Welcome
Safe Haven Shelter for Battered Women in Duluth, Minnesota provides services to women and children whose lives have been affected by physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. Some women who use our services are in physical danger. Others are living with controlling partners in relationships that are emotionally abusive.
We provide an array of services including 24-hour emergency shelter, individual advocacy, legal advocacy, information and referrals, support groups, and community education. In addition, we recently opened the Lake Superior Regional Family Justice Center, an "off-the-street" service that serves as the headquarters of our legal advocacy program. For more information, please visit the Family Justice Center page. To schedule an appointment, please call 623-1000.
Click here to read 9 short stories from survivors of domestic abuse.
Acknowledging 25 Years:
This article was written by Cathryn Curley, one of the founders of the organization, to mark the 25th Anniversary of Safe Haven Shelter for Battered Women in March of 2003. Cathryn worked for Safe Haven for 32 years, until her passing in October 2010. There is a memorial to her at the Family Justice Center.
To say we are “celebrating” our 25th anniversary makes me feel both proud and disheartened. Proud that we are a “rock” in this community – a place where women know they can come for safety, for information, for options, for protection orders and support. I am disheartened because when we gathered together in 1977 to create a safe shelter for women who are battered, our vision was blurry as to the specific journey, but the larger vision was clear: we would end violence against women. The fact that we are still here and in our third “home,” which is much larger and safer and can accommodate many more women and children, is testimony that we are still a long way from achieving that larger vision. We have won many battles, but we have not yet won the war.
On March 1, 2003, Safe Haven Shelter (formerly Women’s Coalition, and originally Northeastern Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women) will acknowledge 25 years of providing shelter to battered women and their children. We opened our doors on March 1, 1978. I staffed the very first overnight, at 216 North 2nd Ave East, full of anticipation, wondering if a woman would call that night or if I would remain alone in this old duplex with its strange noises. A woman did call. She came in and we stayed up all night talking, both of us feeling our way. She was taking a giant step in reaching out for help and I was taking a giant leap of faith that we could actually provide her with some.
There was a core group of us, ten in all, all of us white. (Our awareness of centralizing the voices and experiences of women of color developed later, as the movement grew) Shirley Oberg and Jean DeRider took the lead. They were the ones who had attended a support group, listened to a woman’s story of abuse and decided to take action. They sought information from the first and only shelter in the state, located in St. Paul. Then they recruited the rest of us.
Some of us had been battered and some not. None of us had any specific skills. None of us were grant writers, expert typists, bookkeepers, professional public speakers, or advocates. We were self-proclaimed feminists and activists and we together forged a vision, first to establish a hotline for women to call for help and then a safe place for them to escape to. We needed a working board, we needed money and we needed incorporation as a nonprofit organization. With the help of the men and women on our first board of directors, we opened the shelter on a shoestring, a grant of $50,000 from the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
HRA provided us with one side of the duplex on 2nd Avenue East rent-free for six months. The Ordean Foundation gave us an interest-free loan to buy our first building, an old three- story Victorian house. It was perfect, but it needed lots of renovation. We did much of it ourselves and tried to divide our time among ripping up old carpet, patching holes in the walls, installing new linoleum, and staffing the duplex.
At this same time, the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project started as a pilot program to hold batterers accountable and to test a mandatory arrest policy in Duluth. Prior to this, domestic assault was treated by law enforcement as a private, family matter. The City of Duluth has since received international recognition for its pioneering efforts to alter public policy to protect victims of domestic violence and hold offenders accountable. Many other communities have adopted the “Duluth Model” of coordinated community response, of which a battered women’s program/shelter is an integral part.
Our collective work creating programs, changing laws and policies, and challenging existing institutions was not at all easy. There was resistance, indifference, a lack of compassion and sometimes outright hostility. Law enforcement, judges, probation officers, social workers, and child protection workers all had their ingrained beliefs. A routine question then, as it is today, was “Why does she stay?” When that question becomes “Why is he violent towards women?” we will have made giant strides in changing the ingrained beliefs and misogynistic attitudes of our culture.
In the last several years, shelters nationwide have been challenged. Many of us find ourselves wondering if we have exchanged our vision of ending violence against women for the ability to provide stable services with stable funding.
Through an exchange program, I was recently able to visit many women’s organizations in and around Nairobi, Kenya. Many of them are in the activist stage of their development. It made me nostalgic and I wondered, since none of them receive government funding, if they would be able to maintain their level of activism for many years to come. When they were tired, would the staff move on to make room for new energy? Would they keep their sights on making larger social and cultural changes or would they settle for mostly providing services? Or, because their funding comes largely from private and corporate donations, both domestic and foreign, would they be able to continue to do both and would they choose to do so? These are very interesting questions and we look forward to tracking their movement.
Even though we struggle with the impact of how money influences the work that we do – the hard reality is, if we are to continue to provide safe shelter and challenge ourselves and the community to end the violence, the money is a necessity. As we conclude our quarter century of service, our funding is in serious jeopardy. We understand the need for funding reductions, and we are willing to accept our share, but we need to protest disproportionate cuts to funding for battered women’s and sexual assault programs. If no other solutions can be found, then we need to encourage lawmakers to raise taxes before severely crippling programs that save lives. These issues affect all of us directly or indirectly. We ask for your help. Please help us continue to be a lifeline for women and their children in the community by calling your senators and representatives to tell them your views. You can make a difference.
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