Refuge House, the Big Bend’s domestic violence program, is having to turn victims away. The shelter doesn’t have enough beds to meet a growing need. So, Refuge House is in the midst of a capital campaign.
Many people, including survivors, are helping. One is Dr. Iris Davis Pendleton, the faculty lead for early childhood education at Tallahassee State College. She is on this year’s list of the Tallahassee Democrat’s 25 Women You Need to Know.
"July 25, 2020 is when I was physically attacked in front of my children,” Pendleton says. “Because I had months before that when I was really starting to process and learn more about what was happening, I was finally ready to leave.”
Pendleton says she’d been with her abuser for 19 years. Growing up, she’d seen domestic violence among her neighbors, and no one said or did anything. For a long time, she thought it was normal.
But finally, in 2019, she called Refuge House and spoke with a counselor there.
“She had me create this timeline, and that’s when I started to realize I saw abuse for the first time as a 5-year-old," Pendleton says. "I saw people doing things to their wives that had happened to me. So, I’ve been programmed from an early age.”
Pendleton talks about her experience on Speaking Of.
Leon County Undersheriff Ron Cave, himself a survivor of family violence as a child, tells us the stats show domestic violence is increasing locally.
He says just under 500 incidents were reported in 2022, and that steadily rose to nearly 750 incidents last year. We’ve already seen about 200 incidents in Leon so far this year.
“We definitely are seeing an uptick in domestic violence-related incidences,” Cave says. “Unfortunately, we saw an uptick last year with domestic-related homicides.”
Why the uptick? Cave says there are factors like substance abuse, Covid-related issues, and stress. In his family, alcohol triggered violence. At one point, he says he went to the ER with a wound inflicted by his mother. She told him to say he’d fallen down the stairs.
“I did. I just, apparently, was not a good liar, and officers came to the hospital and interviewed me, and was able to ask me what happened, and I shared that with them,” Cave says.
Now, having been one of those law enforcement officers at the scene of domestic violence calls, he says the children are terrified.
"You’re terrified of what’s going to happen to your mom or your dad. Are they going to be arrested or are they going to be taken away? Is somebody going to go to the hospital? There’s so many ranges of emotions that’s going on that trying to comprehend it, especially at a young age, is really tough,” Cave says.
Emily Mitchem, the executive director of Refuge House, says the hardest job there is answering the hotline and having to tell people there’s no room for them.
“They deal with stories that are just heart-wrenching,” Mitchem says, “and there’s no solution….We’re woefully undersized for the population we serve.”
She says the emergency shelter has just 23 beds, and they’re having to turn away about 100 people every month.
“That leaves these women and children with the option of either staying in an abusive relationship or entering homelessness, where they’re more likely to become victimized again," Mitchem says. "It’s really a hopeless cycle we’re in, and that’s why we’re looking to expand.”
It's a pattern being seen statewide.
“We’re not talking about the fact that 106-thousand people sought emergency shelter last year," says Amanda Price, executive director of the Florida Partnership to End Domestic Violence. She works with all of the state’s domestic violence shelters.
"We’re not talking about the fact that people are showing up to seek life-saving assistance at shelters, and the shelters are full and not able to meet the need of that person,” Price says. "We're then not talking about what happens in 5 years or 10 years to that family and how we as a system are going to be responding to that family in the future. So, we should be talking about it generationally.”
Refuge House is raising money to add beds and turn fewer victims away.
Click LISTEN above to hear the full segment about domestic violence and Refuge House on Speaking Of.
