Lavender's Casebook

I'm at a three day training on sexual violence through the state coalition and feels like a combination of the women's studies class I took my sophomore year of undergrad, Killing Us Softly, and tumblr. I even saw fuckyeahfeminists! in a documentary, It Was Rape. 

When Olivia was caught smoking, staff made a decision to ask her to leave the program. I wasn’t here, I wasn’t informed, I wasn’t considered (which is fine), but to further advocate for her case case manager asked her to pen a letter to our executive director.

The letter more or less said (and I’m paraphrasing) “I’m sorry I’ve messed up so much. I was panhandling on the streets with three babies before I got here, and I keep making mistakes. I’m sorry I’ve been such a burden.”

Vignettes like this reminds me why I hate holding power over other people. The idea that it is my shared capability to make someone homeless once again is too much. Who am I to do that someone?

It’s not for a lack of education that I lay my concerns… after all, I finish my masters in a few weeks, but I don’t know her story, never had walked a day in her shoes, and for us to be so heavy-handed is callous and unfair.

When they pull strings, they yank em down.

I'm saddling up to go to Sadie's custody modification hearing next week and she just called to ask if I can drive nine miles west to pick her aunt so she can testify, even though I'm already driving thirty miles east just to attend the hearing as moral support.

Sometimes going the extra mile is a mega bummer. 

Case Manager: I told [intern] to write a letter advocating for [Olivia] to stay and worked!

Me: Why wasn't she being allowed to stay? I missed client staffing on Friday.

Case Manager: Evidence of her smoking in her room.

Me: Oh. Has she been talked to before?

I checked my email from work and ended up contacting post-programmers on shelter, mail, grievances, and a whole slew of things. 

When I began my professional, post-college entry into domestic violence advocacy nearly two years ago, my first weeks were spent in an empty office with no computer, no network, little to do.

I had one co-worker sharply retort, "how nice!" when I lamented as much.

Boss lady was a doll and handed me my first olive branch, a booklet entitled "Advocacy Beyond Leaving." Jill Davies, the author, is famous within the field of domestic violence for her focus on safety planning. A professor of mine in undergrad used her material exclusively for that section of our domestic violence and criminal justice class.

This is what I do. I'm a victim advocate, case manager, one man band-stand tied neatly together for families venturing into the great beyond. Because of it, I'm a big believer in advocacy-based counseling.

My copy, pleasantly enough, has telling highlights I vastly enjoyed re-reading.

This subsection stuck out for me this morning as I reflected on the adventure that was last night. I also found this handy little flier sticking out of clutter. In response to Daisy's criticism, case manager, counselor, and I created a resource portfolio. These are my newest venture in the post-program end of things.

This was fortunate as by the time most people had clocked out, I was still chit-chatting without another co-worker about the day's findings. Right around the time I was about head on out, case manager breathes a sigh of relief "Oh, good! Someone is here!" and that is where dreams go to die.

She had come to the back office to get help in containing a crisis situation with Daisy and daughter. Case manager spoke to Daisy, while I worked to de-escalate her daughter. The daughter told me that her mother was upset over the previous day’s incident, which resulted in her mother hitting her across the chest and lightly slapping her cheek. The daughter was visibly upset, citing her mother’s remarks that she would send her back to the Midwest via bus.

A local crisis team was called, with the responder speaking to the Daisy alone to help decompress and help resolve the issue of how to handle her and her daughter’s deteriorating relationship. The team member suggested sending the daughter to a youth shelter, which Daisy contested, saying the daughter would not be accepted. The responder confirmed this due to previous violence on the daughter’s end to the mother.

Our case manager informed the mother that we must make CPS reports when parents refuse to care for their children. The mother expressed that she understood, saying she didn’t want to care for daughter anymore and wanted her to be sent to the Midwest to live with the child’s grandmother as she felt her daughter was the primary cause of her homelessness and had behavioral issues that she didn’t want to be burdened with.

I called CPS while crisis team spoke with the mother. I was not patched through to a specialist until 45 minutes later. By that time, Daisy was upset, claiming we were trying to build a case against her. I made a report to the specialist, who continuously prompted me whether I had to have a specialist out to respond that night. I emphatically said that we did need a specialist as Daisy was refusing her daughter care and we were concerned about the daughter’s safety with mother.

After fifteen minutes of making the report, the specialist remarked they would contact an overnight responder. At this time, Daisy was yelling at her daughter that she would be lost to the system and that no one would care for her, that no one would remember her after this night. After doing so, she changed her mind about refusing her daughter care and decided she was going to flee shelter.

We contacted police minutes after making the CPS report. Case manager and I were concerned for the daughter’s safety and wanted CPS to speak to the family first. Police stated they would dispatch someone to the scene.

Twenty minutes later, Daisy gave us her room badge and left property. Minutes later police arrived. We informed them the mother had left. They asked for the make and color of her vehicle, also berating staff, “[resident manager] said this was going to be fixed yesterday and they were going to be kicked off campus” before leaving.  Nearing nine, CPS called to ask follow up questions. At that time, they were told the mother had left property with the daughter and responded lightly, “Well, that makes it easy.”

Overall, I felt that timeliness was essential in addressing this issue, and neither Child Protective Services’ hotline, nor police responded to the situation in a timely manner. Being on hold with CPS for 45 minutes lost us time we could have used to create an alternative plan, and as Daisy became a flight risk, we depended on police to intervene for the benefit of the child. The general demeanor was very casual with the officers, both of whom reportedly had responded to a crisis situation with the family the night before.

Ultimately, we are unsure where the family went to. I hope they don't end up the 6'o clock news.

Ginger left in the middle of the night, subtly moving her belongings into the back of her SUV. She was here maybe three weeks, having left because of her abuser's physical violence towards her while she cradled their newborn son (born via c-section of all things) and told him enough was enough. Her abuser used to lace her cigars with marijuana. She tested positive two weeks post-c-section. Definitely the first time I've ever scoured the Internet for the the dangers to infants of exposure to marijuana. 

When she disappeared, there was no contact number, no closure to her case, no closure to the woman I so earnestly advised to write, just write, and write. There's an exercise I've taken a liking to lately, to just write to yourself all the reasons you're here, what you're fighting for, what you refuse to settle for. It's powerful. It makes most women cry, and though I'm not apt to cry, lately I've come close.

An advocate off-handedly remarked the other day, "Hey, Ginger left her number. I didn't leave a voicemail, but maybe it works."

So when I did my roundup yesterday, I pressed the wrong button and left my number as a page, no name attached. Ginger called back from the doctor's office, promising to call later. I was brief, polite, having heard it a million times, but respecting their choice to move on.

Well, cynicism is on me, because she returned my call after I left, and then returned it again early this morning. A one-hour conversation broke out. She asked why he refused to address his transgressions, why she must hide things, why she can't ever have a conversation. There is no intimacy, no connection, they feel like two people living together.

Ginger's a pretty smart woman. I admire her pursuit of the great big question. I want to believe her stay here pushed her to ask those questions, that she realized there is more to a relationship than dead-ends. After running short on time, the Daisy issue still unaddressed, I asked her to keep regular updates. You know, Ginger, I think you'll soon enough figure out what is and isn't enough for you.

Here's hoping you're safe when you do.

When residents are kind, it's always nice for us to pat ourselves on the back and proclaim to the world, "That's it! We've ended domestic violence!" So, Daisy, she's been a riot. Daisy is direct, short-spoken, and does things to the beat of her own drum. She's one of those women who has no idle interest in chit chat, and made my initial assessment swift.

Daisy is from the Midwest. She headed in our direction to flee for safer pastures. Since coming to shelter, she's been mostly withdrawn, not contributing to group, avoiding our central office, and has been generally tardy to case management appointments.

The first referral I gave Daisy was for emergency mental health medicine for her teenage daughter. Medicaid is tricky between states and nothing grinds my gears more than having a family stuck in the middle of such a mess. So,  while she was able to get an emergency dosage of medication several days back, it was pro-rated, not free. My mistake.

Last night, Daisy and her daughter had an altercation surrounding social media. Mom wants to monitor her daughter's daily doins', but daughter has no interest in such a proposition. Daisy is concerned that her daughter is being solicited the wrong advice by her so-called comrades.

When the fight took a violent turn, police were called, did their business, and then the family returned hours later. I can't explain the rationale, but even with a zero tolerance violence policy, I really couldn't stand to see them go. Instead of giving Daisy the choice of whether her daughter should be hospitalized or receive outpatient services, we were effectively making the decision for her. It was either "she leaves, or you both do," and that wasn't fair.

Boss lady (reasonable authority figure, tm.) agreed. So, I waltzed into the intervention between case manager and Daisy, and allowed case manager to get caught up on our newest consensus. Lo and behold, Daisy had a lot to say. She says we waste too much time, don't have enough resources, are unwelcoming, uninterested, generally unhelpful, and that we don't do our research.

And she's right. Sometimes, it's slow. Sometimes, I don't verify things 100% and good for Daisy for poking a hole in our self-inflated sense of self. Now we're getting creative and working towards her directive, which incidentally is to keep her family together, get housing, and get on with her life. We all need a little reorienting and I hope she sticks around.

We quickly returned to the topic of why Daisy was so concerned for her daughter's social media, and it was something to the effect of her friends prodding her to have sex too early in life. Unfortunately, her daughter is already at such a point. She also has mental health issues, including self-harm tendencies, affecting her well-being as a whole.

I talked to Daisy about responsible reproductive health choices, and her response was crystal clear. Her daughter isn't even old enough for the Depo Shot and her medication doesn't allow for alternative estrogen-based responses. We need another intervention. As case manager and I left for an excursion, I watched Daisy's daughter play with case manager's iPad. She was absolutely, positively too young. That's all I could think, and so maybe I'm beginning to understand Daisy's perspective.

Daisy, we're working on it. Individual-based advocacy is absolutely a necessity, and girl, we got your back.

Today's educational experience was downtown at a glitzy hotel conference room. It was a five-star affair with an appetizer, lunch, and desert, and Lavender's favorite, free stuff. 

I got a pinwheel from preventchildabuse.org, yo!

So, case manager and I munched quietly as a leading expert on sexual violence and media gave us food for thought on the hypersexualization of our children by the media. It's a hot topic, also, definitely one of my favorite.

In 1980, then-fifteen-year-old Brooke Shields modeled for Calvin Klein. She bared a slip of skin, immediately inciting controversy. When I see this ad, it's hard to imagine this ever having been controversial. I, of course, was born in 1991, so by the time I was Brooke's age, Miley Cyrus' Vanity Fair shoot was grabbing headlines, with implications heading south rather quickly.

The issue, though, isn't a taut tummy or a bared back, but more so who is slipping skin or baring their back. Children have been increasingly sexualized as we've rolled on through the times and there is always a push-pull between slut-shaming and the objectification of women. So, then, we focus less on the women and more on the individuals producing this environment. 

In a study by Bridges of fifty randomly selected films from the top 250 grossing porns of 2007, he found that between 304 scenes there were 3,375 varied acts of abuse, both verbal and physical in nature. All of the respondents to these acts of abuse had either positive or neutral reactions, with a flat zero negative engagements. 

The average age of initial exposure to porn is twelve. I was eleven the first time Yahoo! misdirected me to a website on golden showers. It certainly wasn't what I was intending to find, but I was soon barraged by pop-up ads for pay-per-view porn subscriptions. In 2002, this was the norm. By the time I was in high school, porn websites had grown fruitful and the availability of free porn had only magnified.

When Belle Knox, the Duke porn star, took headlines there was a conversation of whether women can do porn and attend the same school as Melinda Gates once did. Knox publicly refuted claims that she was being exploited by the porn industry, remarking that it has been substantially helpful in covering costs of higher education.

She's only become victim to more and more budding criticism as further information has come to light, and while some of it is unsubstantiated, other concerns are valid. I'm glad that Knox has survived porn relatively unscathed, but other women have not. Knox chose to speak for all when she could only speak for herself.

If there was ever to be a success story (and there are numerous), Evelyn would be it. She's a gleaming example of privilege dealing people generous hands. Evelyn is in her mid-twenties and recently finished her master's degree through the same university I attend. She was rewarded vastly for her diligence. 

Unfortunately, Evelyn has a surplus of debt and only recently got a job suitable enough to compensate for a portion of it. When Evelyn stayed with us, she was hardly ever around, always at work, picking up the kids from daycare, or dealing with other things. She is quite the superstar in terms of juggling it all, and juggling with grace. 

Of course, I should have seen this one coming, because statistics say abusers only get worse after you leave. While in shelter, Evelyn filed for divorce and because she and ex-hubby chose to go the no-representation route, the divorce was streamlined. It was supposed to be a victory for the self-made woman. Of course, it only brought further questions to the surface. Would he continue to harass her? Would he file for spousal maintenance? What tricks were up his sleeve?

Finally feeling comfortable enough to put a face to domestic violence in order to inspire others to seek help, Evelyn began sharing her story on Facebook and Instagram. She left out names and identifying information, but still, what did this instigate? Threats from ex-hubby that he would drown social media in nude photos she shared with him while they were still married.

The timeliness of these threats are bittersweet. Where I'm from revenge porn legislation has just made its rounds through the House. Comments on local articles discuss accountability, threats to mental health, and first amendment implications. From the social science lens, it's fascinating, but from a professional standpoint, it's pretty despicable. Sharing intimate photos that are entrusted to you to the world to make a point is, in my mother's words, "low and unmanly."

I couldn't agree more, mama.

Lavender: (confused) The movie?...

When I began my post-college career in domestic violence services a few years back, the first training I attended centered on being an efficient advocate for survivors. On the tail end of the training, the coalition introduced a bit of reading entitled "How the Earth Didn't Fly into the Sun," which discussed the development of a reduced-rules domestic violence shelter model.

Personally, I'm a friend of structure, but some rules are monotonous and unwarranted. I get that. Chores aren't necessarily necessary, nor is an early curfew, a detailed account of where residents are going, or other information or tasks that serve little purpose. 

Yesterday, the case manager and I attended a focus group on reducing shelter rules at the coalition. It was a nice reorienting session for us to consider how we communicate with residents. After all, I'm here to provide as much help as they comfortable accepting, and one of my greatest joys is seeing residents achieve the goals they endeavor on in their four month stay with us. I love what I do and it shows.

Case manager and I had a dialogue about the importance of confidentiality. She believes that residents should have the right to inform their loved ones where they are living. I don't. I don't believe as much maliciously, but because as many things in life are, shelter location can be spread so easily via word of mouth.

I'm acutely aware that we service hundreds of survivors each year and that our program has been open for thirteen years, but I earnestly feel that nothing good will come of the freedom to tell anyone the residents please where the shelter is located. A large part of my concern stems from the fact that they not only expose themselves, they expose everyone else currently in shelter and those who may follow. Sure, telling my mother would be harmless, but what if my mother told her co-worker who told her son who told his best friend, who just happened to be an abuser? We had a resident once who said her abuser recommended certain shelters for their amenities. 

Word of mouth was that strong.

The question I posed to case manager was "what is going to stop abusers from going on a one-day shelter tour to prevent their victim from achieving temporary reprieve?" Case manager said in that scenario that we'd send em out of state, but I think she's California dreamin' because residents rarely have the inkling to pack up and leave their friends, family, neighborhood, and all they've known because of some abusive scumbag. It's simply not fair to expect that.

The victim advocate and I went to court for Olivia earlier this afternoon. Olivia has been married for four or five years, with three children, but between incidences of periodic abuse, has spent most of her marriage away from her husband.

Two week's ago, Olivia ran into her abuser in one of the surrounding cities and fled, calling police. He was taken into custody and she received a notice to attend court to see how the violation would pan out legally.

Olivia's husband made threats against her life, resulting in her making the choice not to attend the hearing. Fine by us! Multiple program staff suggested she prepare a victim impact statement to be read, but it fell on deaf ears. It's truly too bad, because I've always had an affinity for victim impact statements. When I was a college intern in victim services, helping a survivor craft a statement was one of the most rewarding experiences I had.

We missed his assignment, but were told by a court representative that he received thirty-six months unsupervised probation, 50 days in jail (with credit for time served), and a slap on the wrist warning not to harass or harm Olivia.

After expressing our disdain, court representative said curtly, "He should just leave her alone!"

Way to be, justice system.