(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to The Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

April is sexual assault awareness month, and The Cocoon is a comprehensive domestic and sexual violence agency that works to raise awareness of that issue every day.

And as well as a number of other issues that we're gonna talk about.

We're joined by Annie Minor, a prevention specialist at The Cocoon, and I wanna welcome you Annie to The Journal.

Thanks for being here today.

- Thank you.

- And I mentioned that of course, April is sexual assault awareness month, just one of the things that The Cocoon is focused on and deals with, with people who are unfortunately find themselves maybe in a situation like that.

Talk a little bit though about, in general, about what The Cocoon is, and the wide array of services that are available.

- Yeah.

So as you mentioned, we are the areas domestic and sexual violence services agency.

So we serve Wood County and then a little bit of the surrounding areas of Wood County.

We have an emergency shelter for survivors and their kids, and we can also house pets.

So that's pretty unique that, and we're fortunate to have that ability to house survivors pets as well.

We have a 24/7 hotline that is fully confidential that survivors can call if they need services or emotional support, or even just have any questions about various situations.

And we have support groups that are for survivors that are completely complimentary and we can meet survivors at the hospital or at the courthouse and help them navigate those various systems.

- Yeah, and I think it's important that you mentioned that you have that confidential phone line.

I guess one of the things that is very important is that even if someone simply has a question, they like say, you know, I'm concerned, is this, should I be contacting you, I guess the best thing there is to say, give us a call and we'll talk you through whatever the situation is and talk with you and help you, inform you on what your options are, what might be going on and how you can help.

- Yeah, exactly.

And especially when we work with university students, we always encourage them to give us a call especially if they're in a situation where they maybe aren't sure if, you know, what they think is happening actually is happening.

Since we aren't mandatory reporters and we do have the privilege of that confidentiality, then there really is no, no harm in calling us just to double check and talk through things.

- Yeah, and I think, as we'll find out, I mean, the important thing is to reach out, not to hold back and think, well, maybe I shouldn't.

Yeah and it's just as simple as contacting you and saying, should I be concerned about that?

Is this a situation I can be concerned about as opposed to saying, well, I'll let it go this time.

And I think, are you seeing, I mean, and I know one of the things that we, we hear a lot is that many, many instances of whether we're talking sexual abuse, domestic abuse, all of those things go vastly unreported.

Is there, how do you get people to be more open about saying, contacting your agency?

What can you tell them right now to say, look, please call us if you think you need our service, is there a way to get through to more people?

- I think the biggest thing is, is mentioning that it is fully confidential.

So should a survivor call and not even wanna give their name, they have have that option.

Of course, we like to collect names and phone numbers just so that we can follow up and make sure that the survivor's fully supported, but if a survivor just needs to talk and, or needs to disclose to someone or needs that support, we can do that with a fully confidential lens.

So I guess that hopefully will encourage more people to reach out, but that first step, it is pretty scary to give a call to anyone.

- Sure, sure.

And as we know, there is a certain reluctance to do that because I think in some cases too, and you would know more about this than I do that, people don't want to cause more, they feel I guess maybe they don't want to cause more of a problem.

Maybe if I just ignore this, it'll go away, it won't happen again.

Those kind of things.

Is that, in your role as a prevention specialist, what sort of consequences or what sort of circumstances rather, do you encounter when you, when you talk with people?

What are some of the things that they, they bring forward as reasons why maybe they haven't come forward earlier?

- A lot of times, you know, putting words to a situation makes it real, right?

So you know, living in it every day is one thing, but then actually telling someone that what's happening maybe is harmful or isn't healthy is another thing, and you kind of have to come to terms with that.

It could be where, you know, trauma kind of, trauma is an interesting thing in the way it interacts in our bodies and with our brains, and sometimes it takes people a while to kind of come to terms with, you know, what happened 10 years ago was actually abuse or it actually, you know, wasn't a good situation.

So, and if that is a situation that you, that someone finds themselves in where it was, you know, a decade ago where something happened, still feel free to call, to call The Cocoon because we can offer that emotional support.

- Yeah.

I think you made a good point too.

And I think that is one of the, cause one of the things you'll hear in these instances after the fact is, well why didn't you call three months ago when it happened or a year ago when it happened?

Why suddenly now?

And as you said, talk a little bit more about why people don't come forward right away, because you said there's, it takes time for them to process what they believe happened or didn't happen.

What just happened to them is so traumatic that they're not sure exactly what went on.

So talk a little about that's why people don't come forward like two hours later or a day later.

Maybe it is year later, as you said, even 10 years later.

- Yeah.

There are a lot of different, a lot of different factors that go into that.

A big myth that we try and dispel with community members, with survivors themselves, is that question why didn't you leave?

Especially domestic violence situations.

Well, one thing is we know that when a survivor leaves or is planning to leave, or is in the process of leaving, that's when the highest rates of partner homicide occurs.

So that's actually a very, very dangerous situation for survivors to be in.

So we never encourage a survivor to leave.

We prefer to take a safety planning route and try and make sure that survivors can stay as safe as possible.

It could be that survivors have dependents.

So pets, children, and if the options are, you know, homelessness with my three kids or living in a house with an abuser who may not be nice to me, but at least doesn't touch the kids, then, you know, at least the kiddos will have a warm bed to sleep in every night.

Could be a geographic location issue.

So if you're in a very rural area and are cut off from modes of transportation, that obviously makes it very difficult to leave.

So there's so many different factors that go into that.

- Yeah, and when we come back in just a moment, I mean, that is one of the questions I think too that people have, if you've been fortunate enough not to have experienced this is well, how could you have stayed there that long?

Why did you stay?

And you sort of talked about that, but we can come back and maybe, and delve into that a little bit deeper.

I'm talking with Annie Minor, a prevention special at The Cocoon here in Bowling Green.

Back in just a moment, here on The Journal.

Thank you for staying with us here on The Journal.

My guest is Annie Minor.

She's a prevention specialist at The Cocoon, which is an agency that deals with those people who unfortunately find themselves in situations of domestic abuse and sexual assault and all of the other issues that we revolve around that.

When we left the last segment Annie, we were talking about the fact that why people stay in a situation or why they take a longer time to finally reach out to an agency like yours.

Talk a little bit more about why people stay and some of the reasons maybe when you talk to them to try to get them to leave, how do you overcome that reluctance to say, as you said, well most of it's good, but there are these bad times.

So how do you talk them through that situation and get them to see that maybe they do need to extricate themselves from the situation that they're in.

- Right.

So when, if when survivors call us and they still are in that, that relationship or whatever it is, we try and offer support.

We try and offer options for survivors but, you know, ultimately we don't want to take further agency away from those survivors.

So we support them in whatever it is they choose to do.

So if they only call us once and they told us, this is what's going on, and then we can't get ahold of 'em again, then we hope that they reach out again.

But you know, we understand that every situation is different and that survivors, you can't tell them to leave.

Cause as I said, that's a very dangerous time so- - Sure.

- We just try and offer those safety planning and things like that.

So, and options and let them know that we are here for them.

- And when you have people who you do, or they reach out to you, they do then remove themselves from what is a bad situation.

What is the likelihood that they might go back or do you deal with people who return to what is not a good situation more than one time?

And if so, how do you work with people who find themselves, unfortunately, unable to really separate themselves from a situation for whatever the reason it is for that.

- Right.

And that is an unfortunate thing that does happen quite often is that survivors do find themselves returning to abusers.

That's no fault of theirs.

Abusers are very, you know, manipulative.

They can be very charming when they want to.

And unfortunately, they do know how to manipulate the survivors.

So that is a common thing.

We don't cut off services, right?

We don't make them feel guilty like, oh, you should know better.

We'll continue to talk with them.

We'll continue to offer that support and be there for them, should they need us again.

And hopefully they do reach out again.

So absolutely.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

Now and demographically, we're talking about, I'm gonna make a, you know, an assumption here, which is probably not necessarily totally accurate, but the assumption would be for the average person looking at what The Cocoon does, these are mostly women that are going to approach you, contact you with situations.

Do you have a certain, is there a certain percentage of men who find themselves in this situation where they're the ones being abused versus what we would consider, unfortunately, the traditional model that we've come to think is the way it always is?

Are you approached by men sometimes who say I'm in a bad situation here, what can I do?

- Absolutely.

We serve everyone.

So men, those in the LGBTQI plus community.

So we do work with those populations as well.

Unfortunately, it is a majority of women we serve and, you know, men especially are more reluctant to come forward in situations of abuse, sexual assault, things like that.

And I believe that a lot of the reasons for that is due to the pressures of society on men and things like that.

And that's why in my prevention, presentations to community members, I really try and stress healthy masculinity and it's okay to ask for help.

- Yeah, and that is a big thing to overcome because society, men are supposed to just do, you know, yeah, take a deep breath and suck it up, I guess, is how it would be.

And we'll talk a little about, you know, as you said, you're a prevention specialist, so a lot of what you do is education, reaching out, talking to groups, talking to people, when you do this presentation, what are some of the things you go through to emphasize, how do you make people more aware of a prevention and then also too, how to respond if the situation arises?

- Right.

So we have been, so I give a lot of presentations to community groups.

So, you know, depending on what group it is, I can tailor it.

So a lot of the times I'll talk about bystander intervention methods, which are safe ways for third parties to intervene should there be, you know, a suspicious situation or a situation where that kinda makes a voice in your head think twice.

So there are options for that.

A lot of healthy masculinity, like I mentioned, you know, media literacy.

So the music and the movies and TV shows that we consume, may be communicating some not so healthy and helpful messages.

So just kind of being aware of those, not completely stopping, listening, or watching those shows or songs, but at least being aware of the messages that you're not unintentionally consuming them, but I've also been able to work with some high school students in the area.

So for that I really like to stress, you know, healthy versus unhealthy relationships and not just romantic relationships, friendships, and family relationships, cuz we know, especially in high school there's a great deal of bullying that goes on unfortunately, and some of these same patterns of domestic violence can kind of crop up in those types of situations.

- Yeah.

Well you make a good point there too, that you know, we tend to think of these, what you would deal with as mainly people who are older adult, are in a marriage relationship or some form of that, but this goes down to much younger people as well.

It's not just, it's people who are high school students, junior high students, things like that.

So that's an important point that they find themselves in, you know, dating abuse sort of situations too.

- Yeah.

And if that is maybe a 15 year old's first relationship and first introduction to a romantic relationship and it is a dating violence situation, and there is maybe emotional abuse, maybe there's no physical abuse, but there is kind of emotional manipulation and things like that, then potentially that's just normal for that 15 year old.

And so they may not know to ask for help.

- Right.

Yeah.

And when we come back, I wanna talk a little bit more about, as you mentioned just now, this isn't just physical abuse we're talking about, it's emotional abuse, which can be in its own way, even more damaging in some ways.

So when we come back, let's talk about, and I'd also like to ask too, you mentioned the fact that third party intervention, because that's a real difficult situation for someone who is watching something go on to say, gee, should I say something?

Should I do something?

What should I do?

What shouldn't I do?

So when we come back let's talk about that.

Let's talk about emotional abuse and then talk about when I as an individual should or should not intervene or what should I do if I think maybe something isn't right in someone I'm watching in a relationship.

Back in just a moment with Annie Minor, prevention specialist at The Cocoon, here on The Journal.

Thanks for being with us here on The Journal.

Our guest is Annie Minor.

She's a prevention specialist at The Cocoon.

One of the things you touched on in the last segment Annie was the fact that this isn't just physical abuse, you mentioned the fact that in many cases, the abuse that you deal with and your agency does, and people find themselves in, can be emotional abuse.

It isn't simply physical abuse.

So talk about the impact of that and what that is like and how people should be aware of are they it's situation where they're being emotionally abused.

Because we can see physical abuse, at least we believe we can, but emotional abuse is a whole different, a different array of circumstances.

So talk a little bit about that.

- Right.

So when I talk to community members and also teens, I always say, you know, friendships, family relationships, romantic relationships, all of those people who you choose to surround yourself with should uplift you and add to your self-esteem and add to your happiness.

And if someone isn't doing that, then maybe it's time to kind of review that relationship.

So situations with emotional abuse and kind of mental and manipulation, while they're much subtler and maybe harder for someone to catch, they do happen and they do kind of follow that same pattern of escalation that physical abuse does.

So it could start with, you know, a backhanded compliment here and there, and then it can escalate to statements like you're worthless, things like that, but it's sneaky and it's hard to sometimes pinpoint.

- Yeah and one of the things too, and we didn't, we haven't talked about this, but stalking is part of this as well.

That stalking is a form of basically violence against someone and yet we probably don't see it the same way, or at least a lot of, some of the population doesn't.

So stalking is one of these things.

That's a form of abuse and yet it's sort of overlooked, I guess, maybe in some of the more violent aspects of the things that you deal with.

So stalking is a thing that people need to be aware of too.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And if someone has concerns about that that they're being stalked, we can help with that as well.

But yeah, stalking is an issue that I think is more common than we may, we may assume it is.

It can occur between strangers, it can be an ex-partner who's stalking their ex-partner, it could be a current partner stalking their partner.

Yeah, there are a lot of different ways.

It could be physical stalking.

So that kind of stereotypical what we think following someone, but it could also be online stalking and it could be hacking accounts.

It could be reading through private emails.

It could be kind of posting on people's social media, pretending to be them and posting kind of wild things that maybe they wouldn't normally post.

So- - Yeah, it's it's yeah.

The unfortunate thing is technology has a opened up a whole new array of areas for people to do bad things.

And this is yet another one of them.

One of the things you touched on is the fact too, you mentioned third party intervention, and that's a difficult thing.

If I'm sitting in a restaurant and I see two people who appear to be not getting along very well at least at that moment, and it looks like maybe one person is being more aggressive or whatever the correct term would be, what should you, how should you react to that situation?

Whereas if you're, you don't know them, you're in a public place, what is my responsibility there, if any, and what should I do?

And what shouldn't I do in that situation, if I should do anything at all.

I'm sure there's something we should probably at least do in some fashion, but what's that situation for me if I look over and go, wow, that's just not right?

- Yeah.

I would say the first thing is do something, right?

Don't assume that someone else will do something because that's probably what everyone else is assuming, and then those people will leave the restaurant and nothing will have been done.

So definitely do something.

There are a few different ways that you could intervene in order to keep yourself safe.

Cuz that is like, that is the number one consideration to have.

So if you're comfortable, you could go up and just, you could ask, you know, are you okay?

If you are in a restaurant you could ask to use those people's salt or pepper or whatever it is just to kind of insert yourself into that situation, but not so aggressively and directly, like you need to stop.

You could ask for help.

So if there's a wait staff that you could could ask, hey, is everything okay over there?

At least you're doing something or you could cause a distraction.

So if you are in a restaurant, you could dump a plate of food on the floor or something, which is messy, but at least it'll hopefully pull those two people out of that situation and kind of have them remember where they are, that they're in public.

- Yeah because it is a difficult thing if you see that or you sense that that's going on.

Yeah.

I think you made a good point that don't expect that someone else, because everybody's going well somebody else will do something about that.

Should you ever be, and I know this is a, should you ever just pick up your cell phone and call 911 and go, I think there's something bad happening here.

I mean would that be an overreaction or not?

I know it depends on the circumstances, but that's not the first thing you should do though obviously, at least in many cases.

- Right.

I mean if that's what your brain is telling you to do, then- - Do it.

Okay.

- Yeah.

Then do it.

I always say, you know, take into account those people's identities, your identity, cuz sometimes police involvement, while it is necessary in many situations, sometimes it may not be as helpful as some of those other intervention methods, but absolutely, if the police are needed, then call 911.

Yeah.

- Yeah and I think you were clear on the fact too, try to do something to distract or diffuse that immediate interaction that's going on.

Something that draws their attention away from each other to some degree too.

- Right.

- Yeah.

And obviously too, for people who want to get in touch with you, maybe watching this or have thought in the past, well maybe it isn't what I think it is, but maybe I should call, you guys are available in any variety of ways to get in contact with.

There's webpage, Facebook, phone numbers, that kind of thing.

But the simplest thing to do probably is just to pick up the phone and call, if you, in a situation where you feel comfortable doing that, obviously.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- Yup.

I would say the quickest way to get ahold of us is by calling us, but of course you can direct message our different social media accounts and we will get back to you.

- Yeah.

And I think the nice thing is you can look at your website, you can look at the information that's online in social media and for someone who may think, well, is this what I think it is, you can see what's available service wise, you can see what's available contact wise.

So there's a lot of great educational material for everyone to look at there and maybe say, oh wow, I didn't realize, I always felt this wasn't right, now I know by looking at some of this information that what's happening to me right now isn't the best situation.

So if nothing else, if people just find that information to look at it, maybe that will help obviously as well.

Great.

Great.

Well Annie Minor, thank you so much for coming on from The Cocoon, prevention specialist and thank you so much for what you do and all the folks at your agency.

And we appreciate you being here on The Journal.

- Thank you.

- Great.

And you can check us out each week at wbgu.org.

Of course you can watch The Journal every Thursday night at 8:00 PM here on WBGU PBS.

We'll see you again next time and goodnight and good luck.

(upbeat music)