For the past year, communities everywhere have faced escalations in domestic violence due to COVID-19. Lockdowns across the country because of the pandemic have ushered people into their homes and forced them to spend nearly all of their time in close quarters with those whom they live with.
In Oregon, Governor Kate Brown’s initial lockdown orders in March 2020 shut down the city and dulled the lights on neighborhood streets as households stayed indoors together. While many teenagers spent the following months taking walks with their siblings, scrambling for job offers, or spending most hours glued to a screen, this somewhat mundane and peaceful routine was out of reach for other Oregonians.
In Multnomah County, the Portland Police Bureau reported a 27% increase in domestic-violence-related arrests from March 12 to March 23, 2020, Oregon’s first COVID-related lockdown, as compared to the same eleven-day period in 2019. Lake Oswego, Ore., experienced a 175% increase in domestic-violence-related arrests during the same time period in 2020, compared to data from the same period in 2019.
For victims of domestic violence, typical resources used to escape abusers were no longer accessible. The Raphael House is an emergency domestic violence shelter in Portland that offers services to meet the needs of survivors. Emmy Ritter, the Executive Director at Raphael House says, “Because families have been sheltered in place, tensions that are already there will contribute to controlling behaviors, which can contribute to increased violence.” While people are trapped with their abusers around the clock, access to hotlines, emergency services or communication with loved ones has drastically decreased. This depletion of resources is largely due to the lack of privacy necessary to make those calls and connections.
Local shelters either shut down for the beginning months of the pandemic, or reached their maximum capacity according to sanitary requirements or basic shelter standards. According to TIME Magazine, abusers are more capable of using fear tactics to discourage their victim from seeking help by using the threat of exposure to COVID-19 to their advantage. Abusers can threaten to withhold financial or medical assistance, or lie about symptoms, as methods of forcing their partner to stay with them at all times.
While domestic violence experts support social distancing measures, they also recognize how abusers can manipulate the guidelines to unleash violence upon their victims. “When you’re dealing with a stay at home order, you have a change in dynamics in the household. Now, you have an abuser and a survivor who are forced by law to remain in the same environment,” says Alexxis Robinson-Woods, the Program and Services Director at Bradley Angle, who worked during the pandemic. Bradley Angle is a domestic violence shelter in North Portland with a public address to all Oregonians.
In the Grant community, people who have been practicing physical distancing since March of 2020 are experiencing the escalation of tensions that accompany physical and social isolation. According to the Fall 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 12% of Portland Public Schools’ (PPS) High School Students reported experiencing sexual dating violence within that year alone. With the climb in domestic violence cases across the city, Grant students may have experienced domestic violence situations in the past year.
“I’m very lucky to be in a place where I’m safe mentally and physically,” says junior Ava Anderson. “And I definitely am concerned about whether other kids get that right now or not.”
Additionally, marginalized groups are more likely to experience sexual and domestic violence as a result of systemic oppression and current and historical power dynamics. Ibram X. Kendi, the director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, defines oppression as the combination of power and prejudice. Violence and oppression work hand-in-hand; violence sustains oppression, and oppression causes violence. Meagan Schorr, a program coordinator from the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, says, “Racism, transphobia, xenophobia, homophobia, ableism… all those things are the root causes of sexual and domestic violence.”
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence states that LGBTQ+ individuals fall victim to domestic violence at equal or even higher rates as compared to their heterosexual counterparts, although heterosexual relationships recieve the most domestic violence education and prevention. According to their studies, fewer than 5% of LGBTQ+ survivors of intimate partner violence sought any orders of protection in 2012. In these relationships, abusers sometimes use the threat of exposing their partner’s sexual or gender identity as a way of manipulating them.
Within PPS’ high school system, 18% of students identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual when surveyed in 2014. 24% of these students who identified as gay lesbian or bisexual reported experiencing sexual dating violence within the twelve months before the survey.
Additionally, the World Health Organization estimates that one in three women experience intimate partner violence or sexual violence in their lifetime. Societal norms for masculinity and femininity are often used as excuses for violence, and glorify violence against women. Ritter says, “This is a gender-based violence issue, that women deserve to feel safe in the place they call home, with the person they say ‘I love you’ to.”
White supremacy intensifies oppression at the intersections of race and gender. Therefore, women of color are disproportionately affected by domestic violence. The National Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence Survey conducted by the CDC reports that 41.2% of Black women and 51% of [Indigenous women] experience physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. For context, according to the CDC, 1 in 4 women on average will experience physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
Anti-violence work is often centered around addressing the needs of white women, which overlooks the inextricable connections between racism and sexual violence. People of color are more likely to experience barriers to safe housing, healthcare, and adequate education. The more vulnerable an individual is due to these risk-factors, the more likely it becomes that sexual violence will affect them within their lifetime. According to the United States Census, Portland is over 77% white. However, Robinson-Woods explains that the shelter demographics are typically more diverse. She says, “Sometimes there are maybe 25% people of color, and other times it’s completely flip-flopped and we have 75% people of color in our shelter at a time.”
Although domestic violence is rooted in power imbalances created by systems of oppression, victims are often blamed for the violence they experience. President Obama considered victim-blaming such a serious problem that he made it a main focus of his “It’s On Us” campaign. According to The Atlantic, victim-blaming occurs when those who are the recipients of violence or harm are held more accountable than those who inflicted the harm upon them. This allows people to maintain the belief that domestic violence could never occur in their own relationships as long as they are undeserving.
This culture burdens victims into believing they are at fault for allowing abusive behavior to continue, which can be internalized by the victim and discourages them from leaving an unsafe environment. Phrases such as “abusive relationship,” which imply responsibility for abuse on both sides of the relationship, perpetuate victim-blaming. Chris Zeller, a coach and health teacher at Grant, says, “When we look at victim-blaming, we look at privilege… the lessons that are taught (in Grant health classes) are stories around victims, and looking at what we have done as a society to create a culture around-victim blaming. The lesson that follows that looks at how to be an ally and an advocate.”
In PPS, the health curriculum is developed based on issues deemed to be most prevalent to the student body according to the results of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which polls ninth through twelfth graders. The survey covers an array of health behaviors to evaluate which behaviors can be addressed at earlier ages. According to the Fall 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 12% of PPS’ high school students reported experiencing sexual dating violence within the year alone.
According to Dr. Jenny Withycome, the program administrator of health and physical education for PPS, it is dire that school districts instill knowledge about healthy relationships in students’ minds from a young age as a preventative measure. She says, “We do try to talk about the different hierarchies that exist in our society, and privilege and media and all these different pieces that kind of lay the groundwork for this [domestic violence] to occur.” Education around what constitutes and creates a healthy or unhealthy relationship begins in the district in the early elementary years. This education does not necessarily prevent domestic violence, but rather make victims aware of what is occuring, so they can get necessary help.
Zeller says that domestic violence education is essential to the Grant health curriculum. “We don’t only teach about the individual establishing their boundaries, but what it looks like to respect someone else’s boundaries as well,” he says. “It’s been a difficult time with the health curriculum… to cater and accommodate for all students over distance learning has been difficult.”
Over the past year, schools and shelters have had to navigate new ways to provide aid to those they serve. In March, shelters began to suspend in-person advocacy services and scrambled to aid victims. Virtual options became available, and in-person service capacity numbers became more stringent.
Each factor that typically escalates rates of domestic violence has been exacerbated by stay-at-home and physical distancing orders across the state. According to the New York Times, factors such as economic turmoil, job layoffs, natural disaster, emotional distress, financial stress, and general increased time spent together are the most common reasons abusers typically cite to excuse their behaviors. In 2020, each of these factors were fully escalated as Oregonians survived record-breaking forest fires, navigated a pivotal election, and aimed to confront systemic racism across the country, all while battling a global pandemic.
Moving forward, some schools are working to better protect students against domestic and sexual violence. Educating students about the signs of violence is vital to preventing it from occurring or continuing in their own lives. Jenna Cohan, a program coordinator for the Oregon Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence (OCASDV), says, “What I would love to see is the sexual and domestic advocacy agencies being treated as experts in what they do, and relied upon by school districts to educate their staff and their students about healthy relationships, dynamics of violence and anti-oppression.”
According to the coordinators from the OCASDV, qualified sexual and domestic violence professionals are frequently overlooked by Oregon school districts as first options in responding to cases of sexual or domestic violence. Teachers have less knowledge, resources and training to address violence; yet they are more often consulted by students and relied upon by districts to intervene.
Professionals at the OCASDV encourage Oregon school districts to increase transparency around mandatory reporting. A mandatory reporter is legally required to notify the relevant authorities when suspicious of child abuse, neglect, or exposure to family violence.
At Grant, all staff in the building are mandatory reporters. Therefore, when a student speaks to an adult at the school when seeking help in a situation that endangers themselves or others, a report will be filed to child protective services.
Schorr says, “People’s stories and their experiences of violence are theirs, and they should be in complete control of that information, and with mandatory reporting, once that is shared with a mandatory reporter, that is out of a survivor’s control.” Daniel Anderson, a social studies teacher at Grant, says, “I’ve never had a kid stop a discussion with me because they thought I would report it, but I’m just upfront about it right off the bat.” He maintains transparency with his students about his duty to report to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and has exercised these abilities on multiple occasions as well. Over the years, he can account for reporting to DHS several times. Anderson adds, “I think things have worked out well, for the times I’ve jumped in.”
According to experts at The Hotline Organization, if someone is not a mandatory reporter, they should not make the decision on the victim’s behalf to seek professional or legal help. Particularly with teens, senior Vivian Rush, who is part of the Planned Parenthood Teen Council, understands how challenging times are during quarantine. “I think defining your role as an ally is super important because sometimes people don’t want you to be especially active, and especially as a peer or a friend,” says Rush. “It’s not entirely your call to be like, I have to call welfare or some organization that will help my friend… I think it’s important to realize that sometimes people just want you to listen.”
Grant’s Women’s Empowerment club hosted a meeting in the fall to have an open conversation about domestic violence. Katherine Currie, junior and club president, says, “At our meeting, we had a lot of people come forward about their stories with domestic violence.” She adds, “It was extremely sad to hear that so many people at Grant have gone through that.” Currie clarified that Grant teacher Stephanie D’Cruz, a mandatory reporter, was present at the meeting.
Checking in with peers to ensure safety in the home is especially important during the pandemic. Signs of domestic violence are difficult to identify in other people’s homes and relationships, particularly when people no longer physically see each other in school. In order for people to help others within their communities, there is value in adopting new practices of checking in with each other without directly addressing possible threats. Ritter says, “There’s a lot of ways to speak in code, and have very careful conversations with an advocate or friend to make sure that there’s co-language between you and someone else that says, ‘I’m not safe.’”
Local hotlines are still available to all victims and survivors; however, advocates are aware of the potential inability to make those calls to seek help. This is why they are urging people to develop coded language, which allows victims to avoid verbally confirming an unsafe situation.
Robinson-Woods says, “Know what (your friends’) habits are and what their regular routines are, so you would know if a routine or a behavior isn’t something they normally do. Look for those red flags.”
Although the violence usually occurs outside of the classroom and school building, the repercussions from domestic violence often resonate inside the classroom. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, domestic violence is a root to physical and physiological barriers to learning.
Students who are coping with violence in the home are less likely to be able to participate in school. Robinson-Woods says, “I’ve heard of some folks sending messages via Zoom to their teachers, you know, on the side, so other kids can’t see it.” The private message feature allows students to communicate that they may need help or be in danger. “I encourage folks to send those messages, because for students it’s one of the only times they have access to the outside world during the pandemic.”
Knowing the warning signs of abuse may help peers support their friends, and help people feel confident setting boundaries. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), the warning signs of an abuser most often look like financial or emotional control, unpredictability, temperamentality, and extreme jealousy. Professionals at the NCADV urge folks to evaluate where these behaviors may be at play in their own partnerships, particularly when entering a new relationship. Ritter says, “It’s so persistent and coercive and manipulative, and it’s hard to see the signs.” She adds, “It feels like love and it sounds like a lot of attention—but it’s gaslighting. It has nothing to do with equity.”
Possessive and controlling behaviors usually emerge over time as relationships progress, but may show signs early on. The Center of Disease Control reports millions of teen dating violence cases each year, and states that disrupting the pathways towards intimate partner violence is vital to preventing this violence from becoming present later on in an individual’s lifetime.
When home is not safe anymore, but a global pandemic forces people to stay inside, survivors must embark on a difficult journey of navigating their next steps. The National Crime Victim Law Institute at Lewis and Clark Law School is an organization using legal advocacy, resource sharing and education to enhance fairness in the justice system for victims. Meg Garvis, the Executive Director, explains that work around victim’s rights is designed to return ownership, dignity, and authority to a victim. She says, “They can choose how, when, and if to exercise their rights. Then, our job is to open the door—so if it’s about their right to be heard, they can be heard. If it is about their right to seek restitution, they can seek restitution.”
Within defending victim’s rights, Garvis explains the changes needed to promote balance within the justice system. She says, “Whole groups of our communities don’t know their rights exist, and when they finally know they have rights they don’t know how to access them, or when they do know how to access them they get silenced.” She adds, “We have to have constant collaboration across service providers and communities… so we can figure out how to make systemic change, and also act within the system as it currently is.”
In the Grant area, there are multiple shelters available with various levels of vacancy. There are three shelters in Multnomah County, one in Washington County, and one in Clackamas County. Each shelter provides legal, safety, and personal services to assist a survivor in seeking help. Aside from the Bradley Angle shelter, all of these shelters’ precise locations are highly secured as to protect those staying there. When a victim calls in seeking emergency shelter, they will be provided with next steps for accessing the locations that have availability. Most shelters include amenities such as easy access to public transit, community living spaces and private rooms. For those who cannot commit to relocation, these options still provide support groups and housing support.
In the beginning of April, PPS opened an advocacy hotline in partnership with Raphael House and the Volunteers of America of Oregon specifically designed for students. The hotline is free, and provides confidential support from non-mandatory reporters for all PPS students. Additionally, the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline and the National Domestic Violence Hotline are available all day, everyday. The National Domestic Violence Hotline also offers silent chat services. YouthLine, a teen-to-teen crisis and help line, offers call, text, chat and email options.
Professionals advise survivors to maintain as many avenues of love and affirmation from others as possible, regardless of their ability to escape the relationship that is causing them physical or emotional pain.
From behind closed doors, it is difficult to know what your peers, loved ones, or neighbors might be battling—but a simple check-in could save a life. “I don’t know everyone’s home lives… but I know people are struggling right now,” says Ava Anderson. “I’m worried my peers aren’t safe.”
