‘An Invisible Increase’: Advocates Say Domestic Violence is on the Rise Amid Coronavirus Lockdown

Editors’ Note: You can find a list of resources for domestic violence survivors at the bottom of this article.

Although the state’s stay-at-home order has proven to be an effective public health measure in the fight against the coronavirus, it has had the unintended consequence of creating a nightmare scenario for domestic abuse survivors trapped at home with their tormentors.

For that reason, advocates say they’re worried that domestic violence—also known as intimate partner violence (IPV)—is on the rise behind closed doors as the coronavirus lockdown stretches into its second month with no sure end in sight. 

“It does feel like, for us, multiple public health crises are colliding,” said Krista Niemczyk, policy manager for the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, whose members include various service providers in Long Beach. “While we don’t yet have full statewide data, absolutely, we are hearing a whole host of programs where calls to their hotlines have increased dramatically.”

She says the economic shutdown and confinement brought about by the coronavirus have exasperated risk factors for IPV.

“Although an economic downturn or unemployment doesn’t itself cause violence, it becomes an additional stressor in an intimate relationship, and relationships that are fraught may move into violence and abuse,” said Niemczyk.

Domestic violence refers to a pattern of behaviors that a perpetrator uses to control and abuse their partners, according to Niemczyk. While it can include physical and sexual violence, it can also take the form of emotional, social, and financial abuse. It is sometimes referred to as an invisible pandemic because it is a hidden crime that takes place primarily at home—precisely where health officials are urging the public to stay—and because it disproportionately affects women, who may not feel empowered to report it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says domestic violence is responsible for an estimated 1,300 deaths and 2 million injuries across the country each year. Women make up about 80% of those cases.

A quarter of the country’s women and a tenth of men have experienced sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime, according to the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey.

“Survivors in those relationships may feel like they have even fewer options or are even more isolated than they were before,” said Niemczyk. “Because your partner is staying at home with you full time, there aren’t the kind of usual reprieves or avenues for accessing safe spaces that exist otherwise.”

Momentary escapes during which a survivor could reach out for help, such as outings to run errands or picking up kids from school, have either been severely limited or completely eliminated by the lockdown orders. But even for those who are able to leave abusive relationships, the choice may not be as clear cut in this new reality.

“A lot of clients, they’re put in a difficult predicament: either stay in this abusive relationship by following the safer-at-home orders or go outside to seek help and potentially be exposed to COVID-19,” said Daniel Martinez, the healthy relationships coordinator for The LGBTQ Center of Long Beach.

In some cases, The Center is able to provide their services, such as case management and group or individual counseling, to survivors digitally. But again, this requires time and space and being confined day and night with an abuser might make that difficult, Martinez said.

HAS THERE BEEN AN UPTICK?

Police departments around the country have reported increases in domestic violence since stay-at home-orders were issued, including in Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles.

Officer Ivan Garcia, a spokesperson for the Long Beach Police Department, said it was too early for the department to make any correlations between crime statistics and the coronavirus response. The number of calls for service for domestic violence to the department from March 19, the day the lockdown orders went into effect, to March 31 is the same compared to the corresponding period last year—129. A public records request for April’s numbers is pending.

Earlier this month, the Long Beach Post reported that the city’s prosecutor’s office had seen a 25% increase in domestic violence cases in the first weeks after the stay-at-home orders.

“As I recall, the data from the story last month was a snapshot of cases during the first few weeks of COVID and it appeared that, as a percentage of all cases handled, (domestic violence) was up, but there were other possible explanations,” Long Beach City Prosecutor Doug Haubert told us in an email. “I would not want anyone to draw inferences based solely on cases during that time period.”

A follow-up email asking for elaboration on the other possible explanations for the spike in cases was not returned by press time. Asked if updated figures were available, he said it would take time to track down that data because of the changes in how the courts are operating during the lockdown.

Even during normal times, trends in domestic violence are notoriously difficult to track with law enforcement data due to underreporting. Only about half of all domestic violence survivors call the police when they are assaulted by a family member, according to a study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Publicly released police data also does not typically distinguish between domestic violence assaults perpetrated by multiple offenders or one offender repeatedly assaulting a victim.

For that reason, advocates warn that police data oftentimes doesn’t tell the whole story and other measures, such as call volume to domestic violence hotlines, can help expand our understanding of the situation.

“We’re mindful that for many survivors, engaging with law enforcement isn’t necessarily what feels helpful or safe. Especially when we think about communities of color or when we think about our immigrant community,” said Niemczyk. “There are survivors who have reached out directly to the domestic violence program hotlines without involving law enforcement,” she said.

Complicating the current situation even further is that during the initial stages of a crisis or disaster, domestic violence reporting tends to dip because people are focused on securing their essential needs, such as food and shelter, says Niemczyk.

This could help explain the flat number of domestic violence calls for service seen by the LBPD in the days following the lockdown.

But advocates say once the initial shock wears off, domestic violence hotlines typically start to light up.

That gels with the pattern advocates at Su Casa – Ending Domestic Violence have seen, according to Anna Conti, the nonprofit’s executive director. At first, the phones went quieter than usual, but in the last couple of weeks, they’ve started to see the dreaded uptick in call volume.

“It just continues to increase. The percentage of calls continues to keep increasing,” she said.

Not only is the pandemic affecting the number of calls, but in some cases the nature of the abuse.

Conti says some callers recounted situations where their abusers exhibited and weaponized COVID-19-like symptoms, refused to self-quarantine, and prevented the callers from following social distancing protocols.

“Seems as though in these cases, and possibly others, perpetrators used their own symptoms to control the situation,” she said.

MORE FUNDING NEEDED

Even with the increased influx of calls, Conti wants to make sure survivors know the program is still up-and-running and providing a host of services.

Though the administration offices and walk-in resource center have been closed because of COVID-19, the Su Casa emergency and transitional domestic violence shelter in Long Beach are still operating. Under normal circumstances, the two shelters can house a combined 46 survivors, but due to social distancing measures, capacity has been reduced. To make up for that, survivors are being housed in hotels when necessary.

“We’ve been blessed to be able to do that. So we haven’t been necessarily struggling with (the shelters) from that sense,” said Conti.

But housing survivors in hotels can be expensive, especially in urban areas such as Long Beach. And with a downturn in donations and volunteers since the crisis, Su Casa and other programs like it are scrambling to make sure they have enough funding to handle the surge of individuals reaching out for help.

The CARES Act provided $45 million for the Family Violence Prevention Services Act. However, that emergency federal aid will be shared between the 56 states and territories.

“We know that the amount that will come to California will not be enough to fully meet the needs that we’re hearing,” said Niemczyk.

California has yet to earmark emergency funds for the 102 domestic violence shelters in the state.

“We continue to ask the governor and the legislature for the funding to help those programs meet the moment and respond to those calls coming in and respond to the needs of survivors,” said Niemczyk.

Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of eight state legislators sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom asking for $10 million in emergency funds for domestic violence shelters.

“We know from disasters like Hurricane Katrina that social isolation and financial stress can increase rates of domestic violence. Early data from domestic violence service providers and law enforcement already show an increase in domestic violence related calls,” the letter read.

Locally, domestic violence programs have received help from the Long Beach Coronavirus Relief Fund.

“Su Casa and WomenShelter of Long Beach (WSLB) are using funds to meet increased demand for help when domestic violence occurs,” Mayor Robert Garcia said in a statement last week. “The added stress of the economic and health crisis has led to an increase in domestic violence and we are so grateful Su Casa and WSLB have for so long been here to offer support with basic needs, safety and confidential emergency housing for victims of domestic violence and their children.”

LGBTQ SURVIVORS

A common misconception is that domestic violence, or intimate partner violence (IPV), occurs solely or primarily among heterosexual, cisgender relationships—oftentimes framed as men abusing women. However, research shows that LGBTQ people experience IPV at equal or higher levels than their non-LGBTQ counterparts.

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LGBTQ survivors already face additional hurdles in accessing support. And now, the coronavirus is making things even more difficult.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 44% of lesbians and 61% of bisexual women experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to 35% of straight women.

That survey also found that 26% of gay men and 37% of bisexual men experinced those same types of IPV, compared to 29% of straight men.

Notably, a common challenge men in same sex-relationships who have been abused face is the social presumption that both partners are physically equal and that therefore the abuse is mutual. This can sometimes result in unfair legal consequences such as mutual restraining orders or mutual arrests.

Meanwhile, a 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that more than half of respondants experienced some form of IPV, including acts involving coercive control and physical harm.

“And while LGBTQ people experience many of the same interpersonal dynamics when it comes to domestic violence, the really big difference is that they experience that violence within a broader social context of bias and discrimination against LGBTQ people and communities,” said Mieko Failey, the director of legal services for The LGBTQ Center of Long Beach.

And yet, there is a dearth of resources that provide identity-affirming and culturally competent services to assist these survivors. Under normal circumstances, this is one of the biggest barriers LGBTQ survivors face when seeking help.

“There is an astounding lack of LGBTQ-specific domestic violence direct legal assistance and domestic violence programming. And so the reality is there is a critical gap in access to civil and criminal legal systems for LGBTQ survivors all over the country,” said Failey.

According to data from the Nation Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), nearly half of LGBTQ survivors who sought shelter from an abuser reported being denied access to shelter, and of those, nearly a third were turned away because of their gender identity.

Failey said that The Center is only one of a handful of LGBTQ-specific domestic violence programs in the state and one of just a few in Southern California—another is at the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

According to the Williams Institute, a pro-LGBTQ think tank at the University of California Los Angeles, the LA metropolitan area has 442,211 LGBTQ residents, more than any other metropolitan area in the state. 

Failey says that having staff that is aware of LGBTQ issues is important in part because LGBTQ survivors can face unique types of domestic abuse. For example, an abusive partner could threaten to “out” a partner’s sexual orientation or gender identity without their consent as a way of exerting control.

“And this can mean, as you can imagine, tremendous loss, isolation, and for some people—in particular for immigrants—possibly even persecution or death. So the threat of outing really gives a person engaged in harm a lot of power,” said Failey.

For immigrants who fled countries where they were discriminated against for their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, outing can compound the fear of deportation.

In other instances, abusers may manipulate a survivor by denying them access to medication.

“A survivor’s hormone therapy or HIV medication—something that they need to maintain their health and safety—can be hidden from them or even thrown away to maintain power over this person,” said Martinez.

And while the police may be the first place most people would turn to in such situations, for LGBTQ people that is not always the case.

“Survivors may fear reaching out to first responders or law enforcement because of historical mistreatment,” Failey. “I think this is important to keep in mind during COVID because right now there is greater reliance on utilizing traditional systems and first responders, which we know for oppressed or marginalized communities can be more difficult to access.”

Even in recent times, the relationship between LGBTQ people and the police can be fraught with anxiety and danger. NCAVP found that 47% of LGBTQ domestic violence survivors reported that law enforcement was indifferent towards them and 11% reported that law enforcement was hostile.

These added challenges to accessing support and safety increase the lethality levels of IPV faced by LGBTQ people, says Failey. And now, the stay-at-home order has added yet another layer of complication. 

While Failey says it’s too early to make conclusions about how the lockdown has affected service calls to The Center, she emphasized that that doesn’t mean domestic abuse isn’t happening.

“We could likely expect that there’s an invisible increase in incidence of partner violence, child abuse, elder abuse, dependent-adult abuse, because we know when there’s higher community fear and stress and increased economic strain, we generally see an uptick in violence.”

LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign found that LGBTQ people are more likely to be employed in industries highly affected by the lockdown, such as restaurants, retail, and education, and thus are more exposed to economic insecurity as a result of the pandemic.

“What we’re seeing more is we’re hearing an increased need for economic empowerment and economic stability support,” said Failey. “And we know that financial abuse is often a tool used by aggressors to maintain power and control.”

The Williams Institute found that about 20% LGBTQ adults live in poverty, compared to an estimated 16% poverty rate among their straight and cisgender counterparts.

“And it’s also important to acknowledge that LGBTQ survivors who hold many identities that are oppressed or marginalized face additional barriers,” said Failey. “We know that these communities are going to be some of the most impacted by what is happening right now.”

Of the survivors who reported experiencing intimate partner violence in the NCAVP survey, 59% identified as people of color and 39% identified as white. For identities of color, the most commonly selected was Latino at 27% and Black at 21%.

“The LGBTQ community is incredibly diverse and so we really recognize that as service providers,” said Failey. “So in addition to bilingual staff, we also utilize interpreting services. We also provide trauma-informed and disability-informed comprehensive services for folks with access and functional needs.”

While The Center’s service providers specialize in LGBTQ issues, their services are open to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, and staff take calls from across the country.

“We just want community members to know that we’re here,” said Failey. “And we’re available to support.”

If you’d like to directly support the organizations featured in this article, you can donate to The Center here and to Su Casa here.