For the bulk of my time as a student I worked at a domestic violence shelter in Athens County. Once while I was working a woman staying there climbed out her window, went down the fire escape and jumped the fence so that she could go out drinking. I was oblivious to the fact that she was gone until I heard a thud in her room around midnight. When I went in her room I found her lying on the ground with a huge gash on her forehead from where she fell on the fire escape. As I helped her get up I noticed she had put a stuffed moose under her bed covers as a decoy. “Seriously?” I said as I held it up to her, which prompted us to both start laughing. I told her I would have to report what happened. She said she completely understood, that I shouldn’t try to go out on a limb for her, and that it was her fault, not mine. I knew she would be kicked out.
When women returned to a violent partner, or anything else perceived as self-destructive, they are often described as being caught up in a cycle of violence, or cycle of abuse, or cycle of poverty. The problem with “cycles” is their implication that people simply keep falling into the same trap, and if only they could just see what the trap is they would stop. News stories on domestic violence always seem to convey the feeling that the causes and effects are obvious; they could be easily interrupted if only the victims and perpetrators had the patience. Deborah R. Connolly, a researcher and cultural anthropologist, talked about this while reflecting on her work as a social service provider in a small nonprofit community center:
It is often not feasible to talk about or respond to “domestic violence” or “drug addiction” or “mothering” or “abuse” or “childhood”. These events are enmeshed in the details and fortuities of living. They often engender one another, with some screaming in the foreground now, while others whisper in the background. If we try to impose neat categories and formulas, we misrepresent those we want to portray, and we shortchange people we might otherwise support.” Deborah R. Connolly, Homeless Mothers: Face to Face With Women and Poverty
Someone I worked with told me “you can’t help people who won’t help themselves.” That wasn’t really comforting. It would have been easier to pretend the system treated her fairly but this one bad choice on her part was the tipping point. The other women there at the time were furious this woman was being so reckless and told me they were afraid she had let her husband know where the shelter is located. The next day the woman moved out and returned to her husband. “Hopefully he doesn’t kill me this time,” was the last thing she said to me.
It’s hard for me to talk or write about that job without feeling self-conscious about oozing an attitude that I see and understand things in social services that other people just don’t get. I have no idea what to conclude about my experience with that woman, but I think about it all the time when someone exits the shelter I work at now and I get a flippant explanation of why they’re gone.
