Women's Rights Employment Law Blog

Jan Mancinelli, executive director of the WRC, said the community has been behind the program from the beginning. Before the shelter ever opened in 1979, people volunteered the use of their homes year round and even cottages during the off-season for victims of violence.
A recent study concluded that more than 400 people experience homelessness in Charlevoix and Emmet counties at some time during the course of each year, and hundreds more live doubled-up in the homes of family and friends, or are at imminent risk of homelessness, living in substandard or housing they cannot afford.
Recent history

Mancinelli said domestic violence as a major source of homelessness became evident soon after the Women's Resource Center opened its doors in February of 1977.

That was a year before Michigan passed a law making domestic violence a crime, the third state in the country to do so.

“Within three months a woman showed up with three garbage bags full of clothes, and kids in tow, and was beat to a pulp. At that point early volunteers and founders of the WRC said, ‘We've got to do something,'” Mancinelli said.

“Before then, if you were assaulted on the street you had more rights than if you were assaulted in your own home by your partner. At that point it was not against the law to assault your own partner,” Mancinelli said, adding that domestic abuse is rooted in sexism, oppression against women, that goes back before the printed word.

In 1980 the WRC opened its first shelter, and has operated it non-stop since. It was in a rented facility until July of 1982 and then it bought a home with a grant from a private foundation.

In subsequent years, state and federal funds have been available for domestic abuse programming such as those offered by the WRC, which focus on support, system change, community education and awareness-raising.

The WRC's tidy, spacious and comfortable shelter has been expanded many times since it was purchased, and can now house up to 25 women and children. Winters said it averages about 8.5 guests a night.

“There are times when we are full,” she said. “Then there are times when we have only two people. I feel it's properly sized for the needs of the community, and we have no plans for further expansion.”

Positive developments in law

Mancinelli said that in the early '80's “the center housed a lot more people than now because over the span of 27 years the laws have gotten better for protecting women and for allowing them to stay in their homes.”

There are also personal protection orders, which are issued by the circuit court to protect a person from being hit, threatened, harassed, or stalked by another person. The PPO may prevent an abusive spouse from entering the family home.

And counties such as Emmet and Charlevoix have victims' advocates who are part of the prosecuting attorneys' staff.

The bottom line, Mancinelli says, is that the not-in-residence client population has risen dramatically while the numbers of homeless victims have fallen.

“There are now more services that help keep women in their own homes without having to become homeless. But it's still a huge problem and they still represent the biggest portion of homeless people in our country. They're still driven out of their homes, more often than not,” she said.

She said the center's advocates staffing the 24/7 crisis line use a tool called “The Power and Control Wheel” that helps callers recognize when their partners are exhibiting abusive behavior.

“We're looking for patterns of control that go on from an abuser in a battering relationship. If he was kicking the dog yesterday and making threats, he could hurt you just as easily,” Mancinelli said.

Once admitted to the shelter, the victims and their children are secure in a homelike atmosphere with a team of trained paid and volunteer staff.

They are welcome to stay as long as reasonably necessary to put their lives in order, with the help of the center's advocates who are well-trained in the systems that can help them move forward.

“There are community resources to help with some emergency types of funding for housing, legal assistance and transportation. And there is support for day care. We can also help with counseling, advocacy, education and job searching, and information and referral.

“And our shelter is located in a confidential location but most batterers know that if they show up there, they would be held accountable. Battering is really a crime that is done deliberately behind closed doors so they won't be held accountable. They don't want to be caught,” Winters said.

Mancinelli said shelter provided by the WRC takes women away from the source of their problems - the batterer. But it also is the source of hardship.

“Women leaving relationships for their physical and emotional safety are putting themselves on the edge for living in poverty and all the other negative consequences.

“They usually leave about 75 percent of their income behind and disrupt their families. And a battered woman stands more of a chance of being injured or killed after she leaves the relationship than when she's in it. Once she leaves the relationship, she has interfered with the power base,” she said.

A point of view

Many battered women have resources - money and other support systems - to rely on, so they don't need the shelter.

“We see more people who have resources in the ‘not-in-residence' program that we have where they receive counseling and advocacy services. It's not only poor, lower-class people that this happens to,” Mancinelli said.

She said last year the center counseled 573 victims of domestic abuse, two of them men, through a five-county area. During the year the center housed 74 kids and 68 women in the shelter.

Mancinelli said that while once the center may have been seen as a “last resort” for victims of domestic violence, today the communities have come to recognize it offers a valuable service.

“We might be the first stop now, because we are a recognizable alternative,” she said.

Mancinelli said women in higher socio-economic brackets can afford to pay for a private therapist whereas the center's counseling services are free.

“A traditional therapist not trained in domestic violence may inadvertently blame the victim for the abuse. He or she might ask, What are your behaviors that trigger him to get angry? That's what we call ‘victim blaming' because you're putting the responsibility for the abuser's behavior on the victim.

“That's not the way we operate in providing the support and counseling. If you are being abused, our bottom line is: There is absolutely zero tolerance for any kind of abuse in a relationship,” Mancinelli said.

Needed: A cultural change

Mancinelli said the battered women's movement is trying to end domestic violence in families and work toward the social change that needs to occur in our culture.

“Unless every piece of society that comes in contact with this problem changes the way we deal with it, we will never achieve the social change that we want to happen out of this.”

She notes that the problem of sexism has been around for millennia.

“In fact, the root of the Latin word for family, ‘familia,' means a man's property (including his home and land), his cattle, his wife and his children - in that order,” Mancinelli said.

“And the ‘Rule of Thumb' is actually a 15th-century English law that says that “A man can beat his wife with an object no thicker than the thickness of his thumb.”

“So violence against a women and a man's ability to control and beat his wife to keep her in line is an age-old thing. We gave men that kind of power way back when, and it persists today. Violence against women persists all over the world.

“Those attitudes and that type of acceptance of the abilities to control a woman is really inbred in our belief system,” she said.

The Women's Resource Center's 24-hour crisis and information line is 347-0082 or (800) 275-1995.