Domestic violence victims don’t always match the stereotype. You know, the one of the woman with black eyes, broken arms, busted lips and bruises.
There’s some of that, make no mistake. But physical abuse is just one small piece of the complex puzzle. Most domestic violence victims endure emotional and psychological abuse that is far more painful and long-lasting than a broken arm.
And here’s the other thing: domestic violence victims aren’t just women. The victims are also the children involved in the situations, whether they are witnesses or direct victims of the abuse.
Women & Children First board chair Cathy Browne elaborates. “It’s very serious because at the time the woman is going through all of this all she’s doing is protecting those kids. She’s not loving and nurturing those kids. They’re not crawling up in her lap. They’re being quiet and they’re not being kids because the mom is so fearful. Their whole childhood dynamic is different.”
The women who seek refuge at Women & Children First, the state’s oldest domestic violence shelter, have to learn how to be a mom again. “They come in and they almost have post traumatic stress disorder,” Cathy says. “Part of their decompression, if you will, is learning to have those kids crawl back up in their lap, and learning to nurture their children again and pay attention to their needs.”
Keeping the Doors Open
Founded in 1975, Women & Children First (WCF) was called Advocates for Battered Women until the early 2000s. Considering the number of children the organization served, the name hardly represented the scope of WCF’s work. Plus, there wasn’t enough awareness of WCF, and it desperately needed more funding. That’s where Cindy Murphy came in.
“I was initially contacted by Frank Cox, who was on the board and was at the time the CEO of Cranford [Johnson Robinson Woods],” recalls Cindy. “He called to ask me for some help with a fundraiser that they were doing in two months. I had never heard of it. As community relations director for Channel 7 for over a decade, that was most unfortunate that I had never heard of it. He said they thought they needed a more positive name, and I said, ‘What you need for your fundraiser is branding.’ So that’s why I came on board.”
Cindy took the organization’s annual event, simply called “The Auction,” from a $25 per person event that netted around $8,000 to an event called Caribbean Cabaret that brings in around $80,000. Then she created the Woman of the Year Gala, which she says brings in around 33 percent of WCF’s annual budget. Two more fundraisers round out the roster: Vegas on the Rocks — put on by WCF’s young professionals group, The Peacekeepers — and the shopping event, Pop Up Shop.
“Probably all of those fundraisers combined bring in around 45 percent of the annual operating expenses,” she says. “I can’t name another nonprofit that has to raise that kind of money to stay open.”
Cathy, Cindy and WCF’s executive director Angela McGraw agree that money is the organization’s greatest need. The Arkansas Coalition Against Domestic Violence distributes state and federal funding to all of Arkansas’ 31 affiliated shelters. The problem is that the money, around $18,000 per shelter, is distributed evenly, regardless of size and need of the shelter.
“The state and federal governments want us to do more, but they’re not giving us any more money,” says Cathy. “They’re not giving us any more money than the tiny shelter with six beds,” Cindy adds. “So many people rely on us, and for years and years, we’ve had the 1-800 hotline for the state to help refer callers to the nearest shelter.”
WCF works with the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence to help victims from all over the country. For instance, there may be a victim who lives in New York who has a sister in Dallas that she can stay with. The National Coalition identifies all of the shelters along the way that can house the victim until she reaches her destination.
“We are the one from Arkansas that always receives that call,” Cindy says. “We house people from all over.”
“There’s a large percentage of our money that goes to personnel and funding,” Angela adds. “In a lot of organizations, funders look down on that, but it’s our employees, our team here, that actually helps each of our guests move through here. We never seem to have enough people here to help them with all of the needs that they have.”
WCF offers a spectrum of services at no cost to those it serves, including immediate crisis intervention, case management and emotional support. They also assist in-house clients with housing, employment, medical care, legal services and transportation. Support groups for in-house and outreach clients teach life skills, conflict resolution, healthy relationships, employment preparation and parenting skills. It takes a big team, and lots of dollars, to perform these tasks even at a basic level for a small number of women and children. WCF is often filled to capacity. But even then, they don’t turn people away.
“Although our numbers aren’t really high right now, just two months ago, we were at 60 people in the shelter [54 is capacity], and I was having to house guests in hotels,” Angela says, explaining that it’s a cost that the shelter incurs.
“Anyone who donates to WCF can be confident that their donations are directly supporting our guests in the shelter by providing all that they need during their stay,” she adds. “We are 100 percent committed to the success of WCF, and our history proves that. In joining us, you become family.”
In addition to money, WCF accepts donations of almost anything you can think of — non-perishable foods and frozen items to stock the kitchen, toiletries and clothes and shoes for all ages.
There are also plenty of opportunities to volunteer. There’s always something to be done at the shelter — a 100-year-old, two-story home — and the kids thrive on positive adult interaction. Every Thursday night, volunteers participate in activities with the kids, whether it’s playing basketball or making crafts.
“It’s not focused on trauma, but more to just get their minds off of why they’re here right now,” says Angela who has plans to expand the child area in the coming year, as long as funds allow.
“We have a lot of kids come in and they’re just mad and they don’t know how to handle that. They’re out of their house and they don’t have their dog and don’t understand what Mom is doing,” Cathy says. “There’s so much more we could do if we had the funding. We’re doing amazing things with the funds that we have and the people we can hire, but there’s potential to do so much more.”
(For more, see Survivor Stories from Women & Children First Graduates)
A Heart for Victims
Cathy describes her passion for WCF like this: “I had a hole in my heart that I didn’t know about. It’s all filled up now.”
She got involved with WCF about five years ago, when she and her husband of almost 17 years, Hank Browne (of Hank’s Fine Furniture), were hosting the Crescendo Party for the Symphony Designer House.
Cindy, already active on the board of WCF, was looking for someone to donate dining room furniture for a family center renovation at the shelter. At the time, B98.5’s Lisa Fischer was doing commercials with Hank, so Cindy emailed Lisa to ask her who she should talk to.
That person, of course, was Cathy. The two emailed back and forth, then met at the Symphony Designer House Girls Night Out party that, coincidentally, Cindy was sponsoring. The women chatted over a glass of wine and have been friends since. Needless to say, Cathy agreed to provide the furniture.
“And Cindy said, ‘You really need to see where this is going.’ So I go to the shelter and I see all this construction and this 100-year-old house,” Cathy says. “We build all our own buildings [for Hank’s] and we have our own construction crew. I immediately thought ‘I can make a difference, like, tomorrow.’” She was hooked.
“A lot of this has been on Cindy’s shoulders. And I’m not talking about the events, I’m talking about the sustainability of the organization,” Cathy says. “So my way of paying her back for this is to do whatever I can to take as much off of her and create an organization that is well-known statewide, well-funded statewide and run it like a business.”
As the marketing and web manager of Hank’s Fine Furniture stores in Arkansas, Texas, Alabama and Florida, running a business is second nature to Cathy. And her business acumen is invaluable to WCF.
“All of the state and federal funding is drying up, but the need of our mission is not drying up,” she says. “We have a moral obligation to the state of Arkansas to be the place that women come that need us. Because we don’t have that federal and state funding, we have to find the money somewhere. And so, we have to bring [donors] in and hook them, maybe not as strongly as I was hooked,” she says, laughing. But we have to keep them thinking about doing planned giving and thinking about this organization that does so much with so little. We’re like the little engine that could. We just keep going and going.”
Becoming Empowered
In addition to being a domestic violence survivor herself, Angela has years of domestic violence training under her belt. She worked at WCF from 2001 to 2004 as a family advocate, then the organization’s first transitional housing coordinator. She has a bachelor’s degree in human services with a specialization in victim/survivor services and a master of science in marriage, children and family counseling with a concentration in trauma and crisis therapy. She is a 2005 graduate of the Advanced Institute on Violence and Victim Studies. She holds numerous certifications and has years of experience in the field. She knows the territory, to say the least.
When she returned to WCF as director a few years ago, she and her colleagues took a critical look at the language they used and how they interacted with the women and children at the shelter.
“I started to become very sensitive about language and how powerful it really is,” she says. “‘Client’ and ‘resident’ already have that indication that there’s someone who has power over you. We didn’t want that to be the case here because they’re the experts of their own lives. The only word we could come up with that would make them feel like this is their place is ‘guest.’ We don’t want them to get comfortable here and want to stay. That is not the objective. But we want them to feel wanted and able and empowered to move forward.”
More changes followed, including adopting the Empowerment Model, in which power is placed back in the hands of the abused. Abusers use control to keep domestic abuse survivors afraid yet reluctant to leave. From controlling a survivor’s ability to go places, hold a job or access money, see friends or family and spend time with their children, abusers use control to maintain the victim’s dependence. When a survivor decides to get help, she doesn’t want someone else telling her what to do.
Some shelters across the state still confiscate cell phones when victims enter the shelter, believing that the women may contact their abusers. WCF no longer does this.
“Until they’re ready to break that tie, they’re going to contact their abuser, whether we take their phones or not. Our goal is to empower victims of domestic violence to break the cycle of violence in their lives,” Angela says. “We believe in transparency, communication and teamwork.”
When women first enter the shelter, they’re in crisis mode and just want to rest and calm down, she explains. Then they have to decide if they want to stay. After that, they have to try and find a job and daycare, if they need it. “All of those things take time,” Angela says. “They’re still not in the place where they’re ready for counseling and support groups. We’ll strongly encourage them to at least make it to the domestic violence support group because, if nothing else, you want to learn the red flags of how not to get back into these relationships.”
But support groups aren’t mandatory; the women have to want to go and get help.
Once they’ve made it 45 to 60 days in the shelter and shown signs of self-sufficiency, Angela says, they’re ready for graduation. A ceremony is held in their honor and they share what they’ve learned about themselves and how they’re ready to move on.
The women also receive a special, custom-designed necklace from Sissy’s Log Cabin. All of WCF’s former guests who have graduated wear them, and they are the only people who have them. They are meant to be reminders of what the women have overcome, and where they’re going in the future.
“That way, as Bill [Jones] put it, when they see each other in the mall or the grocery store, they’ll know,” Cindy says. “It’s a sisterhood of women who have survived and went on to lead productive lives.”
Domestic Violence By the Numbers
24: Number of guests at WCF at press time; 12 adults and 12 children
250: The number of children served by WCF’s Children’s Program*
582: The number of individuals who received emergency shelter accommodations at WCF*
12,542: The number of crisis calls answered by the Domestic Violence Hotline*
86%: Percent of WCF guests whose income is at or below $10K annually
*2014 stats
Event of the Decade
Since WCF’s fundraisers provide so much of the organization’s annual operating expenses, the organization’s largest annual event is of paramount importance. This year marks the 10th for the Woman of the Year Gala, and Cathy, Cindy and others wanted to put on a unique event that would get attention.
“Our women who are committed to this mission are so important,” Cindy says. “But for our 10th anniversary, we thought it was also important to celebrate the support of the men who have been very supportive of WCF behind the scenes.” And with that, Men Behind the Mission was born.
“It was Cindy’s brilliant idea,” Cathy says. “She started pitching it and we were like, ‘I don’t know.’ The more she talked though, the more we liked it. Now we love it.”
Ricardo Sotomora, Chip Murphy, George Gleason and Chuck Erwin will be formally feted at a gala held at the Marriott Little Rock Grand Ballroom on Feb. 6. “It will be very masculine and elegant,” Cindy says, with a dinner featuring the honorees’ favorite dishes, sides and desserts. A special tribute, along with live music and dancing, will follow dinner.
For more info about the event, or WCF services, visit the new website, WCFArkansas.org. If you are are a victim of domestic violence and need help, call the hotline at (800) 332-4443.