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We are called to make a healthy difference in people’s lives.

By Andrea Novel Buck

WhenRachel H. left her boyfriend for good, it was after a crazy night of arguing, listening to his lies and threats, and fighting that resulted in him pulling his arm tight around her neck.

“I walked out,” she said. She believed he had fallen asleep, but either he hadn’t, or she awakened him. “I started the car real quick and drove off.”

Five days earlier, he had threatened to kill her and had blocked her in her car so she couldn’t leave. “I sprinted down Fourth Street in the pouring rain,” she said. “He found me a block away from the gas station. I didn’t make it.” That night she stayed, resolving though, that she needed to leave.

The night she left, she drove around looking for a well-lit place with a camera where she could pull over and call the police. She was afraid he would come after her. Instead, he called the police about her, claiming she was suicidal. The police took Rachel to Safe Haven. It was 3 a.m. “It was so quiet in there,” she said.

Tucked in a Duluth neighborhood, Safe Haven’s Shelter serves about 500 victims of domestic violence each year. Its primary mission is to provide immediate safety to women and their children. Safe Haven also serves about 1,400 men, women and children each year through its secure Resource Center downtown, providing legal advocacy and programs for self-sufficiency and healing.

“We’re keeping people safe from violence in their homes,” said Executive Director Susan Utech. “Your home should be your sanctuary.”

Immediate safety

“Call the hotline: (218) 728-6481,” Utech advised. Safe Haven started serving women 40 years ago as just that — a volunteer-staffed crisis hotline. Soon after, it opened a small shelter in a duplex. By the mid-1980s, it was operating a 16bed shelter in an old home. It built its current 39-bed shelter in 2000 and opened its Resource Center in late 2008.

The call to the hotline begins a relationship with a Safe Haven advocate and initial screening. Do they need medical help, the police, a ride to the shelter, information?

“Advocates are there to support survivors in whatever way they need,” said Brittany Robb, Shelter Supervisor.

On arrival at the shelter, basic needs — sleep, food, water or a cup of coffee, a shower, a clean change of clothing — are met.

Even before her boyfriend threatened to kill her, Rachel reached out to Safe Haven to check on her options. In the 2½ months she and her boyfriend lived together, the fighting had escalated quickly from name calling, throwing things and slamming doors, to breaking things and physical violence. “I emailed them right after it started getting physical,” she said. “I had to leave smart.”

The first night at the shelter, she didn’t sleep much. Her boyfriend called or texted her 50 or 60 times. She was breathless from the near-strangulation. But the bruises on her collarbone and

Continued on page 12 finger marks on her arm wouldn’t show for a day or two. “I knew there wasn’t enough proof, and people wouldn’t believe me,” she recalled thinking that night. She didn’t know what she was going to do next.

Moving forward

Her advocate helped her sort things out and explained the resources Safe Haven could offer. “I thought, I’m going to do it all, and I’m just going to heal.”

When Rachel met with police the next day at the shelter, her advocate was there. The police arrested her boyfriend on misdemeanor domestic assault then upped the charge to felony strangulation. He was released from jail two days later. Her advocate accompanied her to the Resource Center and helped write an order for protection against him.

In the days that followed, her advocate helped Rachel get her name off the lease she had signed for the apartment she shared with her abuser. She helped her get her belongings from the apartment and put them in storage. She helped her apply for restitution for her TV and other personal property he had damaged.

Rachel stayed at the shelter 56 days, going to work as much as she could but taking time off for appointments with police, a mental health therapist, a housing advocate. “I needed to stay at the shelter until I found a place to stay I could afford,” she said.

“Usually, the shelter is the absolute last resort,” said Robb, noting that most women come there after a severe episode of violence or lengthy history of abuse. It is communal living with people you don’t know who also are in crisis, she said.

“Sometimes a woman is so badly beaten, she can barely walk. Others show no physical signs of abuse but when we talk, it’s like peeling back the layers of an onion,” Robb said.

The average stay at the shelter is 22 days. Some women may have just needed a safe place that night, then reach out to friends or relatives.

On average, a woman will leave an abusive partner seven times before she leaves for good, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “When women come into the

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