One in four women and one in five men in Kentucky will experience domestic violence in their lifetime.

That's according to the Center for Women and Families at Domestic Violence Center in Louisville.

The center also says Kentucky has the second highest rate of domestic violence in the country.

But there are encouraging numbers now when it comes to a program that's offering survivors of domestic violence a level of protection from their abuser.

Our Clayton Dalton has an update on Kentucky's Safe at Home program.

During the 2024 legislative session, state lawmakers unanimously passed Senate Bill 79, which expands the Safe at Home program.

Originally, the program only shielded participants addresses from publicly accessible voter rolls so that they could register to vote without fear that their abuser could find their new address.

But Secretary of State Michael Adams said the program needed updates.

We took a look and we found it was deficient.

We found that only about 22 people were even in it in the whole state.

There are three main problems with that with the program.

One is it was a reciprocal with other states.

And unfortunately, survivors sometimes have to move between states.

Number two, it required an order from a judge to be eligible to join the program.

And not everyone gets a protective order.

Someone may not want to hire an attorney and deal with the costs or go through the legal process or face her abuser in a courtroom.

So that was a problem.

The third problem was the program was limited to our voter rolls, but it exposed the survivors address to the rest of the world through other public records, state records and local public records.

So those are three problems that we saw it.

Last year, we approached the legislature and we got a law passed unanimously, I'll add to address each of those three issues.

Now, the Safe at Home program allows participants to use the Secretary of State's Office address on public records instead of their own, and their mail will be confidentially forwarded to their new address.

Even more participants can use a personal statement in lieu of a restraining order to join the program.

It's another step towards confidentiality anonymity for survivors of domestic intimate partner violence.

And any step that the government, the elected officials can take towards helping to protect survivors is another step towards keeping people alive.

What we know is that perpetrators will do whatever they can to find their victims.

And so this is another way to keep their where they're located, their identity, anything that would identify them and locate them.

To keep it private.

Martin says confidentiality is a step toward normalcy for people who have experienced domestic violence.

One of the things that we often see, especially in shelter, is that when survivors come to us, they often flee with nothing.

And so they leave all their documents behind, their birth certificates or driver's license or Social Security cards, their insurance, medical insurance cards, all the important things that we have to take to get our basic needs met.

And so they often go online.

They apply for that.

And then they come here.

But if they again, if they're suspicious of their address being locate or just finding them, then that's going to play a big part in how they get those documents.

And you can't get a job without those documents.

You can't get housing.

You can't.

There's a lot of things you can't enroll.

Can you enroll your kids in school?

That's another big factor.

And so being able to hide that address is essential for, again, not only the adult survivor, but also children.

The origin of this program was a way to let people who were nervous about going out in public, going to the polls and voting where their abuser or their stalker could find them, giving them an option to vote by absentee ballot with a different address as their public facing address on the voter rolls.

That was the the egis of all of this.

And it's grown into so much more.

For Kentucky edition, I'm Clayton Dalton.

And just this year, the safe at Home program has seen its numbers increase by 460%.