Supporting Women after Domestic Violence by Humphreys Cathy Abrahams Hilary

Author:Humphreys, Cathy, Abrahams, Hilary [Abrahams, Hilary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781846426155
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers

Other experiences of refuge life

Eight of the women who talked to me had paid more than one visit to a refuge, and others had spent a few days or weeks in other refuges immediately prior to moving to one of the refuges in this project. Between them, they offered comments on stays in 26 other refuges. Women were rarely certain whether the refuges they went to were run by Women’s Aid members or, in some cases, how many they had been to and exactly where they were. (This was most often the case when the visit had been short and the woman was in the state of shock, numbness and confusion which I have referred to as the Reception phase.) In general, praise and criticism mirrored the comments made about the refuges in the research project. Workers who provided an unhurried reception and respectful approach, explained options and offered emotional as well as practical support and time to talk to them were highly regarded. However, when women arrived in a refuge at the end of a working day and felt that workers wanted to deal with them as quickly as possible so that they could go home, this was experienced as disempowering and reinforcing feelings of worthlessness. Charmian commented: ‘She was waiting to go home and kept saying “Is there anything else you need?” I felt I’d just been dumped there and left to get on with it.’

Some of the refuges that women had stayed in were clearly not affiliated to Women’s Aid, since they offered only warden controlled accommodation. Although this was secure to an extent, women felt very unsupported9 and unable to obtain the practical and emotional help they needed. This was also true of accommodation where there were too few workers for the size of the refuge. In general, it was the smaller communal refuges which were preferred, rather than the larger ones, or those with self-contained accommodation, which were both sometimes experienced as frightening and isolating:

I didn’t like that. There was too many of us…too many of us in one place. Too many. Quite frightening. (Eve)

It was just, it was like an office building and there was just too many floors, too many rooms and…it just weren’t nice at all. Commercialised. They had rooms, TV rooms where you could go, but they were on each floor, so, if you were on that floor, you all stayed there. There was nowhere for you to mix, or meet other people and that. And, like, you didn’t see the staff. You just got up and you was in your room all the time. (Val)

While women acknowledged that some rules and regulations were necessary, both to ensure the security of the refuge and to facilitate refuge life, some of them had experienced workers in other refuges as dictatorial and controlling of their actions and behaviour, thus recreating the abusive behaviour they had come to the refuge to escape. Maryam talked of ‘feeling like a criminal’10 and that ‘if you say

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