Serena Williams’ fight against abuse
Insurer’s initiative raises money and awareness to fight domestic violence
For more than a decade, the charitable arm of Northbrook, Ill.-based insurance company Allstate has been working to chip away at the silence around domestic violence, particularly financial abuse, which experts say occurs in the vast majority of domestic violence cases. Would the #MeToo movement coax the topic out of the shadows, advocates wondered, in the same way it coaxed workplace sexual assault and harassment out of the dark and into our conversations and collective conscience?
So far, not really. A recent Allstate survey found a 10 per cent increase since 2014 in the number of respondents who said discussing domestic violence is taboo.
“People don’t like to talk about money, and they don’t like to talk about their relationships and home life,” Vicky Dinges, Allstate’s senior vice-president of corporate relations, told me. “But if people don’t talk about it, we’re never going to be able to solve the issue.”
Maybe Serena Williams can help.
The tennis powerhouse has agreed, for two years running, to serve as program ambassador for Allstate Foundation’s Purple Purse initiative, a 13-year-old campaign to raise money and awareness to combat domestic violence. (Each week during October, domestic violence awareness month, a donor wins a purple purse. This year’s purse is designed by Williams.)
In a powerful public service announcement, Williams puts it this way.
“If I limped onto the court, you’d notice. If I had black eyes and broken bones, you’d notice. If I had marks on my arms and fear in my voice, you’d notice,” she said. “It would be easy to see that I need help, to know something is wrong.”
I had the chance to interview Williams recently, and I asked her why, of all the causes she’s asked to lend her name to, this one grabbed her attention.
“When I learned that financial abuse happens in 99 per cent of domestic violence cases, that’s pretty much every person who’s abused,” Williams said.
By asking viewers to imagine, for a moment, what they don’t see when they look at someone they know and recognize, Williams said, she hopes to launch a dialogue, both public and private.
“The sad truth is too many of us know someone or care about someone or are someone who has been abused,” Williams said. “I want to raise awareness on their behalf.”
With the National Network to End Domestic Violence, Allstate Foundation created a “moving ahead” curriculum that helps victims of financial abuse recognize the signs, better understand financial basics and find resources to help them escape an abusive situation.
Signs of financial abuse, the curriculum states, include a partner who controls how money is spent, withholds basic resources, medication or food, forbids his or her partner from working or earning money, or steals his or her partner’s identity, money, credit or property.
Financial abuse keeps victims tied to their abusers, Dinges said, because they not only lack access to funds for rent or transportation to begin a new life, they’re also often saddled with daunting levels of debt and ruined credit scores.
“This cuts across every economic level,” Dinges said. “Any race, any religion, any ethnicity, any age. It has to do with power and how one person exerts control over another person. Finances are an invisible weapon.”
By enlisting Williams, she hopes to inspire victims to seek help.
“We want people to get the message that there is hope and there are resources and you don’t have to live the horror alone,” Dinges said. “There is a different life where they can feel safe.”
And maybe, she said, the campaign will nudge people to learn the signs of financial abuse, so they can spot it if it occurs among family or friends or their community.
“What about the abuse you can’t see?” Williams asks in the public service announcement.
“I want to let people know they’re not alone,” she said. “Help is out there.”