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More than Rough Sex: ,
Safespace Provides Help For Victims of Violence Within Queer Families

 

. Bv EUAN BEAR

E ‘ It was Thanksgiving, 1999.
I was ajunior in college,

and I had invited 10
friends over for dinner.” Peter
Jacobsen is remembering when he
finally decided that enough was
enough, that he would not allow
himself to be hit by his then-
boyfriend any more.

‘‘I’d been seeing this guy
for two months, tops. He had a
habit of slapping or hitting me
whenever he disapproved of some-
thing I said or did. I made some
comment during dinner, and he just
reached over the table and slapped
me in front of all my friends and
over this dinner I’d spent all day
preparing.”

We‘re sitting in the
offices of Safespace with Director
Kara DeLeonardis. Peter continues,
“I was embarrassed. l was tired of
feeling miserable. I’d spent two
months feeling scared and never
knowing when the next time [he’d
hit me] would be.”

None of his friends said
anything at the time, either to the
abuser or to Peter. “There’s no pro-
tocol," Peter adds, “where friends

can say, ‘This is not appropriate.”’

Peter got out of the rela-
tionship then, but the abusive
boyfriend didn’t leave him alone,
even going so far as to get the col-
lege housing department to assign
him a room in the off-campus
house where Peter lived.

There were other ways
‘Andrew’ (a pseudonym) controlled
him, Peter recalls; “He controlled
where we spent time ~ inihis room
and not at my house, because I had
friends there. He controlled my
grooming and appearance. He
wanted me to be as much of an
object as possible, and he enjoyed
showing me off as an object.”

_ There’s a pause. “A small
vain part of me enjoyed being
objectified,” Peter says with a little
embarrassment. ’

Peter Jacobsen knows
with his mind that being battered
was not his fault. He is, after all,
the chairman of the board of direc-
tors of SafeSpace, the new lgbtqq
agency set up to address domestic
violence and hate crimes in the

lives of our community members.
But sometimes the emotions need
more time to catch up.

Even a short-lived abu-
sive relationship of two months is
not easy to get out of ~— and it can
be even harder when the relation-
ship is of long standing. Peter
moved out of ‘Andrew’s’ room and
went back to his off-campus house.
But the next semester, ‘Andrew’
got himself assigned to that house,
saying he needed to live in a ‘gay-
friendly environment.’ And
‘Andrew’ lived two doors down
from Peter for the next 18 months.

“It was really creepy. 1
locked my door nights and put fur-
niture against it. My housemates
knew. but they had no control over

getting him out of the house.
Actually, I was the house manag-
er,” Peter says, “but I thought I was
just being petty” in wanting him
gone.

It is common for the bat-
tered partner in an abusive relation-
ship to return to the relationship. In
fact, says Kara DeLeonardis, on
average, a battered partner returns
seven times before escaping for
good.

Abusive partners are not
abusive all the time. They can be
charming, warm, apologetic, even
caring at times. When a partner
returns to an abusive relationship,
that’s the part of the relationship he
or she is returning to. There‘s
always the seduction of hope that
this time it will be different, and

_the good times will go on, unconta-

minated, uninterrupted by violence
and control.

“I didn’t get him out of
the house because I really thought
he needed a place to feel safe. But

' what he really needed was to con-

trol me,” Peter remembers. “And
the change from ‘just’ control to
violence can happen right in front
of your eyes in a second’s time. -
When you’re so worn down by
being controlled, you can’t even
think about how to resist or escape.
It’s more comfortable to stay and
not run away, not disrupt your life,
your home.”

October is Domestic
Violence Awareness and Prevention
Month. SafeSpace has seen at least
16 clients as of mid-September,
according to advocate Mike Bensel,
the majority of them lesbians deal-
ing with domestic violence. But
there has been a recent influx of
male clients, some coping with
domestic violence, others with hate
crimes.

SafeSpace director ‘Kara
DeLeonardis says the take-home
message is that “domestic violence
is not something that only happens
to straight women. For whatever
reasons a person chooses violence
to meet their needs, it happens
within gay and lesbian relation-
ships too.”

It has been difficult for us
as members of an outsider commu-
nity ofien discriminated against by
police and social service agencies
to consider seeking help in an abu-
sive situation. In years past, a les-
bian who called the police on an
abusive partner was considered to
have betrayed her community. A
gay man in a similar situation
risked being arrested along with the
abuser — or having the incident
arbitrarily dismissed - because the
investigating officer couldn’t make
his usual gender-based snap judg-
ment about the identity of the
abuser.

But at Safespace, the stafi‘
is all queer. And they aim to
change the situation in the rest of
the world by training police and
other social service agency staff
and volunteers about violence with-
in and against the gay, lesbian,
transsexual and queer community,

as‘

“When you're so worn down

     

by being controlled,  
you can’t even think about
how to resist or escape.”

Safe Space chairman Peter Jacobsen,
with director Kara Deleonardis 1

and the barriers thathave tradition-
ally prevented us from seeking
help. “It’s homophobia, usually.
But it can also be the fear of homo-
phobia, that a person might have to
come out in order to get services
they need,” says Kara DeLeonardis.

Domestic violence is
defined as violence within an inti-
mate relationship. The violence
may or may not be sexual in
nature. It may occur with a sexual
partner, a roommate, or a member
of someone’s family of origin.
Most domestic violence is about
power and control. When you feel
isolated by arbitrary limits a partner
or family member enforces, when
you feel physically and emotionally
afraid of what will happen when
you break those boundaries, that’s
domestic violence. It can be shov-
ing and threatening, as well as hit-
ting, and it often comes with emo-
tional abuse, put-downs designed to
break your self-confidence and
keep you attached to the relation-
ship. It’s abuse. You don’t deserve
it. No one does.

“We have our own myths
about our relationships too,” says
Kara DeLeonardis, “like ‘lesbian
utopia’ — how could there be any
abuse when it’s two women?”

“Or boys will be boys,”
Peter Jacobsen chimes in.

Domestic violence might
be dismissed within the lgbtq com-
munity as “rough sex” or S & M.

The difference is consent.

One past theory suggested
that any violence in the lgbtq com-
munity was a form of “horizontal
hostility” — that is, because we

I were oppressed (there was pressure

from “the top”), we took out our
anger and rage against other mem-
bers of our owncommunity.
DeLeonardis rejects that
explanation, in favor of a more
complex, nuanced view. “Who
knows exactly why any individual
chooses~to use power and control
and escalate into violence? People
can have control in so many ways —

race, class, education, support, why

does someone need to use vio-
lence? It always comes down to a
choice of how to deal with anger.
Our hope is that people can unlearn
that, or learn new [less hurtful]
ways.”

Peter remembers that
‘Andrew’s’ father routinely slapped

his mother, setting an example that

his son followed.

I-late crimes of violence
may occur with anyone — neigh-
bors, even strangers. The perpetra-
tors yell, throw things, damage
your property, make threats, maybe
kill your pets — because they don’t
like it that you’re gay, lesbian,
bisexual, or transgender.

According to the Vermont
Incident-based Reporting System,
well over a third of the hate crimes
last year — the single largest catego-

ry with 36 incidents — were listed
as anti-homosexual. Anti-African
American incidents were the next
most reported category with 20.

Safespace documents the
incidence of both hate crimes and ’
domestic violence in our communi-
ties. According to their_ Pride Day
survey, 12 percent of the 200 peo-
ple who filled it out have experi-
enced domestic violence within the
last year.

A much larger group — 58
percent — reported experiencing
harassment or a bias-related inci-
dent because they were lesbian,
gay, bisexual or trans. Nineteen
percent of that group reported that
the incident could qualify as a hate
crime (assault or property destruc-
tion‘).

Currently, there is no
shelter for gay men escaping an I
abusive relationship, and they are

i not welcome at the Women

Helping Battered Women shelter.
There is now a network of potential
safe houses for such men, but
according to Kara DeLeonardis, it
has not yet been necessary to use it.
“The guys who might have needed
shelter have been able to find it
with friends or family — and we
always support that. It’s much less
disruptive to a 'person’s life and
their psychological health to have
the support of friends, rather than
be dropped into a system of well-
intentioned strangers.”

. SafeSpace offers support
one-on-one with victim advocates
Mike Bensel and Martha Dyson.
An advocate from SafeSpace will
help explain the legal ins and outs

of getting a relief from abuse order »

and accompany a client to the hos-
pital, a police interview, court, and

‘to other agencies as necessary to

help him or her get whatever serv-
ices are needed to be safe and
begin healing. They offer short-
tenn counseling and referrals when
longer-term therapy is needed.
They offer a place for women to
talk about their abusive female »
lovers without being disbelieved or
scoffed at. .
Part of healing from emo-

tional and physical trauma is telling .

others about what happened. And
lgbtqq survivors of domestic vio-
lence or hate crimes can do that in
a support group through SafeSpaC€-
It’s a safe place for men — who get
an extra layer of shame as male
victims — to be with men who’ve
had similar experiences.

The real message is that if
you’re in an abusive relationship.
you’re not alone with the problem.
whether the abuser is a member of
your family of origin or an intimate
partner. You’re not alone when a
hate crime ofviolence is committed
against you. There’s help and sup-
port for you at SafeSpace: Helpline 6
Monday through Friday from 10
am to 6 pm - 1-866-869-7341 (to“'
free); 1-802-863-0003 (voice and

‘ TTY). V

m