Questions 

1. What is the Rural Safe Home Network?

2. What is a safe home? 

3. Isn’t domestic violence just hitting, shoving and slapping types of behaviors?

4. Why doesn’t she just leave?

5. Aren’t men abused too?

What is the Rural Safe Home Network?

The Rural Safe Home Network is a collaboration of agencies in rural communities throughout Arizona networking together to provide victims of domestic violence with safety and resources needed to start their lives over if/when they choose to do so. A Rural Safe Home Network may also exist within an individual community and is the collaboration of the community agencies networking together to provide victims of domestic violence with safety and resources in that community.

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What is a safe home? 

A safe home is a safe, temporary, emergency shelter where victims of domestic violence may live for short periods of time. Safe homes may be comprised of homes of private citizens in a community who volunteer to take a family fleeing violence into their homes for a pre-determined amount of time. Other safe places for victims to go may include hotels or motels that have agreed to provide safe shelter on a temporary basis. Safe homes may be permanent structures (homes/shelters) in a community. Safe Home programs for victims of domestic violence may also provide case management, counseling, transportation and advocacy.

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Isn’t domestic violence just hitting, shoving and slapping types of behaviors?

NO! Domestic violence is not just the physical violence. Domestic violence is a pattern of coercive, controlling behaviors that include verbal, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and economic abuses. Most advocates who work with victims say that these forms of abuse are the most damaging and hardest from which to recover.

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Why doesn’t she just leave?

There are more reasons for a woman to stay than there are to leave. Many women do not know of the shelters and programs available to help them. They may have no place to go if they leave their relationship. A woman may have little or no income. She may stay because social and/or religious pressures encourage her to maintain her relationship at all costs. A woman who experiences domestic violence may believe it is her fault and if she could change or become “good” enough, the abuse would stop. Victims very often love their partners and just want the abuse to stop. It may be safer for a woman to stay than to leave! Her abusive partner may have threatened to kill her and her children if she leaves (75% of victims who died as a result of domestic violence had left the relationship). 

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Aren’t men abused too?

Yes, men may also be victims of domestic violence. However, typically the rate that men are abused appears to be 5% as compared to 95% of victims who are women. Men do not sustain as serious physical injuries as compared to women. Many times men have greater financial resources than do women. When leaving a relationship, men very often do not remain responsible for the children, instead leaving them with the primary caretaker.

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