HAVEN’s Beth Morrison still fighting domestic, sexual abuse

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Beth Morrison has spent eight years as president and CEO of HAVEN of Oakland County, an organization dedicated to addressing and preventing domestic violence and sexual assault along with assisting victims of those crimes. Morrison has spent the past 30 years doing her part to address these issues in positions ranging from a children’s therapist to a rape counselor and a crisis line operator. Born in northern Michigan, Morrison obtained her bachelor’s degree in Family Relations from Central Michigan University before heading west to get her master’s degree from the University of Arizona. A Bloomfield Hills resident, Morrison started at HAVEN as the senior director of programs, but was promoted to the highest position in the organization just nine months later. Morrison recently spoke with the Spinal Column Newsweekly about her experiences with domestic violence and assault, what HAVEN does in the community, and how people can play a part in helping victims of violence and assault.

(click to listen)

SCN: For those who may not be familiar with your organization, please tell us what HAVEN is and what services it provides? How did you become involved with HAVEN?

BM: HAVEN is Oakland County’s center for the prevention and treatment of domestic violence and sexual assault.

We provide a wide range of services for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, from a 24-7 crisis line and a domestic violence shelter. We do individual and group counseling for adults and children for people who are in our shelter and maybe don’t need shelter at all but need some counseling services. We offer a court advocacy program where we can work with survivors who are navigating the court system as it relates to their victimization. We have a response team, a group of staff and trained volunteers who go out to local emergency rooms, law enforcement agencies, schools, employers, and places where other people are meeting with a victim that might need some help and support. We have a forensic examination program where we provide forensic evidence collection, as well as crisis counseling in support for individuals after they’ve been sexually assaulted.

We also have prevention education programming, where we go out into the school systems, preschool through 12-grade, and talk with students about the issues of domestic and sexual violence in age-appropriate ways.

We also have an office at the circuit court building where we assist individuals who are in need of a personal protection order.

I’ve been working in the field for over 30 years, I started out as a student at Central Michigan University volunteering at the newly opened domestic violence shelter there back in the late ’70s and I just really got turned on to the issues in the sense that I recognize that, one; I as a woman was vulnerable to becoming a victim myself of either domestic violence or sexual assault, and then I also really got angry and frustrated by the injustice of the violence against women and children.

Certainly in the ’70s there were very few laws and remedies and very few services available to individuals who had been victimized, and I just felt that maybe I could be part of the solution. So over the years, I’ve held a number of different types of jobs and careers within the field of violence against women and children and eventually made my way to HAVEN about eight and a half years ago.

SCN: Tell us how addressing domestic violence, sexual assault and rape became your mission. Have you been affected by it personally, and if so, how. How have you been affected by those things while being involved with HAVEN?

BM: I would say there’s hardly any individual out there who in some way or another hasn’t been impacted by domestic violence or sexual assault. In Michigan, it’s estimated that at least 1 in 3 Michigan households are impacted by these crimes, directly or indirectly. I have had a number of family members who have been assaulted in either domestic or sexual violence.

As a woman, I’ve certainly been exposed to a fair amount of sexual harassment and inappropriate sexual behavior, and obviously, working in the field for 30 years, I can’t help but be touched and impacted by probably at this point thousands of individuals I’ve had the opportunity to meet or maybe even work with who have been victims.

It’s so rewarding to be able to see an individual in crisis be able to find their voice and gain strength and live life without violence, and watching some of that happen and sometimes being a part of that happening.

I think it’s also been rewarding for me having been in the field for a long time to be able to see love enacted and see the community rally together, to be able to see systems put in place, and to be able to support survivors. It’s been exciting to have been able to observe and be a part of that over the years.

SCN: It’s no surprise that most domestic violence and rapes occur against women. There are cases where women are afraid to come forward due to scrutiny by others or threats of subsequent violence. From your experience, how prevalent is that? How does HAVEN encourage women who are victims to stand up and be strong in the face of scrutiny?

BM: I would say it’s very prevalent, I think that coming forward and sharing your victimization is a significant step for an individual and it’s something that they’re in the best position to determine when the best time is to be able to do that. For some, it’s immediate — they have a support system in place, they have resources in place, and they feel this is their opportunity to be able to reach out and get help right away. For others, the fear might be so great that the abuse is going to increase that it may hold them back or they might not feel that they’re going to have support from their small social system, their family and friends, or the greater system. They might not feel that the community is going to believe them and support and help them and therefore, the consequences of coming forward are going to be greater than not coming forward.

Domestic and sexual violence are still considered, by national statistics, the most underreported of all crimes, especially sexual violence. It often happens behind closed doors, if you will, and the only opportunity for it to become known is for the victim to come forward, and with sexual violence in particular it’s very difficult to do that.

(HAVEN) believes that just because women are in a violent relationship doesn’t mean that they’re weak. They might be very strong and that’s what’s keeping them alive is their strength.

What we believe in doing is really supporting a survivor on where she’s at, that there are individuals who believe that if they were to end the relationship or take some kind of action that their life would be in danger or maybe lives of other people would be in danger. And if that individual believes that’s where they’re at, we’re not going to tell them what to do, we’re going to support them and help them and look for other avenues of which maybe at some point in time they would be able to end that relationship and reach out for additional assistance. So we’re really a survivor center — we take our cues and the lead from the survivor when they want to proceed.

Our No. 1 goal is safety and educating people on safety, but No. 2 is really looking at and educating individuals about options and choices and resources.

Some folks, they often start receiving a service by calling our crisis line and that’s the first time maybe that they’ve had any information, so we try to get them information about what resources are available to them, who’s there to be able to help them, what does that help look like and what resources are available to them.

SCN: On the flip side, what does HAVEN do to educate people who know family members or friends who are victims of domestic violence or rape but may not know what to do or how to react? How important is the role of men in educating themselves on domestic violence and rape and how to address and possibly prevent it?

BM: Well, that’s another big part of our crisis line and some of our counseling program and information on our website to try and do just that.

A lot of people want to do the right thing, but they don’t know what the right thing is, so sometimes they don’t do anything and we want people to act. So we reach out to the community and try to educate them about what is and isn’t helpful, what are some things that you can do if you suspect or things you can do to prevent, so we encourage those folks to call our crisis line, to go on our website, to become educated themselves so that they can be a support person for a survivor, but also an ambassador for even the cause.

(The role of men) is huge. If we’re ever going to reach the point of eliminating domestic and sexual violence, we need the attention, dedication and commitment of men.

We know that there are a lot of really good men out there who are not abusive, would never be abusive, but they don’t know what to do, so they don’t do anything, and what we need is men to come forward and … to speak up, to educate other men about a man’s role to hold other men accountable and to accept responsibility for their abusive behavior. When we can have that happen, then we stand a good chance of starting to put a dent in the statistics that are existing.

SCN: When we write stories about our municipalities’ Community Development Block Grant funds, we find that a lot of them allocate some of those funds to HAVEN. How much of your funding comes through CDBG monies? Where does the majority of your funding come from?

BM: Over the years, we’ve been able to receive a significant amount of funding from the different municipalities. Unfortunately this past year, the federal government imposed, I believe, a 43 or 45 percent cut in CDBG funds, so actually this year we’re experiencing a significant decrease. In the past it was probably about 5 to 8 percent of our budget and we’re expecting it this year to probably drop to about half of that to maybe 2 and a half or 3 percent of our budget.

We have a budget of roughly $3 million dollars. About half of that comes from federal funding, that’s either a direct fund from the federal government or funds that are passed through the state of Michigan, most of it under the Violence Against Women Act funding or Victims of Crime Act funding.

The other half of our budget, we basically fund raise. It comes from grant writing to individual corporations and foundations, local ones, state and national ones, as well as individual donors, groups, churches, and social service clubs making donations to us. And then we do a few fund-raising events each year that also contribute to that, as well.

So, without the community support and being able to raise the other half of our budget, obviously it would be very difficult for us to do what we do.

SCN: It’s our understanding that federal CDBG guidelines have changed in the last year or two, and that now municipalities can’t allocate as much of their CDBG funds to HAVEN. How, if at all, has this impacted the organization? Do you find the struggling economy having any impact on funding?

BM: We have over the last couple years — with the decline in revenue from multiple sources as the economy certainly changed in the last few years — had to lay off a few of our staff. We are in the process of phasing out a program that we actually had for perpetrators of violence. We’ll be ending that program in a couple more months. So we’ve really had to really kind of tweak and change our programs a little bit here and there to try and minimize the impact as much as we can. Obviously, it’s become a little bit more difficult each year to be able to do that.

Absolutely (the economy has an effect on funding). We are seeing that in some cases it’s getting a little bit better. With our corporate donors and some of our individual donors from a couple years ago, we’ve have seen some decreases in those areas and in those areas we’re starting to see them come back. But, our federal funds, either the funding has remained flat or we’re experiencing some decreases in those areas. And flat funding over many years somewhat is like a cut because obviously the cost of doing business continues to increase with health insurance costs, being able to offer a decent wage and salary to our employees, and the cost of utilities and food and those kinds of things continuing to go up. So it does make it tougher when even our funding has been flat and not increased.

SCN: Do you feel that with trying times in this economy, there is a greater potential for domestic violence situations? Why or why not?

BM: I firmly believe and I think what we’ve seen over the last couple years kind of proves that, the poor economy does not make an individual abusive. If that’s not part of their social beliefs, norms, values and belief system, they’re not going to become abusive because the economy is poor.

What we’re seeing in those individuals who are and have been abusive is that the frequency and severity of the abuse has greatly increased.

SCN: Does HAVEN have outreach for youths, such as assemblies at county high schools?

BM: We do a lot with youth. We have a prevention education program, we have four full-time staff who are out in the schools during the school year and then doing other activities with youth in the summer months. But, during the school year, we’re out with preschool through 12-grade, sometimes at school assemblies, but it’s often in small classrooms. We have age-appropriate curriculum designed from preschool through 12th-grade, talking about a wide variety of different topics.

We also have a lot of youth engagement activities that we do. We have a team advisory council of area high school teenagers and middle school students who advise us on keeping us pertinent and up to date on teen concerns and issues, and we do a lot of programming with them and they also then in turn reach out to their various different schools and peers with information.

We have a special funded program called “MVP.” where we reach out and work a lot with athletes in area schools, helping them to be strong leaders and feel equipped and adequate to be able to speak up against violence that’s maybe happening within their school or within their social unit.

We reach out to about 15,000 school kids each year.

SCN: How can people learn more about your organization and educate themselves about these issues?

BM: One great place to start is going to our website, haven-oakland.org.

If it’s just for information and wanting to know about volunteerism or how they can be supportive of HAVEN, they can call our business line, which is 248-334-1284.

Or if somebody is looking for services, they’re in a crisis themselves or maybe they have a loved one that they’re trying to assist and would like to learn more, the best thing is to call our crisis line, and that number is 877-922-1274.

@Readerline:By Michael Shelton

Read more of this interview at spinalcolumnonline.com.Beth Morrison has spent eight years as president and CEO of HAVEN of Oakland County, an organization dedicated to addressing and preventing domestic violence and sexual assault along with assisting victims of those crimes. Morrison has spent the past 30 years doing her part to address these issues in positions ranging from a children’s therapist to a rape counselor and a crisis line operator. Born in northern Michigan, Morrison obtained her bachelor’s degree in Family Relations from Central Michigan University before heading west to get her master’s degree from the University of Arizona. A Bloomfield Hills resident, Morrison started at HAVEN as the senior director of programs, but was promoted to the highest position in the organization just nine months later. Morrison recently spoke with the Spinal Column Newsweekly about her experiences with domestic violence and assault, what HAVEN does in the community, and how people can play a part in helping victims of violence and assault.