Turned away

Natalie had just been beaten by her husband. She asked to stay at a shelter. They said no -- and they had room.

by Sarah McNaught

Natalie was in trouble. Threats of violence, even of death, had become a daily part of her life. For two years she had felt imprisoned by a husband who verbally abused her and dictated what she was allowed to do and whom she was allowed to see. Most recently, he had begun physically assaulting her.

After a particularly dramatic beating -- he attacked her at the farmers' market in Hyde Park, in front of a crowd of witnesses -- the 39-year-old mother finally sought help. She was desperate. She needed a safe place. So Natalie turned to the one place designed for women like her -- women who are sometimes beaten so badly that they end up dead.

But her plea was ignored by a women's shelter that admits it had room to take her in. Though her beating had left her with lacerations, a swollen eye, and broken bones in her hand and face, the New Hope Shelter for battered women, in Attleboro, turned her away.

Why? Because Natalie is an undocumented immigrant who, shelter staff claim, didn't speak "good enough" English.

Indeed, New Hope officials confirm that they refused Natalie help, just hours after she was beaten by her husband, because of her legal status and her language ability. And others who work with abused women say Natalie is not the first immigrant New Hope has turned away. Now, the Department of Social Services (DSS), one of the shelter's primary financial backers, is questioning the decision. After inquiries from the Phoenix, the Attorney General's Office says it wants to investigate the incident. Meanwhile, Natalie feels even more vulnerable in the face of her legal situation: because she can no longer rely on her husband's sponsorship, she must now petition for US residency on her own behalf.

---

Natalie searching for work and a better life when she came to Boston in 1994. She had lost her first husband in an accident 11 years earlier. There was no work in her native Haiti and, she says, "no hope for a good future." She left her 19-year-old daughter behind with the promise to send for her as soon as she got settled.

Yet Natalie says that what she found in America was worse than anything she experienced back home. She says she feels she has been constantly on the run: first from Haiti, then from the abusive husband she married in 1996, and now from anyone who may try to deport her.

New Hope, she says, was going to be the place where she could stop running. Two weeks before the shelter turned her away, she had left her husband. "I was working a part-time job and my husband told me, `You can take a ride from people you work with to and from work,' " she remembers. One day, Natalie says, she accepted a ride from a coworker; when her husband saw her arrive home in a car he didn't recognize, he attacked her. Natalie says she fled the house and went to stay with a family member.

When two weeks went by and she had not heard from her estranged husband, Natalie says, she was beginning to feel safe again. It was just after noon on a hazy, warm Thursday. After several days of drizzle and rain, she was looking forward to shopping at the farmers' market. "I just wanted to enjoy the day," Natalie remembers. She had a shopping bag and was wandering around, debating whether to taste one of the ripe pieces of fruit she was planning to purchase, when she saw him.

"There wasn't a very big crowd, some people in working clothes walking by, but there was enough people around that I thought I would be okay," says Natalie, shifting uncomfortably in her seat and raising her hand to her mouth. "Then he came right up to me on the sidewalk."

She says her husband took hold of her arm and asked her if she was going to return home. She said no. The beating began. According to Natalie, her batterer pulled her hair and punched her in the face, breaking the bone above her eye. He threw her to the ground, crushing several bones in her hand.

Despite all the people milling around, only one really tried to help, recounts Natalie. Lunine Pierre-Jerome was parking her car when she saw a woman lying on the ground. The 27-year-old teacher had two students in her car on their way to pick up band uniforms for a Flag Day performance. But she stopped when she saw a man stand over Natalie and then run away as people began to approach her.

"There were people standing around her, and I knelt down and asked her what happened," says Pierre-Jerome, who is also a Haitian immigrant. "She was bleeding from her face and her arm, and she told me her husband just beat her." Pierre-Jerome helped Natalie to her feet and into the car. She then took her to the Boston offices of the Association for Haitian Women, where Pierre-Jerome is a member, and left her with Carline Desire, the association's executive director.

"I didn't call the police because I thought it was best to let the association handle it," says Pierre-Jerome.

Desire says it was clear from looking at Natalie that she had been attacked. Her face was bleeding, her elbow was cut, her eye was swollen, and she had difficulty moving her hand, she recalls. (According to a police report filed at the association later that day, the responding officer "spoke to victim who stated that her husband -- the suspect -- punched her in the head and threw her on the ground." The report documents that the "officer observed victim's right eye to be swollen and left elbow to be cut.")

Desire says her first concern was to find a safe place for Natalie to stay that night. "Every shelter I called was full. I got to the very bottom of the list, where New Hope was, and called them," she says. "It was far away" -- on the South Shore, a good hour's drive -- "but we would take any opening at that point."

When Desire called New Hope, she says, she was told the shelter did have an opening. Both Desire and the director of New Hope say an outreach coordinator working the hotline asked to speak with Natalie in order to gather information and start a file on her. After about 20 minutes, the hotline worker asked to speak with Desire again.

It was at that point that things started to go wrong. First, says Desire, the hotline worker inquired about Natalie's legal status. Desire was put on hold, she recalls, and when the worker came back on the phone, Desire was told Natalie had been denied.

"I asked to speak with a supervisor, and the hotline worker said one would call me back," Desire says. "Ten minutes later a supervisor called me back to tell me the space had been taken."

---

Although they call Natalie's situation "tragic," officials at New Hope stand by their decision not to accept her for emergency shelter. "She did not speak English well enough for our staff to communicate with her," says Beverly Kennedy, the shelter's director. (In an interview with the Phoenix, Natalie spoke English well enough to answer most questions without assistance.) Kennedy also confirms that the shelter had an opening at the time Desire called.

It is not clear whether New Hope broke any law. "There appear to be no laws regulating whether shelters can exclude anyone based on language [ability] or immigration status," says Barbara Douggan of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the Boston Bar Association. "However, that is not to say that this woman doesn't have enough evidence to pursue a discrimination complaint against the shelter with the state."

But there is no question that many who work with battered women believe what New Hope did was wrong. The Department of Social Services, one of New Hope's chief financial sponsors, says what happened at New Hope should never have occurred. "A program should not be refusing women because of a language barrier or any other issue, especially women in crisis situations," says Lorraine Carli, spokesperson for DSS. "This illustrates a need in this state for short-term placement for women in these situations." DSS is not planning to penalize New Hope.

Georgianna Melendez-Brown, outreach coordinator for Casa Myrna Vazquez, says her Boston shelter would not refuse a woman refuge for any reason except lack of space. "We certainly do not turn people away for language ability or anything else. . . . It's discrimination," she says.

Sandra Elien, assistant program coordinator for the Boston-based shelter Respond, agrees. "It defies the very purpose of a battered women's shelter, which is that a woman's safety is our first priority," she says. "Despite her legal status or language ability, we would never turn a woman away."

But Elien says she, too, has had problems trying to place immigrant women at New Hope.

"We had a Haitian woman who needed to be relocated because her batterer located her at our shelter," remembers Elien. "New Hope said they refuse non-English speaking women. What I was told is, `We have rules and she won't be able to understand the rules.' "

"Yes, we may have made the same choice [in that instance] for the same reason," says Kennedy. "Communication is a very important part of our program. Without it, we can't help these women."

---

After a trip to Boston Medical Center, Natalie finally had no choice but to spend the night in a homeless shelter, where workers are not generally trained to deal with battered women.

"I was very scared. I didn't belong in that shelter. These people didn't understand my fear," says Natalie. With nowhere else to turn, she returned home the very next morning. Her husband was gone. At Desire's urging, she left again and went to stay with a relative; later that day, according to a second police report, her husband made a threatening phone call to the home of the person who had taken her in.

Within the next few days, Natalie says, her husband checked himself into the hospital for psychiatric evaluation. He was released to his mother last week.

Natalie is not pressing charges against him right now because of fears that it will complicate her immigration application. Her husband, who is a legal resident, sponsored her so that she, too, could gain residency. But if he is found guilty of domestic assault, he could be deported, depriving her of her legal sponsor. That would open her to the risk of deportation as well.

Her only hope is to file independent immigration papers under the 1995 Violence Against Women Act, which provides for women in her position. "If the victim can prove that her batterer is a permanent resident, she has a petition pending, and she is a victim of abuse, she can file for an independent petition, which will protect her from deportation," explains Beth Stickney, directing attorney for the International Institute of Boston.

In the meantime, Natalie is receiving pro bono help from a lawyer at Foley, Hoag & Eliot. She has filed a restraining order against her husband, and she is putting together her immigration paperwork. And she is wondering how, in a country where she thought she would always be safe, a shelter for battered women could turn her away.

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.