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paration, counseling, recognizing "i the signs of an impending violent outbreak.”
Mrs. Greco noted that abused women often feel guilty. “First, they often feel that they “deserved” the beating. Then, they may feel that if they had any self-esteem at all, they would have left long ago. We don’t add to that burden of guilt at all. We’re willing to provide support without judgement. ”
Rappahannock Sheriff John Henry Woodward sees the shelters as good choices for rural women with few other options.
“A great many of our calls deal with domestic violence,” he said. “Of course, it’s a very sad and dangerous part of our job. (According to state statistics, over a quarter of police injuries come from domestic calls.) And even when the children are not abused physically, just being around when their mother is abused is terrible for them.”
Sheriff Woodward said that he and his deputies try to provide some on-the-spot counseling to the couple, advising the woman what options she has.
“If she’s in danger, we get her out of there,” he said. “Normally, we don’t provide transportation to swear out a warrant, but this is a case where we will. Often, these women don’t have transportation.”
Sheriff Woodward said that domestic violence calls cut across all age, education and income classes. “In Rappahannock, alcohol is usually involved,” he said. He added that women who are concerned about their husbands periods of drinking and violence can also call the mental health clinic.
“We run into problems when the woman doesn’t want to leave her husband, but wants us to put him in jail for the night,” he said. “Of course we can charge him, but when there are repeated calls, with the wife unwilling to press charges, we try to encourage her to do something more constructive about the problem, such as dealing with the alcoholism, or trying a separation.”
“But a lot of women don’t think their husbands have an alcohol problem if they just get drunk and voilent once in a while,” Sheriff Woodward added. “So they’re not willing to hospitalize him, they’re not willing to kick him out, they’re not willing to leave him, they just want him to dry out in jail, This doesn’t really help anything in the long run.”
Woodward thinks that shelters, on the other hand, provide a realistic service to women.
“Maybe more women would call a shelter for help if they knew that its location was an absolute secret,” he said. “We don’t even know where they are. We refer women through Social Services and when an angry husband comes to us we can tell him we have no idea where his wife is. ”
Meanwhile, Sheriff Woodward says that women should be given information by the law enforcement agencies: ‘We try to do this, and in a small community like this, we can. They magistrate is also likely to provide a great deal of information to a woman who comes in to file charges. We try to inform her that she doesn’t have to leave her home if she’s not frightened. We can put her husband under order not to return home if he’s assaulted her.”
Sheriff Woodward said that he would not put the Rappahannock Sheriff’s department in the category of law enforcement agencies criticized as being unsympathetic to the plight of abused women.
“Naturally, we feel sorry for them,” he said. ‘We get frustrated by repeat calls where no progress ever seems to be made, but we continue to go. And I’m absolutely convinced that there are women in Rappahannock who would have been seriously hurt if not for our response to their calls. I’m also convinced that there are women who live with this day after day, too frightened to even call us. They need to find out what they can do.”
For Counseling and Services.
Counseling:
95.1%