Crisis behind closed doors – nj.com – nj.com

Maria’s vision blurred as she gasped for breath on the kitchen floor. Then her hearing went. Her boyfriend, who had shook and punched her in the past, now had his hands wound tightly around her neck.

He had a history of controlling her, of keeping her from neighbors and work, and the physical violence had escalated recently. But this time, she thought through the haze, he might kill her.

“I knew that this was death,” said Maria, who NJ Advance Media is identifying by a pseudonym because she fears speaking publicly about her abuser. “That’s when I left the house.”

When she escaped his grip, Maria fled their home with her two daughters, but ran into the same problem that plagued her the last three years: she didn’t know where to go, hadn’t packed anything. She had no friends or family in New Jersey. And now, with the coronavirus circulating the state, nowhere seemed safe.

“I walked out of the house, I didn’t even have a mask on,” Maria said, remembering that day in July 2020. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I was like, good lord, what am I doing in the middle of COVID?”

The state lockdown curbed the number of COVID-19 cases, but created a new crisis by unintentionally trapping domestic violence victims like Maria with abusers. Tensions grew behind closed doors, and abuse became more violent and frequent, experts say.

Some victims felt they had no escape, that shelters or hotels weren’t safe from the virus, and neither were the homes of friends or family. Calling for help could be too dangerous — abusers sometimes assaulted victims as they spoke on the phone to hotlines.

Domestic violence is another pandemic that lives in the shadow of the coronavirus. It’s long gone unreported, and crisis professionals face barriers to reach those who are suffering and convince them to leave an abuser. But COVID-19 inflamed the problem, and advocates worry it won’t subside as daily coronavirus cases stagnate.

“The pandemic exacerbated domestic violence,” said Julye Myner, executive director of the Center for Hope and Safety. If an abuser wanted to isolate a partner from friends, family and work, they could use COVID-19 as a justification.

“And this isolation allows an abuser to control their victim more,” she said.

Calls to domestic violence hotlines initially dropped last spring before spiking. The number of temporary restraining orders fell as the courts closed, and the number of domestic violence complaints filed decreased in 2020. Social workers and advocates knew that tens of thousands of people in the state were potentially victims of domestic violence, but social distancing measures had built new obstacles that forced them to find new ways to reach those in need.

Experts warned about such a crisis early in the pandemic. Natural disasters often trigger violence in fraught homes, and COVID-19, the most wide-reaching global disaster in a century, would do the same. And the coronavirus pandemic has lasted much, much longer.

And the fallout is far from over. Survivors of domestic violence still lack safe, permanent spaces to call home if they flee an abuser. Counseling and legal services have seen increases in demand, but funding from the federal government for local survivor organizations is on a steady decrease.

For now, a moratorium on evictions protects many financially vulnerable survivors who try to live on their own. But that will end. Advocates worry about survivors falling through the cracks as life in New Jersey returns to normal.

As one crisis unwinds, another builds.

“This is not a women’s issue, this is not a gender issue, this is a public health issue,” said Rupa Khetarpal, a social work professor at Rutgers University who also works in the school’s Center on Violence Against Women and Children.

The calls stopped coming. Then, they flooded in.

When the state shut down last spring, Myner’s phone line at the Center for Hope and Safety in Rochelle Park went silent.

More than 60 miles away in Lawrenceville, Patricia Hart, the executive director of Womanspace, saw a similar situation unfold: Every metric her agency tracks — from hotline calls to safe house requests — plummeted. She was deeply concerned, but not surprised.

The problem was obvious to her and other advocates, but hidden from the public. Some reporters from radio stations and newspapers called, assuming the nonprofit was flooded with requests for help, but Hart knew why the opposite was true.

“If you’re trapped in the house with an abuser, you probably do not have access to a phone,” Hart said in an interview. “Or if you have access to a phone, you don’t have access to any privacy.”

Hotlines provide victims with a feeling of security, although it’s often brief. Hart’s agency, which operates both the statewide domestic violence hotline and the local Mercer County hotline, saw a surge in hotline numbers starting in late spring, when some restrictions began to loosen.

Calls jumped 60, 80, and even 90% during the summer months and lasting through the winter, compared to 2019 numbers.

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Myner’s center in Rochelle Park also saw numbers tick back up. Calls to the center’s hotline increased 46% from 2019 to 2020.

Experts say the abuse wasn’t just more frequent — it evolved and worsened.

Those who did call the hotline sometimes spoke softly, saying their abuser was in the room, Myner said. Others ended calls abruptly, or said they had been locked in a room for days. Some had their internet access cut off.

Abusers even assaulted victims as they tried to call the hotline, Myner said.

It wasn’t just the lockdown spurring violence. The pandemic also fueled gun sales, alcohol consumption and disproportionately affected women’s employment, all factors that heighten tensions and cause abuse to escalate.

“So now, here we are: heightened stress, more control, women financially dependent, guns in the home,” Myner said. “All significant risk factors for lethal domestic violence.”

Victims of domestic violence often struggle to leave an abuser due to the mental toll of abuse and a lack of resources to support themselves. And leaving is not always the safest option. But for some, COVID-19 made the new, uncertain outside world feel as threatening as their homes.

While they weren’t calling for help, victims also had less contact with people who typically spot signs of abuse. Workplaces, schools and extracurricular activities either moved online or paused, isolating children too, who are often affected by the violence in their homes.

“They absolutely had zero exposure to the external world, which kind of made them even more isolated and trapped within their home,” Khetarpal, the social work professor at Rutgers, said.

Teachers couldn’t spot signs of abuse so easily over Zoom, and friends, family and neighbors stopped checking in on each other in person. Courts closed, which forced people to seek temporary restraining orders at police stations or using an online court system that could be difficult to navigate. And hospitals or doctors’ offices felt more dangerous than ever.

The increase in hotline calls hasn’t stopped, despite the pandemic continuing to recede in New Jersey and life regaining a sense of normality.

In April 2021, the statewide hotline received 358 calls — a 49% increase from 2019 numbers. And just a month later in May, it received 431 calls — an 81% increase from two years ago.

Advocates knew domestic abuse was happening. They just had to find the victims.

To extend their hand to victims during lockdown, advocates became more nimble.

They took on the Herculean effort of reaching victims where they were: online or by phone, even using Facebook Messenger to chat with people. At police departments and hospitals they distributed fliers with a QR code that directed the person to resources and chat lines when scanned.

Carmen Diaz-Petti, assistant commissioner of the Child Protection and Permanency unit within the state Department of Children and Families, said the number of referrals remained steady in the pandemic, but the proportion that involved domestic violence went up from about 20% in the summer of 2019 to 31% in April 2020.

In the pandemic’s early days, response teams still came to homes in cases of severe abuse or for calls involving very young children. Once staff had proper personal protective equipment, they could expand their reach and respond to homes where domestic violence was suspected.

“We were out there physically putting our eyes on our children,” Diaz-Petti said.

Advocates and social workers set up social distancing in shelters and areas where children could safely and privately learn online. They found hotels for people to quarantine in before they arrived at a shelter.

It was that work that made Maria say yes to a shelter. She had immigrated from the Caribbean in 2016 and had a third child with her boyfriend. She said felt depressed and anxious before the pandemic, and then spent the first months of the lockdown fighting with her now ex-boyfriend about how to keep the virus out of their house. She would ask him to take off his shoes when he came from work, following behind him and spraying Lysol.

She would text with a helpline staffer when she could. But she didn’t know how to use the court system, didn’t know there was a place for her and her children.

The violence escalated from shoving and fists in the face to choking. She came home after running from the house that July day, but found him sitting on the couch with a gun on his lap.

With the help of a social worker, Maria found safety at the Rochelle Park Center for Hope and Safety. She had not wanted to press charges against her ex-boyfriend, but police insisted because he illegally owned the gun, she said. For now, he’s behind bars.

Maria and her three children are now in permanent housing after leaving the shelter, and she is preparing to take classes and exams that will allow her to work as a nurse again. She had time to rest and recover, receiving counseling in the shelter, she said.

The threat of her ex-boyfriend is not gone entirely, nor are the mental wounds of abuse and subsequent trauma. But a year later, she’s hopeful.

“Things look really up and really in my direction,” she said. “I’m looking forward to when September school comes back up. I’m feeling good about myself.”

Experts say many survivors are just like her. They fear calling the police — either because it might escalate abuse or result in violence. And the pandemic heightened that fear.

The amount of temporary restraining orders granted — a tool advocates say is one of the best ways for victims to separate themselves from an abuser — fell 34% from April 2019 to the same month in 2020, according to an analysis of statewide data from the judiciary. (These include restraining orders for domestic disputes, as well as some for other personal situations.) The number was 19% lower in May 2020 than May 2019. By June the numbers stabilized, but courts did not see a surge of people filing once they reopened.

Experts say victims may have hesitated to call the police or pursue legal action against their abusers both out of fear for their safety, and empathy for the abuser, who may be left with nowhere to go during the pandemic if removed from the home.

“The survivors, they really understand the perpetrator more than anyone,” said Anna Martinez, director of the Division of Women in DCF. “Why didn’t they file a restraining order? Because they know, for some of them, that could be a really dangerous thing for them to do.”

Police — often the first-responders when someone makes that call for help — also witnessed a drop in complaints initially, so departments adapted to reach victims, said John Zebrowski, the chief of the Sayreville Police Department and president of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police.

He held a Facebook Live forum to talk about court schedules and changes and put a list of resources out to the public.

Then, during the pandemic’s second winter wave, calls for service increased, Zebrowski said. According to New Jersey State Police, law enforcement agencies have reported 62,469 domestic violence incidents in 2020, nearly a 5% increase from the prior year.

Officers around the state are continuing outreach, but moving to in-person efforts, he said.

“We have to be very cognizant that while the pandemic has receded, I think what they called the shadow pandemic, continues on: the unintended consequences,” said Zebrowski. “I don’t believe we’re anywhere near out of the woods at this stage. It continues to be a concern for us.”

The coronavirus crisis is slowing, but domestic abuse will continue in the shadows.

As the threat of the virus fades, some advocates find themselves cautiously hopeful the pandemic will serve as both a lesson and a blueprint to move forward.

The issues aren’t new. Survivors needed more services like housing, counseling and free legal help before the pandemic. But just as the coronavirus outbreak has laid bare inequities in education and healthcare and ravaged the most vulnerable groups, it has shown how domestic violence does the same.

“I think that we just have to totally move beyond thinking that this crisis is going to be over. Housing and costs in this state are just absolutely unaffordable for so many people,” said Patricia Perlmutter, an attorney who compiled a report on domestic violence during the pandemic. “If we really want to address domestic violence, I think we have to do that robustly from a preventative point of view.”

That means looking beyond the obvious solution: Shelter for the victim, jail for the offender. Instead, the state must invest in educational programs, including for the batterer, that seek to intervene and change behavior, some say. But these new programs have mixed results in other states.

Some of the pandemic changes have helped survivors. When Gov. Phil Murphy enacted a moratorium on evictions in March 2020, housing and tenant advocates breathed a sigh of relief. Banks and landlords could still pursue evictions and foreclosures, but wouldn’t be able to carry out actual removals until it was lifted, which is set to happen by Jan. 1, 2022.

Advocates fear the incoming “tsunami” of evictions will hurt survivors living on their own and victims at home with an abuser.

“We’ve always known that there’s a very close association between domestic violence and economic security, or insecurity,” Khetarpal, the Rutgers professor, said. “And that when somebody’s financially dependent on another individual, their vulnerability increases and their ability to access resources decreases.”

Putting survivors and their children into a new home isn’t enough. They also need access to mental health care, Perlmutter’s report found. As of September, agencies saw an increased demand for counseling, with some people pushed to waitlists.

Both housing and mental health care need additional financial support from the state to meet the demand, the report found.

At the same time, funding has dropped. Each year, the federal government gives tens of millions of dollars to New Jersey to support crime victims under the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA), which is funded by criminal fines, bail bonds and other penalties. But that’s been on a steady decline with this year’s allocation expected to be $28.9 million — less than half it was two years ago, according to the Attorney General’s Office, which grants the funds to organizations in the state.

Seventy projects in the state were denied funding this year, said Pamela Jacobs, the executive director of the New Jersey Coalition to End Domestic Violence. That means counseling, legal services, and others supporting victims and their families (including those harmed by other forms of violence) will lose money.

Perlmutter, who works with the legal aid group Partners for Woman and Justice, said the organization stands to lose about 30% of their total funding, at a time when the number of requests for legal aid has grown.

“It is a real blow. We just see time and time again what a difference legal representation makes,” she said. “Our concern is that at this critical moment, having to roll back and curtail the legal services that we can offer will have a terrible impact on survivors in our community.”

The state is putting more money into domestic violence assistance. $10 million was awarded by the Attorney General’s office to 20 programs to help survivors impacted by COVID-19 last year. An additional $6 million is in the state budget for this year for Women’s Services, bringing the total for domestic violence programs to $24.9 million. Bt it doesn’t fill the gap.

“We know that safe, stable housing is necessary to be able to escape abuse, move forward, and heal,” Jacobs said. “What is needed is funding for survivors to be able to pay security deposits, moving expenses, and have assistance with rent while getting on their feet.”

Abuse will continue on for many others, regardless of the pandemic’s trajectory — inflicting trauma, leaving scars, derailing lives and families — at a time when funding has decreased.

Yasemin Uyar, who family and friends say suffered years of abuse from her ex-boyfriend, Tyler Rios, is the latest face of the crisis. Rios was charged with her murder after strangling her and kidnapping their son, despite multiple attempts to end the relationship, move apartments and a restraining order he repeatedly ignored.

Domestic violence didn’t start with the pandemic, and surely won’t end alongside it. A sense of hope and normalcy returns for many as the threat of COVID-19 wanes, but some worry this ongoing crisis will fall back into the shadows.

“The community, the country, the world are continuing to experience stressors that we hope will be abated later in the year,” said Mary Houtsma, the executive director of the Essex County Family Justice Center. “But we see this as the crisis is continuing.”

Editor’s Note: Reach the New Jersey Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-572-SAFE (7233). Reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), chat with their advocates here or text LOVEIS to 22522.