Sharon Brew, who directs the shelter serving abused clients of the Women’s Crisis and Family Outreach Center in Castle Rock, came accidentally to her nearly 14-year career as an advocate for domestic violence victims.
As a college senior, she applied to volunteer at a large social services agency and shelter in Arizona. Someone misdirected her résumé to the agency’s employment office, and Brew found herself hired at the place she expected to volunteer.
She found the work gripping and the clients perennially magnetizing. Despite the many drawbacks – including the dispiriting fact that a typical client cycles in and out of shelters six times before finally quitting an abusive relationship – Brew sees hope and promise in her work.
The location of the shelter remains secret to protect women fleeing from dangerous partners. The Women’s Crisis and Family Outreach Center – the organization changed its name on its 20th anniversary last year – has applied for funding through this year’s Post/News Season to Share campaign.
A woman who calls the center’s crisis line is not allowed to go straight to the shelter.
Instead, a shelter staff member meets her at a public place – a grocery store, for example – to ensure she’s not being followed. Only then does the woman, often pregnant or with children in tow, receive directions to the shelter.
Most of the clients are between 30 and 45 years old. Eight of 10 arrive with a head trauma, often with brain injuries.
Once a physician clears the client, she is assigned one of the shelter’s 12 beds. (There are four cribs for babies.)
Then she begins the laborious process of rebuilding her life.
The first two steps include navigating the legal system and assembling personal identification documents. Abusers often confiscate a woman’s birth certificate, driver’s license, passport, Social Security number, credit cards, etc., leaving her without any evidence of her own existence.
“Isolation, degrading the woman emotionally and abusing her physically, withholding money and medication, the telephone and the car puts her in a helpless, powerless position,” Brew said.
It takes two to three weeks – the typical length of time a client remains in the shelter, though some stay the full 45 days – to collect identification, begin the legal process and find housing and employment.
Many clients are pregnant or have physical and mental disabilities, such as multiple sclerosis – which is increasingly common, Brew says – or bipolar disorder, exacerbated because their abusers hid or destroyed critical medications.
Of the 90 women cycling through the shelter every year, about five are familiar faces.
“We ask what makes it different this time, and they tell us, ‘He knocked out all my teeth this time,’ or ‘My children finally left home and I don’t have to stay anymore,’ or whatever it is that’s important to them,” Brew said.
How to donate
Post-News Season to Share, a fund of the McCormick Tribune Foundation, gave more than $1.73 million to 56 agencies last year serving children, and people who are hungry, homeless or in need of medical care. Donations are matched 50 cents to the dollar, and 100 percent of the donations go to the charitable agencies.
To contribute, please call 1-888-683-4483 or visit seasontoshare.com.
