Murray

Continued from D13

“I didn’t know how daunting it would be,” she said. “CODA was not in a great financial position at the time. Running a residential facility in the middle of a pandemic was challenging. But I like a challenge. It was also really exciting and an opportunity to rebuild this organization from the ground up, a lot of different challenges.”

Predominantly, CODA serves low- to no-income people. “If you have resources, you don’t really need the emergency shelter,” Murray said.

Murray says she never feels herself to be in danger on the job.

“I fear more for our clients’ safety,” she said. “I feel safe working here. There is an element of potentially exposing yourself to dangerous abusers, but an abuser is trying to get to the person they’re connected with.”

Often, however, abusers are invited to the shelter for a peaceful visit.

“If someone’s seeking shelter, it doesn’t mean they’ve cut off their relationship,” Murray said. “It’s a very hard thing for people to do. They don’t necessarily want the relationship to end, they want the abuse to end.” Cameras take in everything that occurs throughout the shelter.

Residents can receive free counseling services to help ween them off abusive relationships and seek out healthy ones.

“Some people have never been in a healthy relationship,” Murray said. “If you haven’t seen a healthy relationship, you don’t know what one looks like.”

Though the success level of getting people out of an abusive climate is not high, seeing one occur is extremely pleasant.

“When we get those clients who go out and get housing and find a way out of their abusive relationship, it is very gratifying,” Murray said. “Seeing those success stories is really inspirational. Most of our clients end up back in those abusive relationships. We see a lot of repeat clients and always want to