedly offered culturally sensitive programs for Aboriginal women and their children while thirty-nine shelters were located on mostly rural Aboriginal reserves (Burczycka & Cotter, 2011).

The majority of women abused by partners do not use VAW shelters. In their study on what abused women wanted from health care providers, Chang and colleagues (2005) found that many women did not want to be told simply to “go to a shelter.” According to Statistics Canada (Brzozowski, 2004), 11 percent of women abused in the past five years had used a shelter, only 7 percent as residents. A thirty-year-old comment that holds true today is that shelters are serving those who need them most, providing, “options for women who have few options” (Weisz, Taggart, Mockler, & Streich, 1994).

Shelters are complex organizations and coping with the rules and structures needed to function within a communal setting can be challenging for both residents (Dewey & St. Germain, 2014; Glenn & Goodman, 2015; Tutty et al., 1999; Tutty, 2015a) and staff (Burnett, Ford-Gilboe, Berman, Wathen, & Ward-Griffin 2016). Although primarily positive about their shelter experiences, some residents have raised concerns about the behaviors of a few other residents, some staff not being helpful, feeling under the watchful eyes of staff, and not receiving sufficient help to access housing or other basic needs (Dewey & St. Germain, 2014; Tutty et al., 1999). Staff concerns are with respect to the complex nature of the women’s needs, including some women with mental health concerns, structural issues such as poverty (Goodman, Smyth, Borges, & Singer, 2009), and the short time-frame within which to assist women. Glenn and Goodman (2015) posit that women with post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) could be hypersensitive and misread staff behaviors as judgmental; Tutty (2006) speculated that shelter staff are at risk of vicarious traumatization (McCann & Pearlman, 1990), caused by repeatedly hearing traumatic stories in one’s professional capacity.

Considering the structural complications and limitations of VAW shelters and, given their central place in society’s response to intimate partner violence, it is important to understand how women get to shelters, what they need for themselves and their children and how they fare afterwards—the focus of this research. This chapter presents narratives from twenty women who resided in emergency VAW shelters from across Canada documenting the nature of the abuse from which they sought shelter, their supports prior to going to shelter, their experiences while in shelter and what happened two to six months afterwards. Especially in the early research (Aguirre, 1985; Cannon & Sparks, 1989), women whose partners abuse them have been described as returning to abusive partners an average of about eight times and as returning to the VAW shelters repeatedly (in the latest Canadian Transition House Survey (Beattie & Hutchins, 2015), one-quarter of the residents had stayed in the same shelter before). While using any resources for safety reasons is entirely appropriate and does not indicate failure on either the woman or the shelter, it is of interest to examine what has happened to a group of former shelter residents to identify whether such patterns remain prevalent.

The Context of the Current Study

The current qualitative research supplemented a quantitative study that described the needs, trauma symptoms, and safety issues of 368 women as they entered and left emergency shelters in ten Canadian VAW emergency shelters; nine operated by the YWCA and a private shelter in Nova Scotia (Tutty, 2015a). The results captured the nature of the abuse, what the women wanted from shelter residence, the services they received, and their plans for afterwards.

On shelter entry, on the Danger Assessment (Campbell, Webster, & Glass, 2009), over 75 percent of 305 women residents who completed the scale fell in the range of Extreme or Severe Danger of risk of lethality from partners. Factors on the Danger Assessment are with respect to the partner, so these would not likely change on shelter exit and were not assessed. On exit, although still in the clinical range, total and subscale scores on a trauma scale (Impact of Event Scale— Revised) (Weiss, 2004) significantly improved from shelter entry. These results suggest both the need for safety and the positive impact of shelters. Finally, on leaving the shelter, the majority of the 225 residents (about 90 percent) who answered the Exit Survey were not planning to return to their partners; about 4 percent planned to return to their partner and 5 percent were undecided.

The qualitative interviews were conceived as one way to assess how a small portion of the 368 women fared from two to six months after they had left the emergency shelters. Except for the few residents who return to the shelter and those who use shelter follow-up programs, staff typically know little about whether or how the shelter stay was useful, or how the women are doing post-shelter, questions that this research sought to address. A semi-structured interview schedule, developed in consultation with the YWCA Canada Research Advisory Team, asked women about the nature of the abuse, what they wanted and expected from the shelter, and how they were doing afterwards. The research protocol was approved by the University of Calgary Conjoint Ethical Review Board to ensure that issues such as informed consent, confidentiality, and permission to withdraw from the study were addressed.

The Demographics of the Shelter Residents

The twenty women were interviewed from two to six months after their shelter stay and were from all of the shelter sites involved in the study (Kamloops, BC-3; Calgary, AB-1; Regina, SK-1; Brandon, MB-1; Sudbury, ON-4; Peterborough, ON-4; Halifax, NS-1; Yellowknife, NWT-1), with the exception of the Toronto Arise shelter, which had fewer residents since their average stay is six months. Half of the twenty women had been in a shelter previously (at least once), although one of these was a homelessness shelter, not one for violence against women.

With respect to the racial backgrounds of the women, thirteen were Caucasian (65 percent), six (35 percent) were of Aboriginal/Métis background, and one was African-Canadian (5 percent). The majority (75 percent or fifteen) had younger children living with them. Two had adult children (10 percent) and three (15 percent) had no children. Before going to the shelter, nine of the twenty were working (45 percent), eight were not (40 percent), mostly stay-at-home mothers, and employment status was unclear for three women (15 percent).

The women were primarily abused by intimate partners: eight common-law partners (40 percent), eight married spouses (40 percent), two live-in boyfriends (10 percent), and one boyfriend with whom the respondent was not cohabiting (5 percent). The one remaining interviewee sought shelter because of abuse by her adolescent daughter who had been sexually abused by her father for years. Of the twenty, nine (45 percent) described the worst abuse as psychological, seven described physical abuse (35 percent) and four, sexual abuse (20 percent). One woman whose partner had physically abused her mentioned, “I don’t even remember what he beat me up about. We were drinking, and my face was out like a balloon and I had to show up on a job interview the next day.” Another noted, “He had me by the neck, and he had a few knives close to my neck and he said he was going to kill me. That was in front of his mom.”

Several women whose partners had sexually abused them commented on their experiences. In one woman’s case, “He pushed himself on me quite a bit until I finally caved, sexually. I’d tell him I didn’t want to do it; he just started doing it even though I would say no.” Another recounted:

New Year’s Eve, he slipped me drugs so I would succumb to certain sexual things he wanted. I knew right away but he kept denying it so I went through a paranoid state. It became clear that I really needed to get out.

As well, psychological abuse is inherent when one has been physically or sexually abused. Most of the women described upsetting psychological abuse such as being called degrading names or told they were “crazy.” One woman commented, “Oh my Lord, he would start calling me names. He would call me a whore, a cunt. He would say I’m spending all the money, when I didn’t have my card, he did.” Another stated:

He told me that I had a borderline personality disorder and that’s why I thought he was cheating. Really the whole time it wasn’t me. Telling me I was mentally ill and almost making me believe it is probably the worst thing.

The psychological abuse was often of a serious nature such as threats to kill or to commit suicide, sometimes with firearms, which has been long known by violence women advocates and researchers as a risk factor to homicide (Campbell et al., 2009; Tutty, 2015b).

I went to bed without saying, “Are you coming to bed now,” because I had a cold. The next day it was harsh words. It was “What kind of a wife are you?” He went into this violent rage and, “I’m going to kill myself if you leave.” He threatened suicide.

He was raging. He was never physically abusive. I never threatened to leave him, ever, but he said if I left he might as well take a gun to his head and shoot himself. He said this in front of my kids. That was the final straw. He’s talking about shooting my daughter, he’s bought bullets and put them beside me, and now he’s talking about shooting himself. That said he’s going to shoot my kids, shoot me, and then he’s going to shoot himself.

The women were asked what strategies they had used to deal with the abuse before going to shelter. Many had used informal supports, although seven mentioned not talking to anyone outside their immediate families. Seven others spoke with friends, but three did not find this particularly helpful. Three others commented on their friends as a valuable support in dealing with and acknowledging the abuse. Eleven women had not used formal services to assist them, while nine had. The formal programs included addictions counselors (two), generic crisis phone-lines (two), a YWCA counselor (one), Victim Services (associated with police units) (one), and a Native Friendship Centre (one). Two had used more than one formal agency. Notably, though, only two had spoken with representatives from VAW-specific services.

Of the twenty former shelter residents, two-thirds (fifteen) had previous involvement with the police because of the abuse. Eight respondents had called the police themselves, but in two cases, the neighbors had called and, in another situation, the partner had called the police as a strategy to stop himself from behaving abusively. Three women were unhappy that the police had not criminally charged their partners, the outcome they had wished for at the time. As one commented, “I called the police. [Was he charged?] No, because I couldn’t say for sure whether it was accidental or on purpose.” Four other women described the police actions as helpful. Several partners were charged with assaults and/or the police provided safety to the women and their children. In two instances, police officers had been the ones to suggest that the woman go to the VAW shelter.

Reflecting on Their Shelter Experiences

In thinking about their time in the emergency VAW shelters, the majority of the comments were positive, although one woman had nothing good to say about her shelter residency, with the staff as her primary concern (see below). Many of the comments simply endorsed the fact that their shelter stay was valuable and assisted them in a number of ways. Overall, the comments about shelter strengths are with respect to the same issues as were identified as concerns. Notably, none of the concerns was with respect to any one shelter and, in fact, residents in the same shelter often perceived issues differently, one noting staff approachability as a problem, another seeing the staff in the same shelter as caring and supportive.

In describing what benefits the shelters offered, the most commonly mentioned positive was emotional support (seventeen of nineteen women), followed by providing basic needs (fourteen of nineteen) and safety (eleven of nineteen). Comments about emotional support referenced counseling and information about IPV including, “They were there to listen to me and a shoulder to cry on” and “Probably the most helpful thing was advice . . . it’s not your fault, you didn’t do a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction by Tod Augusta-Scott, Katreena Scott, and Leslie M. Tutty
• Part I Responses to Women Abused by Intimate Partners
• Part II Intervention with Men Who Have Perpetrated Intimate Partner Violence
• Part III Legal Responses to Domestic Violence
• Part IV Restorative Justice
• Part V Broadening the Lens: Integrating Interventions for Domestic Violence Across Systems
• Index