My Sister’s House is the Central Valley’s only domestic violence shelter that focuses on the needs of Asian and Pacific Islander women and their children. In recent years, we’ve noticed that the accessibility of the internet and the ease of international travel has increased the number of abusers who find their wives, girlfriends and victims in other countries. Our client May* was such a woman.
May was working in a bank in an Asian country when she met her future husband while she was on vacation. The man showered May with gifts, and she became pregnant soon after the courtship began. Eventually they married, and May joined her new husband in America.
Before long the husband began abusing May, and after the child was born, he abused the infant as well. It was this that finally tipped the scales for May, who decided to leave in spite of her fear of what might happen to her and to her child. Would she have to return to her native country in shame? Would she be forced to leave the US without her baby?
At My Sister’s House, May could tell her story in her primary language, and she found other women and children who looked like her and her child. May and many of the other women she met had come here from other countries believing they would fulfill their dreams of opportunity; instead, they found themselves living nightmares of physical, verbal, emotional, and financial abuse.
While working with My Sister’s House, May participated in our Women to Work Program, where she and other domestic violence survivors discussed the unique challenges that faced them in trying to establish a sound financial future. For example: how and when to tell their supervisors that the reason they’re missing work is because they’re abuse victims; or, if they were under- or unemployed, how to become job ready.Women to Work offers resume assistance, interview practice, wardrobe help, counseling, and legal assistance to victims trying to get on their feet financially and vocationally. These services were just a few of the ways that Women to Work helped May along the path to independence from her abuser. The result was a happy one: May recently informed us that she had found a new job.
Under the B.O.S.S. Program, My Sister’s House is expanding the reach of Women to Work so that more of our clients can participate and share in the success that May has found. Financial independence and economic stability can lead to a life free of abuse and filled with happier endings.
*May is a pseudonym.
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