{"id":34962,"date":"2020-07-27T03:52:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-27T00:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/domestic-violence-soared-during-coronavirus-in-nyc-experts-say\/"},"modified":"2020-07-27T03:52:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-27T00:52:00","slug":"domestic-violence-soared-during-coronavirus-in-nyc-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/domestic-violence-soared-during-coronavirus-in-nyc-experts-say\/","title":{"rendered":"#Domestic violence soared during coronavirus in NYC, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Domestic violence soared during coronavirus in NYC, experts say<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n At the height of New York\u2019s coronavirus lockdown, domestic violence in the five boroughs skyrocketed, data show.<\/p>\n

When the pandemic first laid siege, experts predicted that mandatory lockdowns and soaring unemployment would cause a rise in household abuse, and figures now bear them out \u2014 with domestic-violence reports at some agencies doubling and even trip<\/a>ling in the past few months.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve never been busier,\u2019\u2019 lamented Nechama Bakst, senior director of the Met Council\u2019s family-violence program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have seen people who never experienced violence starting to experience violence, and people who have experienced violence experience worse violence.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Typically, the non-profit gets about 70 new cases a month \u2014 but in April, they juggled 135, another 145 in May and 146 more in June, the organization said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see more choking, more sexual violence, kind of much more intense and serious acts of crime,\u2019\u2019 the director said.<\/p>\n

At Sanctuary for Families, which also works with survivors, there was a similar increase in calls to its helpline.<\/p>\n

In May, the group received 206 calls, compared to 102 for the month the year before. In June, calls more than tripled, with 259 compared to 73 last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cDomestic violence is fundamentally about power and control,\u201d said Dorchen Leidholdt, director of SFF\u2019s Legal Center. \u201cThe coronavirus pandemic gave abusers a powerful tool of control because their victims were in much closer proximity to them, 24\/7 in many cases, and had less access to sources of support and assistance.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

In many cases, the pandemic became just one more tool in a perpetrator\u2019s arsenal, experts said.<\/p>\n

Some abusers would withhold personal protective equipment from their victims so it wouldn\u2019t be safe to leave home. In other cases, if an abuser ended up catching the coronavirus, they would shame and blame their partner for it or become physically violent, advocates said.<\/p>\n

Some would also refuse to social<\/a> distance or wash their hands \u2014 and then \u201ctaunt\u201d their victims about it in a way that made them \u201cfeel unsafe,\u201d Bakst said.<\/p>\n

\"Dorchen<\/img>
Dorchen Leidholdt, director of Sanctuary for Families.<\/span>James Keivom \/ NYPost<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One abuser warned a victim, \u201cYou better watch your back \u2026 because the courts are closed, so you can\u2019t do anything,\u201d said SFF \u2014 which helped the person in need get an order of protection.<\/p>\n

High unemployment brought on by the virus only compounded the situation because abusers are more physically violent \u2014 and likely to kill \u2014 when they\u2019re out of work, experts said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a twin tsunami,\u2019\u2019 Leidholdt said. \u201cOn the one hand, abusers were unemployed, angry and more abusive than ever with more access to their victims than ever. \u2026 And then victims were more economically dependent than ever before.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Amid the lockdowns, the abused were trapp<\/a>ed inside with their perpetrators all day, forcing some to hide in their bathrooms in the dead of night so they could whisper frantic pleas for help into their phones as their abusers slept, said David Greenfield, the Met Council\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n

In response, both the SFF and Met Council created a text-based helpline for victims, which was a much safer way to communicate.<\/p>\n

The experts noted that the most dangerous moment for a victim is when they\u2019re trying to leave their abuser, which is why most escapes are carried out when the attackers are out of the house.<\/p>\n

With coronavirus stay-at-home orders in place, fleeing became more difficult and thus more dangerous \u2014 making \u201csituations that are already bad \u2026 exponentially worse,\u201d Greenfield told The Post.<\/p>\n

In one case, a woman and her children were in a \u201chighly, highly dangerous\u201d situation with an abuser who kept weapons in the home, Bakst said.<\/p>\n

The torment against the victims escalated amid the pandemic, and the woman asked the Met Council for help getting her and her kids out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe figured out a time of day, it was literally 15 minutes that she had where she was not being watched,\u201d Bakst recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd in those 15 minutes, we coordinated a way to get her to a place where she can get out and get to safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, for many victims, reaching out is never easy \u2014 and became even harder amid the pandemic, advocates said.<\/p>\n

There was one woman who said she was too scared to call 911 because she was concerned police officers would give her coronavirus, Bakst said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeking help outside the home was more difficult than ever because the courts were operating virtually, there was a period when the NYPD was dealing with its own coronavirus crisis, and we did not see the same level of responsiveness when a survivor called 911,\u201d Leidholdt added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way to get help is the telephone, and using a telephone when you\u2019re in close quarters with an abuser [is nearly impossible].\u201d<\/p>\n

When victims did get a chance to call for help, they used \u201ccodes\u201d devised with their case worker to discreetly communicate whether the offender was around.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone starts giving us directions to the mall, that was code for, like, \u2018I gotta go\u2019 without saying \u2018I gotta go, he\u2019s here,\u2019 \u201d Bakst explained.<\/p>\n

\"Met<\/img>
Met Council CEO & Executive Director David Greenfield<\/span>James Keivom \/ NYPost<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cFor some people it\u2019s \u2018I got to put dinner in the oven\u2019 \u2014 and that means to the social worker, \u2018FYI he\u2019s here.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

For abusers used to targeting vulnerable people, a global pandemic perfectly set the stage for increased exploitation, Leidholdt said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbusers tend to be serial perpetrators. They seek out vulnerable victims and take advantage of victim\u2019s vulnerability, and the coronavirus pandemic significantly increased the vulnerability of women and children in particular in New York City,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt increased their vulnerability economically, it increased their vulnerability in terms of public health, it increased their vulnerability in what is a really very terrifying environment where venturing out unprotected can lead to illness and even death,\u201d the advocate went on.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbusers take advantage of those kinds of situations, they use them, and they exploit them to increase their power and control over victims.\u201d<\/p>\n

At times, Leidholdt and her team found themselves \u201cfairly overwhelmed by the need\u201d of domestic violence survivors amid the pandemic, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though we had the help of eight large law firms, we got more calls and clients in need of assistance than in key moments we were able to assist,\u201d Leidholdt recalled.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, no one was turned away, but the nonprofit gets \u201cmany more referrals\u201d than they have the capacity to assist, shining a light on the need for increased services for domestic violence victims, staff said.<\/p>\n

The coronavirus pandemic has plunged the Big Apple billions of dollars into the red, and many programs for domestic violence survivors have been cut in the FY2021 budget, fiscal reports show. The cuts include programs that support survivors post-victimization and funding for various district attorney\u2019s offices that allow for improved prosecution, even as crimes related to domestic violence such as murder, rape and assault have increased, reports show.<\/p>\n

Funding for domestic violence programs under the Human Resources Administration was cut by nearly $1 million, the biggest decrease it has faced in years, reports show.<\/p>\n

While Leidholdt said the cuts could\u2019ve been a lot worse, funding wasn\u2019t enough even before the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly this isn\u2019t new, but we see it more during the time of the coronavirus pandemic. There is a much greater need for legal services, for clinical services, for economic empowerment services and for shelter services than currently exists. For all of these services, there are wait lists,\u201d Leidholdt said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sad reality is, they are not remotely adequate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Nolan Hicks<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

\n

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“#Domestic violence soared during coronavirus in NYC, experts say” At the height of New York\u2019s coronavirus lockdown, domestic violence in the five boroughs skyrocketed, data show. When the pandemic first laid siege, experts predicted that mandatory lockdowns and soaring unemployment would cause a rise in household abuse, and figures now bear them out \u2014 with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[44554,509],"class_list":["post-34962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-domestic-violence-soared-during-coronavirus-in-nyc","tag-experts-say"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}