Turning Down Requests from Women* Who Are Victims of Domestic Violence
Another one of those phone calls. It’s mostly the same answers I have to give over and over again: “Sorry, the bed has been taken but you could give us a call again next week”, or: “unfortunately, we don’t have enough room for that many people. We can only take in two people max”. In most cases, it’s just a simple “No, we’re full, there won’t be any rooms in the next while. Please call the hotline again”.
The NGO I work for is based in Berlin and offers support to women* and their children who have experienced gender-based/ domestic violence. We have so-called refuge apartments which are very similar to shelters, only that it’s not a central building but several apartments, spread out over the city.
As soon as a free bed is available, we notify the Berlin hotline that takes in all requests from women* by phone. We do the same on an online platform. Within a few hours, many e-mails and phone calls reach us, either from the affected women* themselves, from other organizations, child services, hospitals, the police, or others.
Today, the person on the other end of the phone was a social worker from child services. A woman needed a safe place to live right away. Her (ex-)partner — who is also the father of their four children — had beaten her so severely that she had needed treatment in a hospital. It was such an urgent case because child services were going to take the kids into custody if the woman* ‘was unable’ to find housing for all of them.
Not only did she need treatment in a hospital after severe physical violence, but now she was also at risk of losing her kids.
It may just be for a short period of time, but still, the kids would be taken away from her. They would remember these days, and so will she. She must feel so betrayed, so powerless; being a victim of domestic violence, leading to homelessness and therefore, losing her kids. None of this was her choice, yet SHE was the one who would have to endure the consequences, NOT the perpetrator.
Yes, she could have turned to the police to report it, maybe she even did. She could have gotten an eviction from the court so she and the kids could stay in the family home. In this case, the perpetrator has to leave the apartment. The problem is that those orders are valid for two weeks max, and they do not guarantee that the perpetrator doesn’t wait at the front door and harass the woman*— since they know the address of their own home!
The lack of shelters is a structural problem.
She couldn’t find a shelter because of the lack of available beds, resulting in very high demand — which is something the Berlin Senate has been trying to deal with in the last decades but has failed to properly do so. Germany — together with many other (EU member) states — signed and ratified the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. This means it must meet the standards the convention demands. One obligation is to offer enough shelters in order to protect women* and their children from domestic violence. But there still aren’t.
So, my answer today was “I’m very sorry but we don’t have any rooms left. Have you tried the hotline? They should know where she could go.”
Of course, they had already called the hotline. It’s the first call you make. The hotline didn’t know of any available beds, so they called the shelters directly. And still no success. Still no solution for a family in desperate need of a safe place to stay. An endless circle of phone calls, telling their stories, only to get the same response.
I don’t know what she ended up doing. Maybe some shelter did have room for her and the kids. Or maybe, maybe none of them did, and her kids were taken into short-term custody, and she had to try her luck in a shelter for homeless people — which often are in terrible conditions, but this is a topic for another time.
Isolation and Victim Blaming
Why didn’t she ask for help from friends or family? She probably didn’t have a social network that could offer support. Many women don’t have that. Sometimes, years of domestic violence result in complete isolation; losing all family and friends that could otherwise help them out. Or she had confided in a friend or family member but wasn’t taken seriously. We sometimes hear stories of relatives blaming the women* for violence. “Maybe if you hadn’t shouted at him/ hadn’t talked to that other guy/ hadn’t provoked him. If only you had behaved as a good wife/ mother would have.” Blaming the victims, not the perpetrators.
I really wish I could have said “Yes, we do have an entire apartment that is free, you can tell her to call us right away! “ But no, I had to give the same old response.
