My friend Rosa was a battered woman. She came from an affluent two-parent family where her parents never even raised their voices. But then she met Jack.
They started out as friends, then decided to get closer. He was handsome and persuasive and she fell in love with him quickly. At first their love was like any other young couple. It was strong and almost consuming. They were sweet to each other and loved spending time together.
Months passed, and they found themselves having little disagreements that sometimes would become heated. She just thought he was passionate and he always made it up to her. He began telling her not to spend time with her friends, getting jealous easily and yelling at her. He slammed doors and punched walls. Then she got pregnant.
He wanted to start a family with her so they moved in together. Then one night after he had been out with his friends he came home, started another argument, then punched her in the face. Falling to the floor with her he began to cry, begging her to forgive him, and saying that he was sorry. She fell asleep that night with him holding her tightly. He would wake every so often to whisper how much he loved her. But the next morning, after he left for work, she packed her things and took off.
Ninety eight percent of all domestic violence victims are women. Here on Maui, the police received nearly 5,000 reports of DV last year. The Women Helping Women violence hotline rang more than 11,000 times. Of those calls, 8,766 women and children sought some kind of refuge at the shelter.
“It is easy to romanticize that these relationships are happening because both parties enjoy it,” said Dan Judson, president of Women Helping Women. “After the honeymoon stage is the tension building stage and how you handle the tension building stage is what separates abusive and non-abusive relationships.”
Women Helping Women runs the only domestic violence shelter on Maui. This week they’re hosting their eighth annual “Elegant Afternoon Tea” fundraiser at Bev Gannon’s Sugar House in Hali’imaile. To get an idea of what the shelter is up against, I visited their facility.
The shelter itself is a well-maintained house surrounded by beautiful grounds. Valerie, one of the staff members who would only give her first name, led me through the grounds. She also had me sign a waiver of confidentiality, promising that I wouldn’t reveal the identities of the women there or the shelter’s location.
With a ‘no turn away’ policy, I could only imagine that communal living with women in crisis could sometimes be intense. But when I walked through it was quiet. A woman sat in the living room watching television, a child playing a video game at her feet.
I asked Stacy Moniz, the shelter’s executive director, why domestic violence was such a problem here in Hawai’i. “It is a problem all over the world,” she said.
She said the reason it appears to be so bad here is that we are a “talk story,” close-knit community. A lot of times, she said, we know what is happening in our neighbor’s house before their own family does.
“It is not more prevalent here,” she said. “It is prevalent everywhere and I think this is a myth that people need to be educated on.”
Instead, Moniz said we should look for DV roots in American culture, which she said was rooted in violence and aggression. She also said the shelter’s temporary restraining order office counsels women who “are lawyers, doctors, rich, educated and even famous.”
Finishing my walk through the grounds, I stopped in the spacious kitchen. There, someone had stuck a quote from former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the refrigerator door: “A pessimist sees the difference in every opportunity and an optimist sees opportunity in every difference.”
MTW
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