Up until the mid-1970s, if a victim of domestic violence needed to get out of a dangerous living situation, there was little help available besides offering that person a temporary safe space.

In July of 1976, the Women’s Center of Southeastern Connecticut was organized in the basement of Branford House on the UConn Avery Point campus to provide information and referral services to women. It later established a 24-hour rape crisis hotline and opened a small shelter for abused women.

Now celebrating its 40th anniversary, the renamed Safe Futures, Inc. has centers staffed full-time in New London and Norwich and serves approximately 6,000 people a year. During the last year alone, Safe Futures saved 211 women and children who fled abuse and were sheltered at its safe house.

When asked to name the most significant services being provided by Safe Futures today, Catherine Zeiner, executive director for the past 13 years, has a very long list. She puts safety planning at the top.

“We set up one of the first shelters in the state, but back in those days, we weren’t doing a lot of safety planning, we were just moving people into shelters,” Zeiner says, “and when shelters were first set up, the rates of murder from domestic violence spiked, which seemed counter-intuitive, but what happens is when a victim chooses to leave, that shift of power and control creates a very high-risk situation. So now safety planning is really the cornerstone of our work, even beyond shelter, because that’s where the risks are.”

She also names her work with the mainstream homeless community to integrate domestic violence and homeless services and provide supportive housing.

“In southeastern Connecticut, about 38 percent of homeless individuals attribute their homelessness to domestic violence and that’s about twice the state average,” Zeiner says. “Many of our clients have no home to go back to either because it’s dangerous or because the abuser has manipulated the family finances so much that they’ve been evicted.”

Another area where Zeiner says Safe Futures is taking a leadership role in training law enforcement.

“We use a legality assessment program to identify the victims at highest risk of homicide and connect them to services, as well as generally training law enforcement about ‘What is domestic violence?’ ‘How do you respond?’ It’s important for law enforcement to understand the dynamic between the victim and aggressor and how to work with it when they’re investigating a case.”

“We were the first domestic violence agency in the state to have every police department in their area trained in this procedure,” adds Emma Palzere-Rae, director of development and communications. “We produced a training video that’s being used throughout Connecticut and in other states as well.”

In terms of preventing domestic violence, education is paramount.

“We’re not doing our job if all we’re doing is responding to the violence after the fact. So the school-based prevention is a key part of that,” Zeiner says. “Last year we worked with about 5,600 students in 20 schools. We work with the youngest students to develop empathy, to learn how to solve problems nonviolently; with slightly older kids we’re doing anti-bullying work; and then the older kids, healthy and unhealthy relationships. We’re not doing one-off classes or assemblies. We’re there for four- to 20-week sessions. Our goal is to reinforce these concepts and help students integrate them into their lives based on where they are in their development and evolution.” 

Expanding the circle of support

The Engaging Men’s Initiative is another important effort in raising awareness that domestic violence is not just a “women’s issue.”

“We’re trying to (encourage) healthy masculinity,” Zeiner says. “And we’re working both in the schools and outside on the idea of bystander intervention, because whether it’s a bullying situation between kids or at a backyard barbecue where, say, one guy sees his buddy disparaging his wife, (it’s important) to speak up because those messages from your peers, people you respect, are really persuasive, and we want to engage the whole community in recognizing that they can be part of the solution.”

Zeiner stresses that Safe Futures not only provides services to women, but to men as well.

“Back in the late ’90s only about 8 or 9 percent of people we served were men,” she says. “Now it’s about 26 percent. It’s changing, but it’s still very difficult for a man to reach out and ask for help. The stigma is still significant.”

A new program Zeiner is happy to be providing is “Safe Homes Include Safe Pets” — the theme of the Oct. 23 Power of Purple Hot Cider Walk and Rally to mark Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

“Sometimes people don’t want to leave if they have to leave their pets behind or an abuser is using pets for control,” Zeiner explains. “When we see animal abuse, we often see domestic violence. There’s definitely a link. So we’ve been really concentrating in the last year on providing safe resources for animals, and also realizing the role animals provide for healing and therapy, and integrating that into our (overall) program.” 

Success stories

Stories of domestic violence are often deeply disturbing, but it can be very rewarding for Safe Futures staff when they’re able to make a positive difference in a client’s life.

Nazmie Batista, supervisor of shelter and counseling services, has been at Safe Futures for five years and describes a recent success story.

The hotline received a call from a woman being abused by her daughter. She was being kept in an attic, given little food, and not allowed to leave the house for doctor’s appointments. She was provided housing in a Safe Futures shelter.

“When she came to us, she couldn’t see,” Batista recalled. “The first thing we did was reconnect her with her doctors. I knew she’d had eye surgery a couple of days before, but I hadn’t had a chance to see her yet. I walked upstairs to her door that night to tell her we made spaghetti and invite her to dinner. She got very quiet and said, ‘I can see you; you’re wearing a green dress. Wow, you’re really young!’

“She came downstairs by herself and told me how she could see her food, knew what the kids look like at the shelter, could make her own coffee, wash the dishes,” Batista continues. “She was so excited. It was almost like she was experiencing every single thing all over again. Now she’s in her own apartment, and she stays in contact with us. She has sight back in one eye and after the doctors (assess) how she’s doing, they’ll work on the other one.”

Kathie Verano has been Safe Futures’ director of client services for 23 years. For the last 18 years she’s overseen the court program.

“Through the years we’ve helped public policy make a lot of changes in the court system,” she says, “advocating for restraining orders, civil orders, victims’ rights. I’ve interviewed probably thousands of victims—and defenders—throughout the years.”

Particularly powerful for Verano is a story of a young client’s transition into a happy, healthy new life over many years.

Verano had received a text from a police officer, telling her she needed to get to the hospital immediately. A victim, who had been referred to Safe Futures before but wasn’t ready to leave her abuser, had a traumatic brain injury and needed emergency surgery.

“She had been abused for 11 years by a very upstanding person in the community, who presented himself very well,” Verano says. “She was in the hospital for weeks this time and when she came out, she stayed in our shelter. After many more surgeries, working with every program respectively — the court advocates, shelter counseling, transportation for medical appointments — through the sentencing phase, this person went from ‘I would never leave him’ to ‘I have rights and I want him incarcerated, and no programs are good enough for him.’”

The perpetrator was sentenced and served jail time and there is a lifetime standing protective order on him.

“She called us recently,” Verano says. “She’s moving into a new apartment and wanted to give back and donate some furniture she didn’t need to our donation center.” 

‘We’re in the business of hearts’

There is good news. Research shows programs that address domestic violence are making a difference.

“Nationally, we’re seeing a gradual downturn in incidences of domestic violence,” Zeiner says. “It appears we may have turned a corner. It’s hard to know exactly how that’s playing out here. We don’t have researchers with all the letters and degrees after their names to do that in a statistically validated way, but our numbers are now slowly, but surely, going down.”

On a personal level, the staff avoids burn-out from their demanding jobs in various ways.

“You have to define success differently,” Zeiner says. “Success isn’t always that somebody has escaped a violent situation and is now stable and in a different place in life. Success may be that today a survivor understood some of the red flags, and believes she doesn’t deserve it. She hasn’t figured out how to leave yet, she doesn’t know what’s next, but realizes, ‘I don’t have to stay in this relationship.’ It’s defining those baby steps — that’s the way you keep at it day after day.”

For Palzere-Rae, it’s recognizing the difference between “somebody who can’t look anybody in the eye, and then one day says hello to you and looks you in the eye.

“That’s bigger than getting a roof over their head or a winter coat, that they’ve built that inside of themselves,” she says. “They can go get a job now, they can build healthy relationships. It’s so basic, but it’s huge.”

Perhaps Batista puts it best when she says, “I tell my shelter staff that we’re in the business of hearts. When you’re having a really hard day, just imagine you have this heart in your hand; it’s broken and bloody and you’re looking at its condition and thinking, ‘What am I going to do with this heart?’ When you’re working with a victim, you have all the power in the world to hurt it or you can try to mend it and help it.

“When you think of this heart beating in your hand, you can’t do anything but want to make it better.”

IF YOU GO

What: The Power of Purple Hot Cider Walk & Rally

When: Sunday, Oct. 23; registration at noon; rally at 1 p.m.; walk at 1:30 p.m. followed by refreshments, resource fair, prizes and raffle drawings

Where: Beth El Synagogue, 660 Ocean Ave., New London

Info: Visit www.SafeFuturesCT.org or call (860) 884-8945 to register or for more information

Suggested donation: $10; children 18 and younger are free.

24/7 Helpline: 888-774-2900