- [Announcer] Production and distribution of City Club forums and Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music) (bell rings) - Hello and welcome to The City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, chief executive here, and a proud member.

Today is June 25th.

You're with the virtual City Club forum.

We're live from the studios of our partner, Ideastream Public Media.

We're very grateful for their partnership and support.

I wanna start today's forum with a quick story.

A few years ago, our featured speaker found herself in what seemed like a truly perfect relationship.

Her boyfriend was smart and loving.

He was supportive of her and his values were perfectly aligned with hers.

He was into meditation and mindfulness, and not only that, he seemed to live out these values that they shared in his professional life.

He was the attorney general of the state of New York.

Eric Schneiderman was his name, and he was seen as a crusader for justice and a protector of democracy.

And he was also politically powerful.

Even former US presidents sought him out for advice.

But here's what was actually going on.

And before I tell you, I need to offer a warning.

We're going to be talking about domestic violence and it's going to be a tough conversation, and maybe a bit graphic at times.

But here's what was going on.

And it was a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde situation.

In the bedroom when they were intimate, this powerful attorney general would hit her.

He would spit on her, he would verbally abuse her, calling her his quote, brown slave.

And then of course later, he would promise not to do it again.

He would promise to get his head right, and he would also remind her that he could have her phones tapped and that he could even have her killed.

In 2018, Tanya Selvaratnam told her story to two reporters at "The New Yorker".

And on the day the story was published, Eric Schneiderman resigned his position as attorney general of the state of New York.

I said this is a tough conversation and it's also a necessary conversation.

This kind of violence, what's referred to as intimate partner violence happens far too often.

So we're going to talk today with author artist and film producer, Tanya Selvaratnam.

And we're also joined by a local leader, Melissa Graves.

She's the CEO of the Journey Center for Safety and Healing, and they provide support to victims of domestic violence.

And let me say too, that if you need to talk to someone about your own safety or the safety of someone you know, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

That's 1-800-799-7233, 1-800-799-SAFE.

Tanya Selvaratnam and Melissa Graves, welcome to The City Club of Cleveland.

- [Tanya] Hi, Dan.

- [Melissa] Thank you.

- Thank you so much for being with us.

If you have questions for Tanya Selvaratnam or Local Advocate, Melissa Graves, you can text them to 330-541-5794, or you can tweet them @thecityclub and we will work them into the second half of the program.

Tanya Selvaratnam, the book is called "Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence".

And I wonder if you could start by reading a passage.

- [Tanya] "Don't be afraid, don't be ashamed.

I told myself every day in the months before my story of abuse became public.

I had decided to come forward after I had realized I was part of a pattern.

It wasn't just my story, other women shared it.

And I had to tell it to help prevent still others from having it become their story too.

In early January, 2018, I spoke with David Remnick, the editor of "The New Yorker", about my experience with Eric.

I gave Remnick my word that I wouldn't talk to other publications while he decided how to proceed.

He told me that if I were alone and coming forward, I could be in peril.

On March 20th, my birthday, New Yorker staff writer, Jane Mayer, called me at Remnick's request, wanting to hear about my experience in my own words.

After hearing me describe it in great detail, she echoed Remnick's opinion.

'If I were alone in coming forward, I could be in peril.'

She asked me to give her time while she tried to contact previous girlfriends of Eric.

Within two weeks, she had spoken with two of them, and their stories were eerily similar to mine.

At that point, I knew that the stories coming out was inevitable.

I also knew that despite being terrified, I had to participate on the record to give it weight.

Moreover, I knew deep down that I was doing the right thing, and I had clear objectives to warn other women about him and to highlight the hypocrisy of men who claim to be champions of women publicly, but abuse them privately.

After "The New Yorker" article came out, I worked hard to understand how I had gotten into a relationship with a man who had made me feel so bad about myself.

I had a long bridge to cross before I could be in an intimate relationship again.

As a child, I had witnessed domestic violence in my home, my father beating my mother.

I had never thought I would become a victim.

A friend said he had been shocked about what had happened to me because he thought of me as fierce, independent, and an advocate for women's rights and safety.

But when I met Eric, I was on a trajectory of recovering from a series of health issues, multiple miscarriages and cancer, followed by a divorce.

I was secure with regard to my work and my friendships, but I was weakened with regard to romance.

Then my path intersected with that of Eric, who I would later discover had a history of breaking strong women down.

I was ripe for the breaking, it was the perfect storm.

I wish I didn't have memories of being a victim myself.

No one wants such memories.

But I feel that somehow the universe intended for me to encounter Eric Schneiderman, and eventually end a cycle with his intimate partners that had been going on for a long time.

In when women were birds, Terry Tempest Williams cited the poet, Muriel Rukeyser.

'What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life, the world would split open.'"

Thank you for listening.

By doing so, you have helped me realize the power of my voice.

Let's split the world open together.

- Tanya Selvaratnam is the author of "Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence".

You're with the City Club Friday forum.

With us as well is Melissa Graves of the Journey Center here in Northeast, Ohio.

Tanya, when you say let's split the world open together, what do you mean?

- [Tanya] By sharing our stories, we realize that we're not alone and we can begin to heal and also find solutions with organizations like the Journey Center to really chip away at the cycle of violence that we are conditioned to accept from the time we're born.

- Was It important to you to, your story had been widely read and widely told by Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow.

Was it important to you to tell it in your own words?

- [Tanya] I decided to write the book after I received so many notes from friends and strangers about their own experiences with intimate violence.

And when I started to do my own research about this issue, and found the statistics heartbreaking.

And I wanted to do more to try and address it, to open up a conversation and to light a fire, to say this crisis of domestic violence, which has only heightened during the pandemic is eating away at our society and our country.

And it is a collective project to address it.

So I decided to write the book for all the people that reached out to me and for the millions of people who experience intimate partner violence, many of them before they turn the age of 18.

- Just to get a sense of the statistics and the data, you quote in the introduction that "Nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States in one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men."

Melissa Graves here in Northeast, Ohio.

I don't know, what does the data tell you or what do you know about how prevalent this is?

- [Melissa] So first I just wanna thank you, Tanya, for sharing your story and for writing this book.

It's such an affirmation and validation and an inspiration for people who are experiencing or who are healing from an abusive relationship, so thank you.

And I'm so glad you did the book in addition to the story in "The New Yorker", because it, in such a clear and personal narrative, lays out so many of the elements of domestic violence.

When I look at the table of contents, it's almost like looking at our domestic violence one-on-one training, but it's told in such a, with clear personal narrative.

So thank you for doing this and for making your voice heard.

So what does it look like here in Cuyahoga County and in Cleveland?

It looks like it does across the rest of the country.

It's very, domestic violence calls are the number one call to police dispatch.

That's the number one type of thing that they respond to.

In Ohio in 2020, there were 91 deaths that were related to domestic violence.

And in 2021, we don't have a final number yet, but with COVID, it is beyond what, it is more than what it had been.

The statistics say that one in four women will experience domestic violence over the course of their lifetime.

One in seven men will experience an abusive relationship during their lifetime.

So I don't know the exact, how that math goes, how many women there are in Cuyahoga County times 25% and how many men, it's a lot of people.

And we know that domestic violence is also under reported.

So, the last statistic that I really wanna share that I think is so critical about what this looks like.

Of all of the murders of women across the country, more than 50% of those happen at the hands of a current or former partner.

So what does that mean?

When a woman is murdered, it's most likely that is at the hands of a current or former partner.

That same statistic for men is 5%.

So I just wanna echo what Tanya said, which is, why haven't we over time and why aren't we treating this like the public health crisis that it is.

- Tonya Selvaratnam, the chapter titles that Melissa alluded to, which she said read like the guide book or training manual almost for how they orient staff and new clients to these issues and trap, isolate, control, demean, abuse, the nightmare.

The journey that you've been on, and it's hard to not call it a journey.

And it's why the name of the journey center is so apt.

The result of the journey that you've been on in many ways is your commitment to breaking this cycle.

And you say that the, you talk a lot about how men are threatened by the safety and health of women.

And I wanna give you a chance to kinda unpack that.

- Well, as Melissa pointed out, intimate partner violence happens to both women and men, but the large majority of victims are women.

And I feel that the safety of women is a threat to male power.

And I think we oversimplify it by saying it's the patriarchy.

It's the systems that we are, have inherited that create hierarchies, that create power dynamics and power breeds abuse.

So, I feel that one way to, like my part, my contribution is to take the reader through the stages that I went through to get entangled in an abusive relationship.

And then also show them how I go from being a victim to a survivor, to a thriver.

And offer resources for everyone to refer to because there are organizations like the Journey Center that can help.

I also wanna encourage bystanders to be upstanders.

Two, if you suspect that your friend or loved one is in an abusive relationship, you could be their lifeline to getting help and getting out.

Because it is so hard when you're in the abusive relationship to see out of it.

And so sometimes we need that ally.

Allyship is so important, and we need more male allies as well.

- Tanya Selvaratnam, one of the things that you mention frequently in the book is the number of people who, women who came to you and said yeah, your story is my story.

Your story is so similar, this happened to me.

You could have been describing the relationship that I had with this guy in college or with my former husband or whomever it is.

And in the course of preparing for this, we had several conversations.

The three of us had a conversation and others and frequently, it seems that you were in these rooms with other women and you're like, oh, five out of five of us have experienced intimate partner violence.

Or, and I think, what I'm imagining is happening right now is women listening right now are nodding their heads and saying, yes, this is true.

I was talking to a friend, a neighbor yesterday, walking our dogs, and I was telling her about this, about what the forum was today.

And she's like, oh yeah, that happened to me.

And the, it is a, I just, could you just talk about that?

Because it still leaves me speechless.

- It breaks my heart every time when I am in these rooms, and because I have shared my experience so publicly, which was uncomfortable for me.

But, I saw that by sharing it, I could in my own small way, de-stigmatize it.

Because stigma leads to secrecy, and recognizing that this experience is so common helps us understand how much work we have to do.

And we do have incredible opportunities because there's been a heightened awareness about domestic violence during the pandemic.

To really explore solutions to address it because there needs to be changes in education.

When people hear the term sex education they get up in arms 'cause they don't recognize that what we need is healthier relationship training.

And for me, I wanna make peace and kindness, more exciting than violence.

I am really concerned that as things are opening up, I'm in New York city where it's like, people are ready to party and people should party, but as they are in these spaces together, to recognize that there are now more opportunities for predators to abuse people.

And we see how college campuses become breeding grounds for rapists and for abuse.

And so it's about encouraging people to really look out for each other and to have more education and awareness, and also to have more governmental support for organizations like the Journey Center.

For community specific organizations all over the country that are closest to the pain.

And know how to help those in need.

And also to strengthen the laws.

I mean, as Melissa said, the number one reason for calls to 911 is domestic violence.

That is a staggering statistic, but law enforcement need to be better trained to deal with domestic violence cases, and also to work in tandem with restorative justice and domestic violence organizations.

So that there's a more holistic approach to it.

And also the laws have to be changed.

I found in my own case, the statute of limitations on some of what I would have hoped I could fight back about like the assault, like defamation, one-year statute of limitations.

- What!

- [Tanya] So we have a lot of work to do.

- I've done some math in my head, Melissa Graves, like a quarter of the women in Cuyahoga County is roughly 125,000 people.

And then as Tanya was talking, I was thinking, well, that's 125,000 potentially guys who are beating their partners, abusing their partners in one way or another.

And I still like, it's both like it's horrifying, it's reality.

It's a lot.

I don't, there's a lot of speechlessness in our forum today.

- [Tanya] I know.

- There's just a lot to deal with.

Lemme just remind you to, that we're, this is the City Club Friday forum.

We're talking with author and activist and artist and film producer, Tanya Selvaratnam.

she's the, her book is called "Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence."

It's her memoir of her journey into and out of an abusive relationship that received a great deal of press in 2018.

Melissa Graves is with us as well from the Journey Center, which is a resource here in Cuyahoga County for survivors and victims of domestic violence.

If you need someone to talk to, you should call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1800-799-7233 or locally, you can call the Journey Center as well 216-391-4357.

This information is also at our website cityclub.org, if I read that too fast.

The big question, I think that a lot of people have is what can allies do?

What can people do?

I think many people have seen a friend or a loved one, some, a coworker that they suspect might be in an abusive relationship and might need help.

And they don't know either how to bring it up or how to talk about it, or how to, how to offer help.

Melissa Graves, what do you tell people?

- Yeah, thank you.

So I'm gonna have some good dialogue here, and I just wanna share with people that on our website at journeyneo.org, there's a section called get informed and there's a whole ton of resources.

And like, clearly, like say, this is helpful to say, this is not helpful to say.

So please, check that out.

But in a nutshell, if you, if someone discloses to you, the most important thing is to be supportive unconditionally and affirm and make sure that you're letting them know that you do not deserve this.

There is nothing that you did to cause this to happen to you, and really affirm that and not have any judgment.

I think it's important to remind people that there is help out there and to reach out to an organization like Journey, because sometimes people give what they think is helpful and well-intended advice, that's sometimes not safe and helpful advice.

For example, sometimes somebody's instinct is to say, you need to leave.

You need to get out.

You just need to like get up your courage and leave and so it's, first of all, nothing about courage.

Survivors are the strongest people you would ever meet, but it is about, it's really important for people to hear this.

And that is that, leaving is the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship.

When a survivor leaves or begins to take the steps to leave, like filing for a protection order or divorce or anything.

That is the most dangerous time.

And it is within those three months of leaving that most homicides happen.

And even up to a year after the relationship ends, there's a heightened risk for that survivor.

So it's not just as simple as, pack your bags and I'm gonna come pick you up, you need to leave.

Survivors know best their situation.

They know the moods of their abuser.

They know what triggers them.

They know when it might be safe to leave, and so we need to listen to and trust survivors and then have someone like a domestic violence advocate help you, help really plan when and how it is most safe for that person to leave the relationship.

So, that I just, and I wanna say a couple of things about, what's not helpful to say or do you wanna.

- Yeah, well, you can say that too.

Go ahead.

What's not helpful because, because that can be helpful, for allies as well.

- And, so some other things that are really helpful is to say, I'm concerned for your safety and this is why.

And really name, Tonya lays out in her book, friends who said, I see Eric doing this and it makes me concerned.

So be specific and just say it out of concern.

How can I assist you in feeling safe?

Really ask them, help me understand.

It's not somebody who's disclosing to you if it's somebody that you're concerned about.

I think it's really important to say it in that way and not to go in leading like, I think you're in an abusive relationship.

I think your partner is abusive.

And that's typically not a helpful way to begin the conversation with the survivor.

And I'm gonna say some things and some people are gonna say, oh, no, nobody ever says that.

Trust me, people say this to survivors.

And that please don't say, have you tried to stop the abuse?

Have you tried therapy?

What did you do?

Meaning what did you do to provoke the abuse?

Or again, you just need to leave.

Why don't you just leave?

If someone ever hit me, there's no way I would stay.

So you just need to get up the courage and leave.

Like, these are very dismissive and diminishing and very not helpful things to say and people really do say those things to survivors.

- Again, if you want more advice and resources on that journeycenterneo.org has a resources area, information area on their website.

Tanya Selvaratnam, that question.

What was the moment?

Or I know there wasn't one moment, but, how did you know when you were ready to get out?

Because there were friends of yours who said things like Melissa has just suggested, I'm concerned, he seems very controlling.

He just called you three times while we've walked three blocks.

Like what, why did those moments not, or those moments?

I mean, I suppose there's a slow accretion of these sorts of things, where then you suddenly come around to realizing what your friends are seeing.

Some of your friends were able to communicate with you about it, some only look back retrospectively.

But talk about how you prepared for your journey.

I know that your lawyer was incredibly important in addition to other friends.

- My lawyer and my friends.

I emerged from the process even more grateful for my friends and for the sisterhood and the community around me, because I was broken at that time.

The turning point for me came, I mean, there was a drip, drip, drip of increased abuse and manipulation.

So that by the time I realized I was in an abusive relationship, it was very hard to see a way out of it.

Also, I was with the top law enforcement officer in New York State.

So any legal avenues that I could pursue felt like dead ends.

They, all the roads led to him.

But a pivotal moment happened when a friend who sensed something was wrong, reached out and asked me questions, non-judgemental, empathetic in the way that Melissa described, and she finally got to a question that took me by surprise, with its clarity and bluntness, does he hit you?

And I said, yes.

And then, she knowing that she was not equipped to take me from that point forward, asked if I would be willing to talk to a friend of hers who was a domestic violence expert.

And it was after connecting with the domestic violence expert, that I began to have the tools and a safety plan to extricate myself without, as she called it, the domestic violence expert, poking the bear.

And I had no intention of coming forward publicly.

I was focused on getting on with my life and recovering and re-engaging with my friends and community and work.

But then I found out about a month after the relationship ended, that there had been a previous girlfriend who had also been abused by him and she had been almost a decade before me, and I thought if there was her and me, how many others are there.

And that's when I realized that I might want to do something.

And I connected with my lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, who then went on to become the co-founder of the TIME'S UP Legal Defense Fund and I know has been a guest at the City Club as well and she and Julie Fink really helped me navigate the very complicated terrain forward.

Part of why I wanted to come forward is to prevent him from harming other women but also to shift the perception of what a victim looks like.

Because so many people were shocked that I was a victim.

I was shocked that I was a victim.

I was shocked by the people who reached out to me to share that they had also been a victim, and they were of all generations.

They continue to be of all generations.

People might think that younger generations are more aware and not having this experience happen to them, but I've had so many young readers reach out to me in their teens and twenties and it just makes me so sad.

I've had women who are decades older than me, who say that similar tactics, the choking, the slapping, the spitting in the bedroom, the intimate violence that I call it happened to them.

- Melissa Graves this is a very interesting point, there's a lot to dig into there, but Tanya's point about younger readers who have reached out to her to share their experiences.

That this is, is this as common among the younger generation that we might mistakenly think of as being more aware of these issues?

- No it's, absolutely.

They are very vulnerable and it's happening in alarming numbers to younger people and it goes to Tanya's point or at the top of the show, which was, this is, it's about power structures.

Our power structures haven't changed, so why would young people have any different experience?

Yes, it's really problem with the young people.

And, if we're not doing primary prevention, if we're not talking at younger ages about what is a healthy relationship.

what is respectful?

What does respect look like?

And if, to everybody's point here about the silence.

That we don't talk about, domestic violence and misogyny and abuse.

Then, well, then it's hush, hush and it's something that is supposed to be quiet and ashamed of, and there's just no discourse.

So how would we expect that young people would have any other experience than what generations before have?

So, no, I'm very concerned about our young people and if you have grown up in a home where there's domestic violence, there's a higher likelihood that you might be susceptible to a relationship, but it's not a given, many people grew up in homes with domestic violence and don't go on to abuse or be abused.

There is a higher risk, but I just, I wanted to, I don't want people to think that well, I'm safe because that didn't happen to me or to feel like it did happen to me, so it's gonna happen again.

The abusive dynamics are profound.

- Melissa Graves is the CEO of the Journey Center for Safety and Healing.

If you need their assistance or need to talk to them for any reason, you can call them at 1800-216-3910.

I'm sorry.

Call them at (216) 391-4357.

There's no 800 in front of that.

The other number, if you're, the National Domestic Violence Hotline number is 1800-799-7233.

There's all this information is also on our website at cityclub.org.

And you with the City Club Friday forum, we're also of course talking with Tanya Selvaratnam, she's author of "Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence" about her journey into and out of ultimately out of a very high profile relationship.

The high profile nature of your relationship, Tanya, did that make it more difficult emotionally to leave?

You were in a you're part of a sort of perceived power couple.

- Yes, what more can I say about that?

It, there were many people who discouraged me from coming forward, because he was seen as a hero of many movements, of immigration rights, of climate justice and of women's rights.

He had co authored some of the legislation on strangulation in intimate partner relationships.

That is the bifurcation of his public persona and his private behavior was, the dissonance was horrifying.

So it made my coming forward difficult because, what if people didn't believe me or what if the story landed and it wasn't airtight if he didn't resign.

In fact, he resigned within three hours, which is a credit to the reporting of Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow.

But if he hadn't resigned, if he hadn't been so exposed for being a hypocrite and a predator, what could he have done to me?

So it wasn't just the public nature of our relationship and his public profile, but it was also the resources that he had at his command, that he could have deployed to destroy me.

But, I just, put my faith in the universe, in the courageous journalists and I said, well, I it's a lose lose situation.

Either I can keep quiet and carry with this with me for the rest of my life, or I can do the right thing and take the risk and I decided taking the risk was worth it.

I also recognize, that in some ways I was fortunate because people cared about my story because he was a public figure.

The vast majority of victims are not involved with public figures and their stories remain in silence.

And so I wrote the book to look not just at my experience, but really at the global crisis.

And to make sure that I put my story in the context of this larger issue, as Melissa's talked about.

Which is, it's everywhere.

It really is everywhere.

And until we begin to tackle the roots of the problems through education and awareness, through talking about respect, healthy relationships, and also consent.

In my situation, I consented to the relationship.

I did not consent to the abuse and that is where victims get blamed so much.

Because they are in a committed relationship.

So, I really want to expose intimate violence in committed relationships.

It is the most difficult type of intimate violence to talk about.

They're all difficult to talk about, but it's very different when you're in a situation where it's with a stranger, when it's with somebody that you know, it's painful.

And so I really want to open up a conversation about consent, but consent must be requested and it must be obtained.

- Let's bring in questions from our audience, but go ahead, Melissa.

- My brain is popping.

- I know, yes.

Briefly, because we have a lot of questions from our audience.

So yes.

- First of all, if Tanya had told her story 10 years ago, what would have happened, she probably would have been dismissed, harassed with legal and it, so and, so The Me Too Movement opened things up and I just want us all to remember that The Me Too Movement did not start just a few years ago.

It started long time ago with black women coming forward and talking about this issue.

So again, please, you need to be listening to and being led by black women in these issues.

And that consent, please.

I mean, there was a phrase in Tanya's book that kinda made my skin crawl, and I wanted to pull my hair out of my head, which was, I think it was Eric who said that it was, the abuse was consensual.

There is no such thing as consensual abuse.

It's an oxymoron.

It's ridiculous and because yes, because you choose to be in that relationship and stay in that relationship.

It's not consent to be abused.

- Thank you, Melissa Graves with the Journey Center.

Author Tanya Selvaratnam, Tanya question from our audience.

And if you have a question, please text it to 330-541-5794, number again, 330-541-5794, to text your question.

If you want to tweet your question, tweet it at the city club and we'll work it in.

I'm wondering, here's just a simple question.

Wondering how to help my 20 year old daughter who is recovering from an abusive relationship.

How does healing happen afterwards and how do you rebuild trust in others, and in one's own judgment.

Tanya.

- First, I am so sorry.

I'm so sorry for your 20 year old.

And I wish that I were there and could talk to her.

My healing is ongoing and while abuse is common, every victim is unique and there are different different ways to move forward.

And I think an important step is professional counseling 'cause we're all wired in particular ways and we don't have to go it alone.

And there are wonderful organizations that specifically serve young people.

Like Day One is an organization, Break the Cycle is another one, and Melissa can talk more about ways to heal.

I can talk about how I have been healing in case it's helpful.

It's very important to, in addition to the counseling, I meditate.

I do taming anxiety meditations through different apps and apps are fun ways to engage in the healing.

10% Happier, Calm, Headspace.

Those might be great resources for your 20 year old.

And also making sure that there are, that you surround her with love and affirmation that she is not to blame for what happened to her.

That she is not alone.

She's not crazy.

She is one of my many and that she can go from being a victim to a survivor, to a thriver, and to be a thriver, I think it's very important to identify ways to experience joy.

I believe that if you can feel the pain, you can feel the joy.

And so whatever form joy takes for you, for me it's in experiencing and making art.

I say when life throws you lemons make art.

It's one of the reasons I wrote the book.

Thank goodness I'm a writer.

So I believe in art therapy.

Those are just some of the methods that I would suggest.

And Melissa, you probably have more.

- Yeah, I was hoping so I.

- And every, I just so echo everything you said.

There are more options right now for virtual support, for support groups and also virtual support groups.

So I would definitely look in to some of that and I mean, everything Tanya said and really specialized therapy, like look for a therapist who is really inmushed in trauma and in supporting trauma survivors in even abusive relationships.

Because they're, it's complex and there's a lot of nuance.

So I would, if you're with a therapist and it's not feeling affirming, or you're not feeling, look for another therapist who really does understand where you are.

- Yeah.

And I would also say I would encourage her to read my book, 'cause I've had so many people who've experienced abuse who've read it, and said it helped them understand what they had been through.

- Yeah, absolutely.

It is a deeply moving book and, and very difficult to put down in a very good way.

Another question, does a person's immigration status.

This may be, I don't know who's who, if either of you can answer this question.

But does a person's immigration status play a part in not reporting domestic violence because despite the U visa and provisions of the Violence Against Women's Act.

- Absolutely.

And I wanna say too, in the statistics, that of women who are murdered black, brown women are more than three times more likely than their white counterparts to be murdered.

So all the structural racism and systemic barriers all play into why it's harder for victims.

But immigration status, absolutely.

And it's also used by abusers to coerce and control and to manipulate.

Threatening to expose, withholding documents.

All sorts of ways in there that an abuser will, or if it's a family member who may be undocumented, using that as a threat to coerce and control.

If you're local, please call our helpline.

We have advocates who are absolutely expert in immigration issues with the legal in the visas and speak multiple languages.

So please, if you are local and you are having that challenge and issues around that, please call us.

We can help.

- And I wanted to mention earlier, too, as you were talking about therapy services, that the Journey Center is certainly a place through which survivors can find those kinds of services.

Their number, the number for the Journey Center.

Again by the way is 216-391-help, that's 391-4357 if you need someone to talk to locally here in Cuyahoga County.

if you need someone to talk to and you're not local in Cuyahoga County, please feel free to call 1800-799-safe, that's 7233-1800-799-safe, for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Another question about communicating with young people around these issues.

this listener writes, as a survivor of sexual trauma and raising four young sons.

It is difficult to speak to them about how they treat the opposite sex.

But I also believe it's necessary to teach them now to be good partners and also advocates for women.

Can you recommend resources that handle this topic in an age appropriate way for young children?

Tanya.

- I am so glad that you asked this question.

I'm sorry that you are a survivor.

The amount of times that is revealed.

It's just like every time it just feels like a knife, because why are there so many of us.

But as far as how to talk to young boys, I am very excited to say that there's a new book called "The Book of Dares" that was put out by A Call To Men, which is a violence prevention organization and healthy manhood training organization that I'm proud to collaborate with.

So I would check out "The Book of Dares."

Sometimes the best messenger is not the parent, because the children don't always wanna listen to the parent.

But there are books and tools and if you go to the, A Call to Men website, there are also some really wonderful videos that talk about how to have healthy relationships and how to have mutual respect.

We're trained from the time we're young, that if a guy teases us, he likes us.

If he pushes us around in the playground, he likes us.

It starts right there.

And that kind of conditioning has to stop.

We just have to recognize that like being kind to each other can be just as stimulating.

And it's not about like taking experimentation out of relationships and sexual experiences.

It's about ensuring mutual pleasure.

And that's the piece that we don't talk about enough.

- Melissa Graves, question for you.

Could we touch on the domestic violence suffered by the queer community.

On top of traditional barriers to coming out, the queer community faces additional barriers, be that "men can't be abused" or homophobia, transphobia, et cetera.

Are there specific resources or thoughts you have on that?

- Well, I'm glad you asked that question.

And yeah, there are very many additional barriers when it comes around some of the myths.

It doesn't happen in same-sex sex couples and it absolutely happens everywhere.

And, we're serving more and more trans people in our shelter.

LGBT community in our shelter.

So it absolutely is happening.

LGBT center is a huge fantastic resource for us locally.

Doing a lot of work around this.

And the, some of the barriers too are, we're more open right now.

People are more wanting to be more coming out and sharing who they are, but it's still not always safe and welcome in this community.

So how does law enforcement respond?

How do families respond if they have abuse happening in relationship.

And using, and abusers use that as a place to control also.

Outing where you don't wanna be outed.

It's another point of control for abusers to use that identity.

- Tanya Selvaratnam, have you heard from readers from the queer community?

- Oh yes, many.

And I'm also very proud to support and collaborate with organizations that serve the LGBTQAI+ community and now in, we are in Pride Month.

Pride is this weekend in New York, and there has been an increased awareness about how the trans community in particular have been targeted and by hate crimes.

A huge spike in calls to Trans Lifeline, a national organization.

And also in, abuse happens in any configuration of relationship because of power, because of the normalization of the cycle of violence.

So we have to recognize that it cuts across all communities and people of all stripes that abuse happens and that we have to be very specific in how we deal with the needs of those communities.

Because as I said before, it's not one size fits all.

We also have to look at the devastating amount of violence in the indigenous community.

The number of indigenous women who are killed, who are brutally assaulted.

And a statistic that really breaks my heart is looking at incarcerated women.

The majority of which are brown and black, and how the majority of them are survivors of abuse.

- One of the questions that has occurred to me as we've been talking and really just struck me right now is, like what happens to these guys, largely guys, the abusers, who after, are there.

So often it seems that there is so little accountability.

Eric Schneiderman, in this case, Tanya has not faced any charges and likely won't at this point.

And he has said, oh, it was really mostly a mental health problem, and, my addiction to, having to do with his addiction to alcohol and other drugs.

But I mean like, do, is there, are there Melissa Graves, are there resources like, are there, I mean, I just, I'm just baffled these, these guys are still out.

Like, they're just there, they're just out there, like finding themselves into the next relationship where they can abuse somebody?

- We do not do a good job of accountability and there are not enough resources either.

So, there might be anger management, substance abuse, but those are symptoms and those are not, they're correlating factors, but those are not the causes of why somebody abuses somebody else.

It starts with that intentional asserting control and harm, to assert control over another person.

But we do have some programs in Cuyahoga County the probation office has four cases that go in for domestic violence.

They, it's not necessarily diversion, but they can go into a diet this program to learn more about that dynamic.

The problem is, I think the statistics show with those types of programs, only about a third of abusers in the system go into those programs and only about half of those finish those programs.

So, even where there are programs that exist, they're not really, we're not really getting to the heart of the issue with the abusers.

And back to Tanya's point about the law and legal.

Our system is set up to, and this is really complex.

Literally, Dan, you could do a whole show on this.

But it's hard to prosecute because of the way the laws are set up, it can be difficult to prosecute these cases.

So what happens is, a lot of times prosecution, a domestic violence charge will start off as a domestic violence charge and get pled down to disorderly conduct.

This is really bad, because domestic violence charges are enhanceable.

Which means if you get more than one, the consequences increase.

If you never get a domestic violence charge on the record, then we have, we know, we have so many abusers that we see in our work where they have 5, 6, 7, 8 disorderly conducts, and they're not disorderly conduct.

Those were domestic violence charges.

So we really have to do a better job on that, and have more data about what was the original charge.

What did it get pled down to?

And all of those things, because that is one of the big ways that we're not holding people accountable.

And I say that same too, in the criminal justice system, is not always a fair system.

I mean, there's a lot of issues within the criminal justice system.

So, victims of color, abusers of color, there's a disproportionate piece that's happening there too.

- Tanya Selvaratnam.

- Yeah, I would add to that on the accountability piece and it, so first with regard to Eric Schneiderman, he did face multiple investigations in the end, no criminal charges filed because of statutes of limitations because the bar at which the allegations become a crime.

But the special prosecutor, DA Madeline Singas did propose legislation to make that type of intimate violence without consent a crime.

So that legislation was introduced, so that I felt was a positive outcome.

Then he did face disciplinary charges by the Attorney Grievance Committee in the state of New York, and he was in fact at the end of April, disbarred for a year.

It's a year, we'll take it.

While he undergoes monitored mental health counseling.

Now moving away from that individual story, what Melissa was saying about programs for perpetrators and abusers, they most definitely can help.

Again, I believe in restorative justice, I believe in redemption, if the abuser acknowledges the harm that they've inflicted and does the hard work to out route their abusive behavior, then I think we can give them a second chance.

But most of users don't do any of that.

And with regard to programs, there are some jurisdictions that do make it mandatory to attend them, but the attrition rate is very high.

And so what some jurisdictions did then is instituted penalties and I feel that that needs to spread.

That these rehabilitation programs need to be mandatory and that they need to be enforced to attend.

And the other thing that I feel needs to happen is, and I make this out their proposal in my book.

Is that the monetary debt, a lot of the more public cases that have happened, the perpetrators are rich.

And in some cases they're still powerful.

So they don't really care that they've been outed.

Like, we dilute ourselves thinking that justice has been served.

Charlie Rose probably just hanging out in his beach house.

Les Moonves, Russell Simmons, he fled to Bali.

So there are all these famous perpetrators that are still living the high life in a sense.

You have to take away their money to make them feel the pain.

So, I feel that for every year of a woman's life that they have disrupted, they should pay up.

Every, every victim.

- We routinely seize the assets of leaders in nations where they're violating human rights and these are certainly violations of human rights.

We have barely a minute left and Tanya Selvaratnam.

I might, wanted to give you give you an opportunity, there's so much more we didn't talk about and, but I think people will be interested to know that there is a sort of Hollywood project in the works here.

- Yes.

And then I also want Melissa to talk, so I'll keep this short 'cause I know she had something to say.

The book has optioned by ABC Signature Disney Television.

It is being developed into a series.

I did not intend for the book to be a series.

But I was very lucky that Joanna Coles, an executive producer read the book and wanted to take it on.

And so it just gives me even more hope that the message of the book will spread to a wide audience.

And also there are others series that have looked at abusive relationships.

But, this is a story where it's a woman of color and many black and brown characters because of the community of women around me, who are going to be centered.

So I'm excited about that as well.

- Finally, Melissa Graves.

- I just wanna say there's two very specific things for your civic minded people in the audience, which I know is very many, if any, it is gun laws and strangulation.

Ohio is only one of two states in the country who does not treat strangulation as a felony, not okay.

- I had tweeted earlier today that we, that to encourage people to listen to this and warning them that it might be infuriating and also really important and difficult and I really, it turned out to be all those things and more.

Tanya Selvaratnam's book is "Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence."

Melissa Graves is the CEO for the Journey Center for Safety and Healing.

I am so grateful to both of you courageous women for joining us here today.

And Tanya, especially to you for taking the time, to write your story and to share it with the world.

And I do hope that it changes the world.

- [Tanya] Thank you so much.

- And thank you for joining us as well.

Our forum today's the annual Margaret W. Long Forum on foreign-born individuals of distinction.

Margaret Wong has been a time supporter of the City Club but practicing immigration law in Cleveland and across the country for more than three decades.

And she's also a life member of both the Eighth Judicial District Court and the Federal Sixth Circuit Court.

She herself was born in Hong Kong after her parents fled political repression in the early days of communist China and she told me that she loved this book.

So there's one more recommendation.

You can find out more about the annual Wong Forum at cityclub.org.

And you know what else is on our website at cityclub.org?

Our July forums, some of which are going to be in person.

Please mark your calendars.

It starts Tuesday, July 6th in Public Square at noon.

We'll be talking about recommendations from community leaders about how our municipalities should plan on spending a billion dollars in American Rescue Plan Act funding that is heading our way, half a billion to Cleveland alone.

We'll be back to Friday forums at the City Clubs starting July 23rd.

And we cannot wait to see you.

Thank you for being a part of our mission to create conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

I'm Dan Moulthrop.

We will actually see you soon in person.

Our forum is adjourned.

(bell rings) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to city club.org.

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