Columnist Susan Snyder: There is a way out of violence

Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2004 | 8:05 a.m.

It's been three years since the woman called to say she was "just stuck" in a violent domestic situation.

I often wonder whether she ever got out.

And I thought of the woman again last week when the Nevada Attorney General's Office sent out a call for applicants to the Nevada Domestic Violence Prevention Council.

The council's members provide information and guidance to the governor and Nevada Legislature for statewide policies and laws regarding domestic violence. The council also works to increase public awareness about the magnitude of domestic violence and finds ways to increase access to the legal and medical help these victims need.

The application is available online at www.ag.state.nv.us. Click on "Hot Topics." If you need a copy faxed or mailed call Lori Fralick, state domestic violence ombudsman, at (775) 684-1115.

Nationally, advocates say, a woman is victimized by domestic abuse every eight seconds. It can be physical or verbal.

Safe Nest, a non-profit agency, operates 24-hour emergency shelters in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas for domestic abuse victims. They are the only two 24-hour shelters in the valley. Safe Nest also has a 24-hour hotline and offers services ranging from transportation and life-skills classes to counseling and crisis intervention.

Safe Nest figures show about 70 percent of the children sheltered are preschoolers or younger, and 80 percent of the women served are mothers in their 20s and early 30s. The agency fields some 14,000 crisis calls annually and helps half as many obtain legal protection orders. It educates about 5,000 teenagers a year about date violence.

They probably see only a fraction of the women and children who are victimized daily in their own homes.

The state has a lot of advisory boards, but few serve a population that is more invisible or more helpless. The Domestic Violence Prevention Council meets every three months, alternating between Reno and Las Vegas. Members receive reimbursement for travel and a daily food allowance for council business.

The woman who called me in August 2001 had walked to a discount store to use a pay phone while her husband was at work. The youngest of her four children was with her, she said.

She hadn't been able to find work because her husband insisted she stay home. And, she said, no one would hire her because her teeth were left badly disfigured from an attack by her first husband. The abusive marriage in which she was living in 2001 was her second.

I encouraged her to call Safe Nest, and she did.

An agency representative called a few weeks later to say they were helping her get her teeth fixed so that she could get out, get work and get on with a better life.

Did all of that happen? I don't know.

I simply wonder where she is and remember what she said before she hung up that hot summer day and walked home to a life she dreaded:

"There are women in danger of losing themselves. I'm one of them," she said. "I know I'm not the only one."

Safe Nest's hotline is 646-4981.