Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 5, 1992 TAG: 9201050116
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SHELTER PROTECTS OFFSPRING, AS WELL
Some men will try just about anything to get into Roanoke's battered women's shelter so they can sweet-talk - or threaten - the women they've already abused.They've come to the door and said they're the woman's minister (the No. 1 excuse), or a salesman or insurance agent. They'll call and claim to be one of the children's doctors. "You soon learn their voices," shelter director Darlene Young said.
The Turning Point shelter is not in the business of breaking up families, Young said, but it does provide a protective wall to women who want to be shielded from abuse.
Often this includes protecting children who have witnessed their mothers being abused - or who have been abused themselves.
A few years ago, a husband trying to shoot his wife missed and hit his daughter's hand. The little girl lost three fingers. She and her mother came to the shelter straight from the hospital.
Amid the horror stories, there are stories of success.
Staffers at the shelter remember one mother and child who came to the Turning Point from the mountains of West Virginia.
The mother was so submissive from so many beatings the only way her husband could get to her was through her daughter. So he started tying their daughter to a tree, leaving her there all night long.
Finally, the woman took her daughter, climbed onto a farm tractor and drove it to the hard-surface highway to get help.
A filled-up shelter in West Virginia referred her to the Turning Point in Roanoke.
The mother had a look of hopelessness on her face when she arrived. But she went back to school and eventually remarried and was doing well the last time she wrote the staff at the shelter.
In every case, Young said, "you think that you can change their lives," The hardest thing about the job is accepting you can't always do that.