Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Male domestic abuse victims seek help, shelters
Group often ignored, but numbers growing
DALLAS — A Texas group has opened what’s believed to be only the second shelter in the U.S. exclusively for men who are victims of domestic violence, as advocates say more men are seeking help amid changing views about male victims.
“We’re trying to help men understand that it’s OK to ask for help. It’s OK to have emotions. It’s OK to cry. It’s OK to be vulnerable,” said Paige Flink, CEO of The Family Place in Dallas.
Before opening the 21-bed shelter in a two-story home in May, Flink’s organization, like many others, housed male victims in hotels. But Flink said that not only was that becoming costly as the numbers grew, it also wasn’t an ideal arrangement for victims to get support.
“They get a lot of growth from being together,” Flink said.
The number of male victims calling the National Domestic Abuse Hotline and its youth-focused project — loveisrespect — has been growing. Last year, about 12,000 male victims called — about 9 percent of victims who identified their gender. That’s about double the about 5,800 male victim callers from 2010, said hotline spokeswoman Cameka Crawford.
“We believe that there are likely many more men who may not report or seek help for a number of reasons,” she said.
Flink said her organization has sheltered men abused by male partners, female partners or relatives.
Some shelters house both men and women, but Denise Hines, a professor at Clark University in Massachusetts who researches domestic violence by women against men, said it’s more common for men to be put up in a hotel.
Valley Oasis in Lancaster, California, says it was the first in the U.S. to accept men into its shelter. “It created an environment where maybe for the first time for female victims and male victims that they could actually talk to members of the opposite sex that were not going to hurt them, that were not going to degrade them,” said CEO Carol Crabson, who said the shelter houses victims in cottages on its campus.
Hines said some men don’t even realize they’re being abused until they read pamphlets — mostly geared toward women — listing abuse signs. “If you are the man, that’s a very difficult process to figure out,” she said.
A 35-year-old man who spent almost three months at The Family Place’s shelter said he went there after feeling threatened by his boyfriend. Because his boyfriend didn’t physically hurt him, he said he hadn’t necessarily thought of his situation as abuse.
“It just opened up my eyes to realize that this isn’t the first time I’ve been in a situation like this and I just never thought of it being an abusive relationship,” said the man, who insisted that his name not be used out of fear for his safety.
“You never really hear about males being victims or even there being a male shelter,” he added.