(bright music) - Welcome to Forum 360 with its global outlook and local view.

I'm Ardith Keck your host today.

Battering is the single most common cause of injury to women in the United States.

Domestic violence affects many families.

We need to learn more about this terrible problem, and here to help us is Terri Heckman, CEO of the Summit and Medina Counties Battered Women's Shelters and Rape Crisis Center.

Terri recently had her 25th anniversary at the shelter.

That's what I call longevity.

You must be good Terri.

Help us-- - Welcome.

(Ardith chuckling) - Help us to understand some of the myths and realities about domestic violence.

Is it true that a woman is battered every 10, 12 seconds in the United States?

- Yeah, that's what the statistics are.

And a lot of people that wanna argue statistics, I tell them, go ahead and double that, triple that, multiply it by 10, it's still a lot of people.

And the way that they come up with that statistic is by doing a survey and asking people about domestic violence questions as a continuum.

It could be verbal abuse, it could be physical, it could be emotional.

It could be all different types of abuse they're talking about when they say that.

But when I use that word continuum, even if you say, well that was just verbal abuse, the abuser just calls this person names, or puts this person down all the time, that can grow, that can escalate.

So when we look at how high that number is, we wanna talk about how we can get it to never get on the continuum, how we can teach people about respect and boundaries and just talking to each other in a more respectful way.

- Tell me, has the pandemic made the problem worse?

- The pandemic is a nightmare.

I mean, it's a nightmare for everyone, and for domestic violence victims as a matter of fact, I was talking to some of the women who are in shelter right now and one of them made me stop in my tracks when she said, "I wasn't on quarantine "I was on home arrest."

And I stopped and I looked at her and I said, explain that to me.

And she said, "I was forced through the quarantine "to stay in a house with the very person "that was hurting me."

She said, "I just felt like I had an ankle bracelet on, "I couldn't go anywhere.

"I couldn't do anything.

"I was getting a lot of information from him.

"He told me that, that the shelter had COVID."

At one point, he had told her that the shelter closed because of COVID.

He told her it was like a nursing home facility and that it went rapid right through the facility.

We've not had any knock on wood, anything like that happen in the shelter to residents or to the employees who work there.

So I don't think we're gonna know for a long time how bad the pandemic has affected families that are already vulnerable to domestic violence, because stress went up in all families during this time.

- Yeah, people are at home much more than they've ever been.

And as you say, the stress level is very high for most people.

So you add the domestic violence type person to that, it would have to be horrible.

- Absolutely, we all needed to use every single coping skill we had in the past year and learn some new ones.

And if you're in a situation that's dysfunctional or just not able to learn new coping skills that doesn't have good coping skills to begin with, I think we're gonna be hearing stories for a long time.

I think there are people still they can't call for help.

Many of them can't even use the phone, can't get to the computers to sign online to talk to some of our staff that are available.

So, calling a hotline, going to a hospital emergency room, calling the police.

I don't think those things have been happening like they did.

In March and April of last year of '20, we saw our numbers just plummet.

We weren't hearing from hardly anybody.

It took until about July or August for the numbers to start ticking back upwards.

- Why is that?

- I think it was because of the initial shutdown and fear of everybody not wanting to be around any strangers.

So even if I have to make up my mind, am I leaving?

I might say to myself, I'm not gonna go right now.

This isn't the best time for my family.

And I'm just gonna try to stay here and get along the best I can during that time, maybe he wasn't even going to work if the abuser was a male because we were all started working from home.

So maybe she couldn't get out and do the traditional things that a domestic violence victim would do to get help.

- Okay, we have to talk about that, but you've mentioned some of the things, but what constitutes domestic violence?

- Well, it's different in the courts than it is with us With the Battered Women Shelter, we're gonna listen to what the victim says, man, woman, it doesn't matter, we treat everybody.

Anybody can come to shelter if you feel that someone is overstepping your boundaries of dignity and respect and safety, especially.

So it's different for every single person, they all define it somewhat differently.

If you go to court, they're gonna ask you, are are you married?

Do you have children with this partner?

Have you been living in the same residence as this person?

But we don't ask all those questions.

We just help anybody who feels like they are in danger in any way, it's already happened or they're afraid it's going to happen.

Once those words come out of their mouth they're eligible for every service we have.

- Are most women who are being abused in some way afraid to leave?

- Absolutely, I think anybody who has watched a segment of Dr. Phil or anything else believes that right after you leave you're in the most danger.

And that is true.

As soon as you take control back by the person who has been controlling you, there is a window right there of the highest level of danger you could be in.

It is a very scary time to leave because all the threats that you've been hearing, "If you leave, I'll kill you.

"If you leave, I'll kill the children.

"If you leave, I'll kill your parents."

Anything they've been hearing like that, you now have back this person into the corner and now comes the time, are they really gonna do it, or was it all words?

So when somebody comes into shelter, we have a very, very high level of protection especially those first about 48 hours when the abuser has figured out that you called the bluff, that you said, I'm going to do the very thing you told me not to do.

So we're really very cautious, extra cautious for those first 48 hours.

- What does it take to get someone out?

- Oh, their will, their will.

I talk to parents all the time who say, "Please help me, I have a 28 year old daughter "who's in a horrible situation, "and I think she wants to leave."

I always tell them they will not leave until they make the decision to leave.

And anything we do before that can help with education along the way, can help introduce them to services along the way.

But it is not until that person says I'm going, then they will find that little teeny crack that they can get out.

Whether it be the abuser went to work, the abuser ran to the store, the abuser is in the bedroom talking to his friends on the phone.

There has to be the will to leave and then a crack that that person will get out.

Anything less than that, and it's not gonna happen.

- Do many, and we're gonna talk about men, but do many women die as a result of domestic violence?

- We do track every time I hear that somebody in the Summit or Medina County area has died, has been shot or something like that.

I always check our files to see, did we have this person?

And if we had them, how long did they stay?

Did they go to our support groups?

Did they have a protection order?

I always try to figure out, was there something more that we could do?

It seems like there's two different people.

The ones who never sought help that end up in that position of either dying, or killing the abuser, or they came once and they didn't wanna come back because they felt they had let everyone down, that they went back to the abuser, which is common.

It's very, very common for someone to go back and say, I'm just gonna try one more time to make things work.

And then they're too embarrassed or humiliated to come back and say it happened again.

And we try to tell people all the time, look this is a cycle, it's going happen over and over again, until help is given to the abuser.

I can help the victim all day long, that's not gonna stop that abuser from abusing until that person learns new skills.

So that's what we always look for when somebody wants to go back home or says they're going back home.

What has the abuser learned since you left?

A lot of times, they promise, "I'm gonna go to therapy.

"I'm gonna go to counseling.

"We'll go to church and talk to the minister."

We always tell the people stay here until you go a few times, stay here until that help starts.

Because if you just go back home before you've gone anywhere, the odds are that nobody's gonna go anywhere for help and it's just gonna happen again.

- What is it that makes someone beat, or verbally abuse another person?

- No skills not to.

If you had an option, if you had the ability to do something else, you would probably do it.

I've talked to abusers who are very sorry and I'm telling you they could pass a lie detector test that they didn't mean to hurt anybody.

It's not something that you, you don't wake up and say, I'm gonna hurt somebody I care about.

You get stressed out, tension builds.

You have to explode.

You and me are pretty brought up in normal families and pretty healthy people, we're still gonna yell once in a while.

We're still gonna get angry once in a while, but we use our coping skills.

You might be silent.

You might get really quiet for a couple of days.

That's your style.

You might go out and exercise.

You might go out and garden.

You might journal.

You might listen to music.

Everybody has different coping that they use to calm themselves down and come back to the situation and look at it differently when they're calm.

The abuser doesn't, the abuser does not have those skills and they have to learn them.

And they didn't learn them, because many times they came from abusive families.

They saw this is what you do when you're angry.

There are no boundaries.

You can kick the dog.

You can throw a glass across the room.

Those things happened in their families when they were growing up.

So they didn't learn the coping skills that are healthy and that we all need.

- Does that person have low self-esteem?

Does that anything to do with it?

- Oftentimes, as soon as we say something like that, you're gonna find people who have a high self-esteem on the outside.

But when you really start studying that person, they're very insecure and very vulnerable on the inside.

If you think about it, domestic violence does not happen in public.

It always happens behind closed doors.

And that is because the abuser is not confident.

That is because the abuser doesn't want anybody else to see that this is how they act in private.

So a lot of times people will say, I've even had family members say, "I don't know if my daughter pushed this guy "because he's around us at the holidays.

"And he's very pleasant."

Families are often confused when someone comes forward and starts to say, especially if there's no marks, if there's no black eye, if there's no broken arm, or somebody needs stitches, if it's just a totally emotional abuse or a hidden punch to the stomach, or something like that, family members really struggle to understand the abuser also.

- We're talking today about domestic violence.

And my guest is Terri Heckman, who is the CEO of the Summit and Medina Counties Battered Women Shelter and Rape Crisis Center.

And domestic violence is a terrible problem.

And it's been made worse by the pandemic.

Is anyone going to schools to teach our young people that it's not okay to abuse another person?

- Absolutely, before the pandemic, we were in a lot of the schools and on The University of Akron campus every day talking about the positive relationships, how to build equal ground within relationships, how to build that respect, what are you gonna do when you do get into disagreements?

Because everyone does, healthy people get into disagreements.

So we really wanna open the door and talk to people depending on their age level.

It might even be for the older students, seniors, juniors in high school and college.

We'll talk about how are things handled in your family without giving specifics.

They'll talk about, "Oh, my mom's a yeller.

"My dad, he's kind of quiet "and he just goes to bed early "when they get in an argument."

Those are the things they're seeing, and as long as they are coping skills that are not gonna hurt the other person, we talk to students and say, does that fit for you?

Or we always try to tell the students what we don't want you doing when you're upset is grabbing the car keys and going out driving.

And that's what we try to get them not to do.

So we talked to them about letting that energy out a different way.

And all the way down to the little kids, we talk to them about bullying and being a bystander when you see someone calling someone else a name, things like that.

They don't know they're learning about domestic violence.

They just think they're learning about how to get along better with their friends and it builds year after year after year in different grades, they hear different messages and we're hoping to make a difference for them.

- Young women they even tolerate abuse in the dating scene.

Why do they do that?

And what should they know?

- If you remember back to when you were in junior high or high school, the most important thing to you during those years unfortunately, for all of us moms and dads is your friends.

Your friends are key when you're in school.

And what I always laugh at are the kids who hate their best friend on Tuesday and then are best friends again on Wednesday.

They go through these ups and downs, it's a huge time for them to learn about forgiving and making mistakes.

And their friends are so important to them at that point.

And their friends are what drives their self-esteem and their confidence during those years.

So when they begin that learning about dating and does that guy like me, they also are beginning to learn about how I want this person to treat me.

And it's very hard to draw the line.

It's hard for adults to draw the line.

If you're walking with your husband of a couple of years and you say something he doesn't like, and all of a sudden he pushes you, you might turn around and look at him and say, "Don't you ever do that again.

"Don't touch me when you're upset like that."

That's very hard for an adult to do, let alone a little kid or a young adult, let me put it that way, or a young adult.

I coached soccer for about 12 years on a high school level.

And it was even amazing to listen to freshmen and sophomores who are going through situations, and listening to the juniors and seniors saying, "Don't put up with that.

"You don't have to put up with that.

"Tell him he either needs to treat you right, "or it needs to take a hike."

They grow so much during that year in the ability to know, I don't need another person next to me and it's okay to speak up and tell someone how to treat me.

But those are very, very fragile years.

And the more positive they have around them, the more positive role models they have, and older siblings, and their parents, and other friends, the more positive their relationships will be.

- How does a woman find out that there's a place she can go if she's being battered or abused?

- You know what, about three weeks ago I was working late, I actually had my dogs in the office.

So it was about 6:30 or seven o'clock.

I shouldn't have even been there.

And I heard a knock at the front door and I thought someone's got to be lost, or maybe they need to drop off some mail for one of my staff or something.

So I went up to the front door and I'm in the office.

I'm not in the shelter.

And I opened the first door and I said to this woman, can I help you?

And she said, "Is this a place that you can get help?"

And I said, what are you looking for?

And she said, "I can't go home."

And I opened the door and I said, come on in.

And a woman came in and she had about a four or five year old child with her.

And they came in and sat down and she started crying.

And I said, listen I'm gonna go get somebody for you to talk to.

And I called over to the shelter, and one of my shelter workers came over.

And while they were coming over to our side, I said how'd you find us?

And she said, "I didn't, "I was gonna go to the fire station," which is half a block away from us, "and I saw your sign "and it says the center for hope and healing," which is our umbrella name.

That's the name, we put on our building, the center for hope and healing.

And she just took a chance and knocked on the door.

Now we don't get that many who do it that way.

A lot of them come to us either through a police call, through the hotline call, they might call the hotline and our staff will tell them where to go.

We have some private locations that people can go to.

And then we have ways to get them to the shelter in case they're being followed.

Any hospital or emergency room will help you get to the shelter.

So there's a lot of different ways you can get there, but many times it's you, yourself, reaching out for that first time saying, I need help.

I need something to change here.

- Let's give the shelters telephone numbers.

- There are 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

There's multiple people answering phone calls.

It's 330-374-1111.

Again, we don't tape your phone calls, they're confidential.

You don't have to give your name, 330-374-1111.

- And that is 24 hours a day, every day.

- Every day.

- Okay.

- And if you're from outside of the area and you call from Portage County or Stark County, we will deal with your crisis and then we will get you to another organization who can help you closer to your home.

- We're talking about abused women, but there are abused men.

- Absolutely, we also answer the hotline for Adult Protective Services, which is people over 60 on nights and weekends.

And we get male victims through that also.

But we're getting about one man in shelter staying with us, one man a month, is about what we're getting.

That doesn't mean they're the only ones we're helping, but it means those are the ones who have said, "I don't wanna make her and my kids move out of their house, "but I also can't stay there anymore."

And we talk to that person the same as we would a female victim, make sure that the kids are safe wherever they are and make sure you get the help.

But I'll tell you the men that have come through shelter, I see as some of the strongest human beings ever, because a man could hit a woman back and probably control her physically.

Most men are bigger than their partners.

So it takes a very good strong man to not strike back and to keep his temper in check.

And many times they come into shelter and unlike the women, they say, "I've never told anyone "and I'm not telling my parents, this is happening.

"I'm not telling my best friend from college "this is happening.'

Many of the coping skills that we as women have, men don't have.

So they feel very alone.

When we first opened the shelter, and it's three floors, we asked some of the women who were staying in the shelter, what if a man was here?

And he came and he stayed on the first floor?

So we have enough distance between you that you're not cohabitating, but how would you feel about that?

Every single one of the victims that we talked to said, "If they are going through what we're going through "they deserve to have the same help that we're getting."

We thought they were more inviting and inclusive than we were as staff.

We didn't know that they would be this open.

Same thing happened in our support groups.

When a man first asked if he could go to the support group and tell his story, we were a little taken back and we weren't sure what to do with it.

And it was the other survivors, or the other victims in that group who said, "Let him come, let him talk to us.

"Maybe it'll help."

- When should a woman get help?

- As early as possible, absolutely as early as possible.

A lot of people think, well, he didn't really punch me.

I talked to a woman once who said, "He hit me with an open hand.

"So I didn't think that was abuse."

I didn't think it was abuse because really it's just verbal.

I didn't think it was abuse because really he's just keeping me in the house.

He let all the air out of my tires.

There's no food in the house, 'cause he thinks I'm getting fat.

So he brings food home at night and tells me what I can and cannot eat.

All kinds of minimizing what the abuse is and making excuses why they don't wanna put that label on it.

They don't wanna say that they are an abuse victim nor do they wanna say that he is an abuser.

It's very hard these days to walk out of a relationship especially if there's kids.

So many times those people will try and try and try to save it before they really come to the experts.

They'll talk to a friend, a family member.

I just said to somebody last week on the phone, when she called me about a friend of hers, I said, please don't try to be her social worker.

Be her friend, let us handle those hard parts.

Let us talk to her about the cycle of violence and the danger that she's in, but you stay her friend.

So as early as possible, people have to open the door for help.

Every year I struggle with weight, Ardith, and every year I say this time it's weight watchers, this time it's Jenny Craig, this time it's, well, those are all learning tools for me.

And every year I learn a little bit more.

So you got to start when you gain that first pound, you got to start when the first time abuse happens of any type, you got to call and get some help.

- Absolutely, is there a danger to the children in some cases?

- Always, there's always a danger to the kids.

I remember one of the moms in shelter said, "He's a good, good dad."

I said not if he's hitting a mom, he's not a good, good dad.

That's what your children are growing up to see.

That's what your daughters believes should happen when they grow up and get married.

That's how your sons will treat their wives someday, and is that what you want?

They learn from their parents.

You are the first role model for your kids.

A man wrote me a letter a couple of Christmases ago and he said that he stayed in shelter when he was about four or five.

And he mentioned some of the things that are in the neighborhood of where the shelter was.

So I knew it was real.

And he said it's the first time they ever had to eat government food.

And it's the first time he didn't have new shoes, but he said, looking back on it now, if his mom wouldn't have been that strong to leave, he doesn't know if he'd be the man he was today.

It was a beautiful letter written by a child who came through shelter.

- You've talked about the fact that battered women and children are often then batters, and stopping that cycle is really important.

I thank you, Terri Heckman for coming today and talking about domestic violence and the tragedy it is.

This is Ardith Keck for Forum 360.

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