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Episode Thirteen: Shattering the Silence on Domestic Abuse
382 Plays7 months ago
In honor of Mother's Day, this special episode takes a personal turn as Romona Jackson, founding president and CEO of the Women's Advocacy Center, discusses the often stigmatized topic of domestic abuse. Despite the empowerment of women in modern society, the blame and shame surrounding domestic violence persist. Romona sheds light on the far-reaching impact of domestic abuse, which extends beyond the household and affects entire communities.
This episode explores the origins of the Women's Advocacy Center, the reasons behind the lingering stigma, and the critical intersections between domestic abuse, mental health, and substance abuse.
Don't miss Romona's insights on an upcoming forum that aims to raise awareness and provide support for survivors.
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Transcript
Introduction to Guardians of Hope
00:00:09
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Welcome to the Guardians of Hope podcast where we bring together parents, nonprofits, legal, and medical experts dedicated to positively impacting children's lives. Before we begin, this content should not be used as legal or medical advice.
00:00:26
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The purpose of this podcast is to inform and unite. So please seek advice from your attorney or doctor to address your specific needs. The thoughts and opinions of my guests are not necessarily my own. This is a platform for sharing.
Mother's Day Special with Ramona Jackson
00:00:43
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In honor of Mother's Day and in the spirit of celebrating women everywhere, this episode is a bit more personal.
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I've invited my first guest, Ramona Jackson, founding president and CEO of the Women's Advocacy Center to join me to talk about domestic abuse. Ramona, welcome back. Hey, Cynthia. It's so great to be back again.
00:01:06
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Thank you. There's still so much stigma around domestic abuse. Even today, as women are more empowered and independent, the blame and shame still exists. I think people are missing the point that when domestic abuse happens, it's not just the victim's problem.
00:01:25
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Women who are mostly the victims in cases are more than what they do in a household. They own businesses, they're consumers, friends, and most importantly, they raise future generations. Therefore, domestic abuse impacts everyone, the entire community.
Empowering Survivors in Rural and Suburban Areas
00:01:45
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Ramona, please tell us about your organization and how you got started. Thanks so much, Cynthia. Well, at the Women's Advocacy Center, our mission is
00:01:55
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simple but complex. Our mission is to empower and support survivors of domestic abuse. And we do that in a multitude of ways, mostly by offering them support services. And we specifically serve the rural and suburban communities of the county in which we operate. And the reason that we do that is because women in those specific areas often don't have access to public or social support services.
00:02:22
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And particularly if you are a survivor of domestic abuse, there aren't the kind of services that we offer. The services we have are very comprehensive. We offer some financial assistance to ladies to help with things like counseling or wellness sessions, financial and budgeting sessions. We also offer a biweekly support group that is now turned into an every week support group.
00:02:49
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We offer assistance to prepare to find a job or to reenter the job market. We offer services that will help ladies with legal representation and everything that someone would need to help stabilize their family, we try to offer that. And the way I like to think about it, Cynthia, is that we try to remove those obstacles that would keep ladies in a situation where they're going to be abused or that would cause them to say, you know what, this is just too hard. I need to go back.
00:03:17
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into that abusive relationship because it's a lot easier. Someone else is paying the bills. Someone else is taking care of all of the responsibilities. And we don't want ladies to have the challenge of living on their own as an obstacle to living safely and securely in their communities. What we want them to be able to do is to have economic independence, to be able to have healthy relationships, to be able to have stable families, and then in many cases to strengthen their faith.
00:03:47
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Ramona, you do so much and these services that you provide are so necessary.
Understanding Stigma Around Domestic Abuse
00:03:53
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I remember when I left my relationship, I had a place to go and I felt empowered, but what I was missing was simple understanding. Oh, yes. And I feel like there's still so much stigma around domestic abuse and people just don't want to talk about it. I am curious to know why you think there's still so much stigma.
00:04:18
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Well, I mean, there are a number of reasons Cynthia, but I really would put forth three big reasons. One, I think is a misunderstanding. Sometimes there is an old way of thinking that, well, she must have done something. She is difficult or in the Bible belt, people might think she's not an obedient wife or some of these old kinds of ways of thinking about relationships.
00:04:43
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But just a misunderstanding about why someone would become a victim of abuse. Perhaps they're thinking it's something that she brought on as a result of who she is. And I think just a misunderstanding of exactly why a man would be abusive. Sometimes people think that it's because he has an anger management problem or it's because he drinks or has some other challenge with some kind of substance abuse.
00:05:10
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Well, those things can certainly factor in to why someone might be an abuser, but really it's about power and control. And a lot of people don't like to think that it could just be boiled down to those two simple things, power and control. Someone wants to exert power and control over another individual and they will use all different ways to do that. They'll use finance, they'll use the Bible, they'll use physical force, they will use
00:05:37
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the children as a weapon against the mom, they will use a lot of different tools to try to exert that power and control. So just misunderstanding exactly the nature of domestic abuse, and that's one of the reasons we don't use the word violence, is because immediately people think about, well, someone who's being physically harmed, which does happen, but there are all these other ways that people are harmed that often don't get discussed.
00:06:02
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The second thing, the second reason I think that there's a stigma is that there are these myths that women are somehow less than in society and maybe whatever happens in the home should stay in the home and other people shouldn't put their noses in what's happening in someone else's home and the man has the final say and all of those kinds of myths play into the stigma that gets attached to
00:06:30
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domestic abuse. And it is one of the reasons I think sometimes in the Bible Belt that women don't come forth and say, hey, I'm being abused because they are worried about what people are going to think about them, the victim, as opposed to thinking about, well, this is something that is happening to me. It's not something that I'm causing. And then the last reason I think that there is stigma is because there are misogynistic attitudes. A lot of the culture will objectify women. There is music.
00:07:00
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that paints women in a negative light and uses really pejorative terms towards women. And so that kind of environment can cause sometimes this macho attitude where men feel like, well, I can do what I want. I can say what I want. I can treat her however I want. And there's really not a repercussion for that. No one's going to call me on that. Now in recent years, we have seen these really high profile cases where there has been
00:07:29
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a calling on some system to hold a man accountable for what he has done. But in the everyday life of women who, like you said, who are just kind of living an ordinary life and trying to exist in a relationship where there's domestic abuse, there aren't a lot of systems in place to really call men into account for the behavior that they have demonstrated against a partner.
00:07:58
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You're so right. Now, let's talk about other areas that affect women or people in this situation,
Intersections of Domestic Abuse
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right? So domestic abuse often intersects with other community-wide issues like mental health and substance abuse, among others. This is critical, and we need to talk about this more, Ramona. What are your thoughts?
00:08:22
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I think you're absolutely right, Cynthia. I don't think that there is enough discussion about these co-occurring issues. A lot of research is done around these co-occurring issues, but in the larger community conversations, that's just not happening. And I think now is a great time for you to be having this podcast and others like you have had where there have been discussions around mental health and how does that show up and what are some treatments and some resources to help people who are faced with that.
00:08:50
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But as it relates to domestic abuse, mental health is really a challenge. Women are very vulnerable. They are oftentimes seen as being very emotional when there's a court proceeding, or sometimes they're just misdiagnosed when they're trying to get mental health assistance. And they really don't often have advocates that talk about this need for mental health for survivors of domestic abuse. And so at the Women's Advocacy Center,
00:09:20
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facilitate women getting the counseling and the mental health resources that they need, because we do recognize that domestic abuse is traumatizing. Living in an environment where someone is either physically harming you, emotionally, psychologically harming you, or using technology to harm you, then that creates sometimes a disruption in someone's mental health. It can create depression, women can suffer from anxiety,
00:09:50
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post-traumatic stress disorder. So there are a lot of mental health challenges that are associated with domestic abuse. And I think that just because of who we are as women, sometimes that gets overlooked. We're considered emotional and well, maybe even exaggerating or perhaps even just lying to be able to punish someone. But that's really not the case. 98% of the time when women talk about domestic abuse happening, they're telling the truth.
00:10:18
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And they're telling the truth about the mental health struggles that are the result of what they have experienced. And so many women don't want to talk about this. I covered this in my last episode where they're afraid that their kids are going to be taken away. Oh, sure. They're not getting the help that they really need because of what people are going to think about them and how it's going to impact their homes.
00:10:44
Speaker
Well, and it's true. And if I could say this, you know, in some states there are laws where if someone fails to protect a child where abuse is happening in the home, it penalizes the victim as opposed to penalizing the abuser. And there have been instances where children have been removed from their mom because the systems that are in place believe that she failed to protect those children.
00:11:12
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And sometimes it's because she failed because she didn't have anywhere to go. She didn't have the resources to leave. She didn't have the transportation to leave. She didn't have the support system. And so oftentimes women will just stay silent because they don't want to face losing their children or have some other negative impact if they come forth and say, hey, this is what's been happening to me. They might be considered as the person who is at fault and they might be the one that is punished as opposed to the abuser.
00:11:41
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or even in conjunction with the abuser. And I'm saying women, although we know that domestic abuse can happen to men, but the women that we, the people that we serve at the Women's Advocacy Center are just women. Ramona, tell me about your upcoming forum.
Raising Awareness: Women's Advocacy Forum
00:11:58
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Okay. Yeah. So we have this forum that we host just about every year where we really try to raise awareness about domestic abuse.
00:12:08
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And this year, the forum is focused on the systems that allow domestic abuse to continue. And that might sound like a strange topic to discuss, and your listeners might be thinking, well, what does that entail? Well, it really just entails looking at things like the judicial system and how are abusers punished, what happens after an arrest, what is the order protection process like,
00:12:36
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And what kind of available support is there in a community like a suburban community that would be available to survivors of domestic abuse? We'll look at the education system. What's the role of a counselor? What's the role of a principal or a teacher when they have a suspicion that maybe a family that is being served by the educational institution is experiencing domestic abuse? And also the healthcare system. What happens when
00:13:02
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a victim shows up at the hospital. What's the protocol that would intervene and maybe get her connected to resources that might offer her what she needs? And then legislature. So what happens when there is a bill that is put forth that is, as I said earlier, perhaps going to penalize a victim or just not expanding or maintaining the rights that victims have? So I'm really excited about this community forum. It's happening on May the 16th. It's virtual.
00:13:32
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And you can go to our website, which is www.womensadvocacycenter.org to sign up. It's $25 or pay what you can. The main purpose of this community forum is to raise awareness and to really begin to have these discussions like you're having with your guests, Cynthia.
00:13:52
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out loud and to be talking about what's happening in our communities because the more that we talk about it, the more people are educated, the more likely we are to have a trauma-informed community who can respond appropriately to survivors of domestic abuse. That's right, Ramona. Thank you so much. Your organization is very close to my heart, as you know, so I really appreciate you taking the time to talk more about it and what you all do.
00:14:19
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Well, thank you, Cynthia. We just appreciate being a part of the discussion. And I applaud you for this podcast and bringing together so many various voices to talk about not just how children are impacted by so many things that they experience, but just giving a broad conversation, giving room for a broad conversation about this topic is really important. Thank you, Ramona.
00:14:46
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To register and attend the Women's Advocacy Center's upcoming forum, click the link on the podcast description and you'll find the link there. And to learn more about the Women's Advocacy Center, go to thewomensadvocacycenter.org.