Small-town domestic violence survivors face unique privacy risks

LA JUNTA, Colo. — Tina and her three kids fled from an abusive relationship to Kansas, where she felt more at  peace, as a stranger, than she had in her hometown of La Junta.

In La Junta, where Tina and her abuser are both from, a quick run to Walmart was enough to launch an anxiety attack.

“Being here in La Junta and knowing everybody was actually kind of scary,” said Tina (Rocky Mountain PBS is only using Tina’s first name for her safety). 

“It felt uncomfortable to even go out and walk down the street or go into a grocery store because everyone knew who I was and they knew what I was going through, what my kids were going through,” she said.

Living in a small town where most people knew her — or at least knew about her — and what was happening in her life, there was nowhere Tina could go where she felt free.

In rural communities, survivors of domestic violence, and the advocates who help them, experience a lack of privacy that creates safety challenges.

Rocky Mountain PBS spoke with domestic violence agencies serving rural areas across the state where advocates prioritize confidentiality. 

Some survivors said living in a small town can feel like putting a microscope on their private life. If their neighbors didn’t already know what was going on, they might when they see or hear that they sought help at a domestic violence agency.

“If you don't grow up in a small town, you don't really realize that everyone knows everyone and everything about everyone,” said Kal Greenman-Baird, program manager for Hilltop’s Latimer House, an intimate partner violence resource agency based in Grand Junction. 

“It is really hard to keep things quiet. There's not a lot of anonymity to seeking services.”

Survivors may hesitate to report abuse to the police because they’re nervous about giving out their personal information or they worry that they or their abuser will know the officer who answers the call. 

“Some of the smaller communities surrounding Steamboat, they might only have two or three officers, so it makes it a lot more likely that they would interact with someone that they might know if they reported,” said Hannah Kaufmann, program director at Advocates of Routt County. 

“I think confidentiality is a barrier in general whether that’s real or perceived,” she said.

Survivors can get support for what they’re experiencing by going directly to a domestic violence agency or resource center without reporting it to law enforcement. Confidential, 24-hour hotlines give survivors another avenue to ask for help. Phone numbers for these hotlines can be found on the website for each agency.

It’s accessing in-person resources that’s harder to keep secret.

Some agencies, like Hilltop’s Latimer House in Grand Junction, are located within a family resource center, so survivors can tell their partner they’re at the building for an unrelated reason — checking out housing resources or picking up free diapers — without raising suspicion. 

Even then, advocates at Hilltop’s Latimer House will coordinate with other offices in the area so they can meet survivors when they’re in town for other appointments, such as  a food stamps appointment or a check-up with their primary care provider.

Tu Casa, Inc, an agency based in Alamosa, serves six counties. A victim advocate visits each county every month and camps out at places that survivors can visit without arousing suspicion, for example visiting their county’s human services department. 

They’ll also travel to meet people close to their home, whenever they need help. 

This is the case for many agencies who serve survivors who live far away and for whom a trip to the agency’s main office would be too obvious. These trips create another expense for these small agencies.

“We'll try to meet in a safe public space where they have some confidentiality, but we'll always go,” said Theresa Ortega, executive director at Tu Casa, Inc.

Even after a survivor accesses help and leaves the abusive situation, it’s difficult to escape while still living in the same town or area as their abuser. When there’s one Walmart in a 60-mile radius, it’s harder for a survivor to change up their shopping routine.

“A lot of what we're seeing now is stalking and that they just can't find a safe place away where the offender can't find them,” said Brooke Leonard, director of Arkansas Valley Resource Center, based in La Junta. 

“Sometimes it's because offenders have a network that keeps them informed, and sometimes people do it without realizing what they're doing. It can be [the offender’s] coworker goes into Walmart, and they come back out and they're like, ‘Hey, I happened to see your ex in Walmart today.’”

Leonard has been working with Arkansas Valley Resource Center since she was a kid because her mom was director of the agency before her. 

Safety is also a concern for advocates helping survivors in rural areas. Leonard said she and her staff are just as easy to find. 

Leonard said she regularly switches up her commute to work. She didn’t take her husband’s last name to make it harder for people to connect her with her family.

“Every time you go to the grocery store, it's very likely you're going to run into either a victim or an offender,” Leonard said. “Our advocates have to constantly be on alert as well and thinking about their safety.”

Housing survivors, even at safehouses or shelters, also poses logistical problems. Agencies take measures to keep their shelter’s location a secret, including partnering with local offices so survivors can park their cars elsewhere and setting designated locations away from the building for friends and family to pick residents up.

But word of mouth — whether it be from prior residents, children who’ve stayed at the shelter or an abuser who found out its location — spreads quickly in a small town.  

“If somebody wants to find out where a shelter might be, somebody knows where it is,” said Jody Strouse, director of Share, a domestic violence agency serving Morgan, Washington and Yuma counties in northeast Colorado.

“We've actually had convicted perpetrators show up on our doorstep and try to get information from us. [They] almost try to threaten me,” Strouse said.

Most agencies said they haven’t yet had a problem with abusers showing up at the shelter, even though its location might be known.

Arkansas Valley Resource Center’s shelter was kept confidential — or at least, incident-free — for more than 20 years. But in the last few years abusers showing up at the shelter led to the agency selling its building out of safety concerns.

Now the agency is raising money to build a new shelter, which will be housed behind the agency’s main office. It won’t be in a confidential location, but it will be close to staff and to the police station, so they’ll be able to respond quickly if needed.

Relocation is sometimes the best and only option to keep a survivor safe.

“A lot of the people just want to leave,” Greenman-Baird said. “They want to go somewhere else and relocate to where they can be a bit more anonymous and find more options. That has a cost.”

Leonard said that her staff typically relocates someone to a new part of the state, or a different state altogether, about once a month.

Tina left La Junta with her three kids and spent a month and a half in Kansas, living with a friend who had survived domestic violence herself.

“I wanted to be out of here,” Tina said. “There was no wanting to stay. I left with just the clothes on my back and was happy about it. I really wasn't scared or frustrated. If anything, I was relieved.”

After a few weeks in Kansas, Tina came back to Colorado and moved to Ordway, which is about 30 minutes north of La Junta.

Tina’s abuser is serving a nine year prison sentence, so he is not in the community right now.

Confidentiality is important to survivors for safety reasons but also for the impact on their social ties . The community response that survivors face is not always supportive.

“Unfortunately, there's a thought process here that the victim’s the one to blame,” Leonard said. “So if someone is being abused, [they think] it's their fault they didn't leave.” 

Knowing that some of her neighbors have that mentality still makes Tina uncomfortable being in public spaces, such as Walmart.

“It made me feel disappointed and disgusted in myself, like if I was looking like a clown,” Tina said.

Crystal Lanckriet is a survivor from Sterling. In her community, she said the conversation about domestic violence often discredits the survivor’s side of the story.

She said people didn’t want to believe that her ex-fiance was abusive, despite witnessing their loud fights in public.

“Some people feel like that person's lying or that person's making it up,” Lanckriet said. “I felt like everyone knew, but everyone was in denial.”

Survivors who speak up about their experience — or have others talking about their experience — run the risk of being dubbed a liar or a “clown,” as Tina put it.

As much as Tina was happy to leave for Kansas, she’s not sure if she sees herself permanently relocating much farther from town. 

She’s relatively comfortable where she is now in Ordway, and that’s more than she’s had in a while. She likes her job, and she has a good relationship with her kids’ teachers.

“I would like to leave, but at the same time, it's been so long since I've been comfortable,” Tina said. “If I leave, I think I'd be uncomfortable because I really wouldn't have anybody to turn to.”

Both Tina and Lanckriet faced stigma from some people in their communities — and both found support and healing from others within those same communities.

Tina’s family lives in the area. Though she said most of her family had “given up” on her, her aunt has been supportive of her. 

Tina has found a community in the advocates at the Arkansas Valley Resource Center and the survivors in her peer counseling group.

Lanckriet is now a volunteer at Help For Abused Partners, the agency that helped her in Sterling. She recently became a member of the agency’s board, and she leads the peer support group there — a group of women who she calls “her girls.”

Confidentiality and privacy are important safety tools for survivors. But disclosure within a trusted group of people, especially those with similar experiences, is an important part of the healing process.

“I never understood why I went through an abusive relationship,” Lanckriet said. “But now I do. Because I use it to help my girls.”