Editor’s note: This is the second in a four part series on domestic violence. The first part ran in July. The third part of the series will run in late September with the series culminating in October, which is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Life doesn’t get any less complicated for a survivor of domestic violence after leaving the abuser.

Once away safely, a survivor will look around and ask, “What now?”

After finding a place to live, a way to get around, a job and perhaps child care or a new school, the next step is to figure out how to build a life that doesn’t repeat the patterns the survivor just escaped.

And at some point, especially if a survivor has kids, it will be important to work with them on ways to prevent the cycle of abuse from continuing.

For the adults

In King County there are a number of programs offered to survivors by nonprofit organizations such as the YWCA of Southeast King County, the Jennifer Beach Foundation, the Covington Domestic Violence Task Force and DAWN, in addition to a number of other offerings by Washington state such as the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, Women, Infant and Children, job search assistance and retraining offered by Work Source and Washington Women’s Employment and Education, as well as the Safe Havens Visitation Center in Kent, which is part of the Center for Children and Youth Justice.

Keith Beach, founder of The Jennifer Beach Foundation, partnered with Jennifer Quiroz, a community advocate from the YWCA, in early 2006 to offer a class called Hope and Power For Your Personal Finances for survivors.

“I was an accountant in another life and have a passion for financial literacy,” Beach said. “It is a free 10 session course plus three follow up classes that includes education in financial topics such as banking, budgeting, saving, credit report review, borrowing, investing, insurance, debt management as well as non-financial topics such as housing, education, legal rights and advocacy for survivors and self-esteem and self confidence building.”

Beach explained that the abuser in a relationship often uses what he described as “economic abuse” to control a victim.

“No money or no skill in how to manage money limits a person’s ability to free themselves from being dependent upon someone else,” he said. “Abusers know this and use it against victims.”

Since first offering the class, more than 200 students have participated, most of whom found it through the YWCA which offers a comprehensive list of services for victims.

There was one student, Beach said, who had left a particularly strong impression on him while they were discussing net worth during one of the classes.

“One of the things that we always have to caution the women in this class is that their net worth isn’t their personal worth,” he said. “They equate that number on a piece of paper to who they are as a person. This one woman stood up and she had a tear coming from her eye and she said, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’ I told her, ‘I know you got up this morning, then you made breakfast, that you drove here, so I know you are capable of doing anything in this class.’ She said nobody had ever told her she was capable of doing anything. She didn’t give up in class that day.”

This particular survivor more than a year and a half later has written a book of poems and is looking for a publisher.

“That is something she might not have even had the confidence to even try before working her way through our class,” Beach said.

Quiroz said the class covers things that are really important for survivors and “we’re very proud of it.”

In her work with the YWCA, Quiroz said, she meets one-on-one with victims (she primarily works with women, but, many programs available in the area are open to men, as well) on every level they need to break away from the abuser.

“If we are not able to help, we’ll make referrals to other agencies, for example to therapy, for very complicated legal cases, or for clothes or diapers, etc.,” Quiroz said. “We will discuss during that visit whatever her specific concerns are, we don’t have an agenda ourselves. And then we’re available on an on-going basis if she has more questions later, or her circumstances change and she needs different help. All of our services are voluntary, which means we don’t do any on-going ‘case management.’ We are available as much or as little as a survivor might need us. We are available to meet with survivors from all over South King County.”

In addition, Quiroz speaks Spanish while fellow advocate Milena Chausheva speaks Russian, and they can find interpreters as needed for other languages.

The YWCA also offers support groups, Quiroz said, for survivors.

“That’s a great way for women to be able to share their experience in a safe, non-judgmental place and to see that she’s not alone,” she said. “We discuss the violence that has happened and how they’ve been affected, but we also focus a lot on moving forward. So, we talk a lot about self-esteem, self-care, setting boundaries, setting goals, etc.”

For as long as the YWCA has offered help to domestic violence victims, Chausheva explained, there have been support groups. They are available in Renton, Kent, Auburn and two in Federal Way. Each group has between five and 10 members.

And a group just started on Aug. 16 in Covington.

“Four people came,” Chausheva said. “Hopefully for the future we will have more.”

Members of the support groups learn about safety planning and how to be safe without living in fear, the dynamics of violence within an intimate relationship and in society, to understand how domestic violence has affected their lives and how to move forward as well as how to develop personal goals and achieve them.

They also work on what they can do as individuals to fight domestic violence in their own lives and in society, build self-esteem and confidence, take better care of themselves as well as share resources.

“This is a place to learn from each other’s positive and negative experiences, what has worked and what hasn’t and how to move more easily ‘through the system,’” Chausheva said. “In our support group we have women from different cultures and ethnicity and sharing their life and experience. There is no language barrier. They all speak the same language — violence — and that language is not tolerable in any culture. It is amazing to see how these people build their self esteem and move on with their life. They are coming desperate and leave with confidence.”

For the kids

Working with children who have witnessed and survived domestic violence is just as crucial as working with the victim who was part of the intimate partner relationship.

The Jennifer Beach Foundation began offering a Kids Club class in the spring. The 10-week program is designed to help children that have been raised in a domestic violence environment.

“One of the main reasons these classes are so important is because children that are raised in a domestic violence environment but are not directly physically, sexually or emotionally abused are sometimes overlooked,” Beach said. “In recent years there has been much more attention paid to this group. What they have heard, what they have seen and the after effects of violence going on inside the home will sometimes leave psychological scars or create impressions of role models that will be copied as they grow up. Our hope with Kids Club is to break that cycle. We have fun with the kids while teaching them new lessons and discussing healthier behaviors.”

DAWN also offers a Kids Club program, but it is a bit different, though it has the same goal. It is for children ages 6-12 years old who are living in shelter and “have been exposed to domestic violence already through their parents’ relationship,” according to Executive Director Cheryl Bozarth.

“In terms of prevention, it helps them understand what healthy relationships look like and how to establish boundaries and enforce them when they need to,” Bozarth said.

In addition, DAWN works with local therapists to provide help for kids who have witnessed domestic violence.

Quiroz said the YWCA also offers a Children’s Advocacy Program.

“We have three children’s advocates who provide a 10-week in-home curriculum for the non-abusive parent and the children together,” she said. “During the program they cover safety planning with the kids, feelings, anger, and much more. Part of the program is also the DV Children’s Response Team, which is a partnership between the YWCA, DAWN, and Sound Mental Health.”

Then there is Safe Havens Visitation Center in Kent, added Victoria Throm, founder of the Covington Domestic Violence Task Force and human services specialist for the city of Covington.

“It is the only child visitation center in the county to protect the adult as well as the child,” Throm said. “They provide safe, accessible, culturally sensitive supervised visitation and safe exchanges for families affected by intimate partner violence.”

It is important to understand, Throm noted, that when an abusive relationship ends visitation can become the way “batterers can continue their abuse by stalking, interrogating the children, convincing them to take sides, sending messages to or undermining the other parent.”

Safe Havens is open seven days a week, Throm said, and currently serves five families from Covington.

For teens

All of these organizations are now looking at ways to work with teens to prevent domestic violence by helping them recognize patterns of abuse early on, but it’s a challenge due to funding and the intense focus that crisis intervention for victims tends to draw.

There is, however, a shift not just on a local level but on national level among advocates to find ways to offer prevention programs to young people, explained Kelly Starr, communications coordinator for the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

WSCADV recently partnered with the Seattle Mariners in an effort to win a $200,000 Pepsi Refresh grant to work with baseball coaches who work with youth.

“The project would focus on mentoring younger athletes to messages of honor and respect… to teach non-violence to athletes,” Starr said. “We have actually partnered with (the Mariners) for the last 13 years on the Refuse to Abuse campaign. That’s how they knew about us. They are really committed to having a voice and contributing to ending domestic violence in the community.”

The Pepsi Refresh grant came about because the soda company decided rather than spending money on Super Bowl commercials they would put those advertising dollars to work. Each month Pepsi doles out grants for projects all over the country.

While the Mariners didn’t win the $200,000 grant after five weeks of voting, Starr said, a lot of good came out of the campaign to get people to vote for it online.

“The great thing about our project is that there was so much grass roots mobilizing to get the word out about the vote,” she said. “This had the great side benefit of people all across the country talking about domestic violence.”

By getting conversations going, the effort to raise awareness was definitely achieved, and the Mariners did earn a $5,000 grant which Starr said everyone is excited about.

“The plan for us is to keep building on this partnership and to look for other potential funding sources to do this work,” she said. “Domestic violence is complicated and we need to bring the community in. We all have a role in ending it.”

Another key program for working teens, Starr said, is something called “In Their Shoes: Teens and Dating Violence.”

“That started with a family whose teenage daughter was murdered,” she said. “They were saying, ‘People need to be talking about this.’ It’s another way of looking at prevention and earlier intervention. This is about us as communities having conversations with teens.”

“In Their Shoes” is a training kit for any group of adults such as teachers, counselors, youth group leaders, law enforcement, or parents.

Participants become one of six teen characters. They make choices about their relationships and move through the scenario by reading about interactions with their dating partner, family, friends, police, counselors, and others. The teen characters are based on the experiences of real teens that include sexting, pregnancy, homophobia and stalking.

It was released by WSCADV in May on the anniversary of the death of Dayna Fure who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2004 just before she would have graduated from Stanwood High School.

“Our goal is to make a difference in the lives of others,” said Melody Hafner, mother of Dayna Fure, in a statement. “I feel that my daughter did what she thought was right, but many people that she went to for advice needed more knowledge. It is my hope that when people experience ‘In Their Shoes’ they get more information about what to look and listen for.”

According to the American Journal of Public Health, one in three teens has experienced some form of abuse in dating relationships.

It’s important, Starr noted, that adults understand that teen dating relationships are different compared to adult relationships. Teens have told advocacy organizations like WSCADV that adults need to understand that in order to have meaningful conversations about teen dating violence as well as how to provide help.

Beach also has plans to do more work with teenagers after a successful one-off program at Kentridge High School in the spring of 2008.

His foundation matched funds from the South King County Community Network. He then connected with a youth group at a church in Covington and asked them if they wanted to tackle the issue of teen dating violence.

“They came up with some great ideas,” Beach said. “One of the students was a member of the ASB at Kentridge High School. He went to the administration and asked if he could do an assembly.”

The theme of the assembly, which drew more than 400 students, was “Have You Had Enough?”

There were role play scenarios where both boys and girls were the aggressor in the relationship and Beach said there was a great deal of audience interaction.

“One of the more impactful things was that we had a 27-year-old Seattle school district teacher come and talk about her first boyfriend who was abusive,” Beach said. “She didn’t realize it had messed up her life until she was in college. You could hear a pin drop while she was speaking.”

In the future, Beach hopes to create a student board of directors for the foundation “so that we can reach teenagers using their voices, their language and their ideas so we can raise awareness that there is help.”

He also hopes to provide resources to teens who experience not just dating violence but bullying and other issues along those lines.

Beach is also hoping to partner with the Covington DVTF to provide the “In Their Shoes” program at local high schools during the upcoming school year.

“Hopefully it will give them a different perspective,” he said. “Hopefully it will change their behavior in the future.”