4,671

That's how many victims Philly's only domestic violence shelter turned away last year.

by Holly Otterbein

Neal Santos NO ROOM: Crisis intervention counselor Eyevette Wilson has to turn domestic violence victims away when the shelter can't accommodate them.

[ consequences ]

In the end, their cases will be labeled simply: "dismissed."

But to Mike Gallagher, a former domestic violence detective for the Philadelphia Police Department, they're unbearably more complex. In his Center City office, the kindly Irishman describes a troubling scene that he says played out time and time again during his 20-year career: A woman is beaten by her boyfriend or husband. She calls 911, but later rescinds her statement because she fears she won't be able to put food on the table without his income or, worse, her life will be put at risk. Finally, after months, even years of abuse, she makes the vexing decision to testify against him. But then, right there in the courtroom, she suddenly can't go through with it.

"I'd look into a courtroom, and see the offender on one side, and the survivor on the other," says Gallagher. "Then I'd see the family of the offender — he's got support. But she sits there by herself. At that point, she leaves. She can't get up there by herself. Her supports aren't there, they've eroded. And the case gets dismissed."

Creating such a support system is the raison d'être of Gallagher's new employer, Women Against Abuse (WAA), a Philly nonprofit that provides services to domestic violence victims. One of these is furnishing battered women (and sometimes men) with court advocates for educational and emotional guidance.

For now, there's just enough money to keep that service, and Gallagher's job as WAA's police liaison, alive. But that could change. Certainly, WAA has had to give up on other sorely needed programs because it didn't have the cash.

In the midst of the boisterous Library Wars of 2008, the city slashed $296,268 from its annual allocation to WAA, which meant the organization had to reduce its operating budget by 10 percent. Five years before that, the state government cut all funds for domestic violence services in Pennsylvania by 4.7 percent. To top it off, lawmakers haven't increased the marriage license fee that funds domestic violence services through the state's Act 222 since its inception 20 years ago. (By comparison, the minimum wage has risen more than 90 percent, from $3.80 to $7.25, over the same period.)

So, in 2009, WAA employees braced themselves for the worst: "We knew it was going to have an impact," says Heather Keafer, WAA's director of fund development and communications. "But we had no idea it was going to be this bad."

To be clear, Keafer is not referring to the number of employees that WAA had to lay off — though there were 19 of those, out of 90 — or even the crucial children's services that have fallen by the wayside. She's talking about the number of victims looking for an escape that WAA has had to plumb turn away.

WAA's primary service is to provide emergency shelter to domestic violence victims. In fact, it is the one and only domestic violence shelter in the city, with room for roughly 100 people at a time. Ideally, though, WAA would have space for many more.

In 2008, before the city budget cuts, WAA had to turn away 1,705 people who needed shelter. A year later, in 2009, it turned away 4,671 victims — nearly three times as many. Worse yet, it seems as though this may have caused, or at least correlated with, WAA's worst nightmare: an increase in domestic homicides. Though the city's overall homicide rate dropped in 2009 — by about 9 percent since 2008 — the domestic homicide rate skyrocketed. It's up 71 percent, from 21 to 36 homicides, in that same time period.

The increased need shouldn't be surprising: There is a long-established link between financial hardship and domestic violence. According to a study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, domestic violence occurs three times as often in families under serious financial strain. A study by the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence reports that 93 percent of domestic violence victims in shelters ask for help with financial problems.

Domestic violence victims could opt to go to a city homeless shelter when WAA is full, but they often don't. Though city shelters offer bits and pieces of WAA's core services — case managers, 24/7 security, behavioral health counselors, separate rooms for each victim — they do so inconsistently. Additionally, WAA provides two services that no other shelter in the city does, and those services happen to be their most important: Residents at WAA are safeguarded by the Protection from Abuse Act, meaning that any communication between a victim and a WAA employee is confidential. Additionally, the location of WAA's shelter is kept secret to prevent potential abusers from tracking their victims.

"Most of the women really don't want to go to the city shelter system," says Eyevette Wilson, a WAA crisis intervention counselor. "They know that men go to those shelters, too, or they'll say right away, 'I don't want to go there because he knows where it's at.'"

Last year, state Rep. Chelsa Wagner (D-Allegheny) sponsored a bill that could have ameliorated some of WAA's financial woes. HB 1588 would have provided $2.8 million for domestic violence services throughout the state by increasing marriage license and divorce filing fees. In Philadelphia, it would have translated to paying $105 instead of $80 to get married, and $318 instead of $303 to get divorced. (The bill included a waiver for low-income couples.)

The bill was folded into existing HB 1861, which funded the state's judiciary through increased court filing fees, and passed in the House. But in the Republican-controlled Senate, lawmakers passed a version of the bill that didn't fund domestic violence services.

The Senate majority leadership argues that it was simply taking a stand against higher taxes. "There were a number of proposals to add new fees and taxes," says Erik Arneson, communications and policy director for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R-Delaware). "The conclusion — based on the suffering of Pennsylvania families and residents due to the Great Recession and record high unemployment rates — was not to accept most of those proposals."

Keafer sees this reasoning as heartbreakingly ironic. "If we can't offer them a safe place to stay, the lives of Pennsylvania's suffering women and children are at risk. That isn't at all a dramatic statement, that's the reality."

(holly.otterbein@citypaper.net)