San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Domestic violence rises amid pandemic
Incidents more frequent, severe, social workers say
One result of shelterinplace orders during the coronavirus pandemic is to confine some household members with others who abuse them. By most indications, domestic violence has become more frequent and more violent.
Police chiefs nationwide reported increases of 10% to 30% in domestic assaults in the first two weeks after a national emergency was declared in March, according to a USA Today survey. On April 6, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres implored governments worldwide to address the “horrifying global surge in domestic violence.”
While the number of calls for help in California has varied over the weeks since, “the calls are now indicating a much greater severity of violence, much more physical violence ... strangulations,” compared with past years, said Krista Niemczyk, state policy director of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, which helps victims find local shelters and assistance.
“Because it’s hard to reach out for help, and survivors may be scared of leaving their home, survivors are waiting to reach out for help until it’s gotten to a very severe level,” she said.
This comes even as most other reported crimes were declining substantially during the pandemic, at least until the looting and violence that followed the death in Minneapolis of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, while a police officer knelt on his neck.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has approved $5 million in state funding for programs supporting victims of domestic abuse and has announced
agreements with private companies to provide free services: Airbnb will offer up to 30 days of housing for domestic violence victims in the San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles areas, and Uber will provide 3,000 free rides to safe places for victims in San Francisco and Los Angeles, with more transportation planned elsewhere in California.
California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris are seeking $50 million in federal funding for Family Justice Centers, which provide services for domestic violence victims. And U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco, who has been releasing immigrants from federal custody during the pandemic, said last month he would deny bail to anyone with a record of domestic abuse, unless he was shown safeguards that convinced him it would not recur.
Victims of domestic violence report that abusers these days are trying to isolate them from friends and family by taking advantage of the pandemic, said Kathy Black, executive director of the La Casa de las Madres shelter in San Francisco.
“If you leave, I’m not going to let you back in. You’re going to put yourself and the kids at risk of COVID” is a typical threat, Black said. “Domestic violence is about power and control.”
Then, she said, victims hear unfounded rumors of outbreaks of illness at the shelters. La Casa de Las Madres runs one of San Francisco’s three shelters for domesticviolence victims and also provides services for them at two singleroomoccupancy hotels in the city.
“We have to work very hard to assure someone who’s making this enormous decision that if they come to our shelter they’ll have their own room, which has a door and a lock,” with three meals a day and help for their children, Black said.
She said the 35bed shelter, at a confidential location, accepts newly referred entrants around the clock and has had a 26% increase this year in callers seeking refuge. The shelter is full, but her organization is arranging alternative housing for victims who need it, Black said.
Victimsupport programs
say fears are even worse in Bay Area Asian communities since the outbreak of an illness that President Trump labeled the “Chinese virus.” Trump recently barred thousands of Chinese graduate students and researchers from entering the United States.
“They’re scared to be out and about in public ... being alone and seeming like a vulnerable target,” said Orchid Pusey, executive director of the Asian Women’s Shelter in San Francisco. “Anything that might be misconstrued as Chinese is on people’s minds.”
The shelter houses 10 women in separate rooms and provides care for about 50 others in local and transitional housing. Pusey, who has worked for the program since 2002, said women in the Asian community were more likely than others to live with extended families, including the parents and siblings of their husband or partner.
“It’s a whole family system that puts one person at the bottom who bears the brunt of everybody’s day, everybody’s mood, everybody’s anger,” she said. “I’m stuck at home and everything I do is wrong.”
The alarm increased, she said, after the Supreme Court allowed Trump to enforce his “public charge” rule, which makes immigrants ineligible for legal status and green cards if they receive public benefits such as food stamps or Medicaid. After the coronavirus outbreak, Pusey said, immigrant women feared deportation under the new rule if they sought medical treatment for the illness or for injuries inflicted by their partners.
Noncitizens may also be reluctant to report abuse to police, despite California’s sanctuary law, and ordinances in San Francisco and other cities, which prohibit local law enforcement officers from notifying immigration agents about the immigration status of someone who reports a crime.
“If they come from a country where there is graft and corruption, they don’t know how much they can trust law enforcement,” said Akiko Takeshita, managing attorney at Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach in San Francisco. Even if you’re a victim, she said, “you may not want your partner to be deported. You just want the bad act, the physical or emotional abuse, to end.”
She said her organization tells victims that “the law is there to protect you.”
Elsewhere, the National Domestic Violence Hotline reports that abusive partners may withhold hand sanitizers or disinfectants from their victims, threaten to cancel their insurance, or give them false information about the pandemic to frighten or control them. One caller reported that an abuser “was using COVID19 as a scare tactic so that (the victim) would not visit family,” the hotline said on its website.
Niemczyk, policy director for the statewide antiviolence program, said the main reason victims remain at home, or return to abusive situations, is that they can’t afford to leave.
The pandemic is “taking a high toll on everyone’s economic stability,” she said. “They may feel like they have no place to go.”
Besides supporting local shelters, she said, her organization sponsors a training program to “shift attitudes and norms about healthy relationships.” One program, called “coaching boys into men,” educates young athletes about domestic violence and how to avoid it, she said.
In federal court, Chhabria, who has ordered immigration officials in the past month to release more than 90 migrants on bail after finding they posed no threat to the public, said in his May 21 order that he was denying release to three men who might pose a danger to women: One had been convicted of stalking, another of spousal battery and a third was charged with domestic battery and, in his bail application, possibly was seeking to be placed with his alleged victim. All are in federal custody awaiting deportation proceedings.
“During this public health crisis, incidents of domestic violence have increased sharply,” Chhabria said. “Accordingly, for any detainee whose criminal history raises concerns regarding this issue, the court will deny the bail application absent a detailed and forthright disclosure about the issue, and absent information that would give the court confidence that it will not happen again.”
“The calls are now indicating a much greater severity of violence, much more physical violence ... strangulations.”
Krista Niemczyk, California Partnership to End Domestic Violence