MonticelloLive

October is Domestic Violence Awareness month across the U.S. Southeast Arkansas has a regional center for domestic violence victims in Monticello called Options, Inc. In 1989 a task force was created in the 10th judicial district to examine the need for a shelter for battered or abused women in the region. Law enforcement officials, doctors, lawyers, businessmen and women, as well as professors from UAM surveyed the situation in Ashely, Bradley, Chicot, and Drew counties as it pertained to domestic violence.

Anecdotal evidence had been mounting for several years, but the survey found that 20% of all calls to law enforcement officials involved domestic violence in some way. The findings led to the conclusion the area was in “dire need” of such a shelter. At that time, funding was raised through private sources to begin a program and provide a safe house for victims. The house opened in September 1989 and has functioned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week since then. See state statistics here.

Brenda Noble is the current director of Options, Inc. As a UAM student in 1991, she answered an ad in the paper for a part-time advocate position. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a shelter for domestic violence victims at the time,” she said. However, the job transformed into a life for her as she has worked for the past 15 years to serve victims and seek to create awareness and hope for those suffering from domestic violence.

“It’s not just about violence between a man and a woman, a husband and wife. Domestic violence is also prevalent among senior citizens who have grown children addicted to alcohol or drugs. Some of these abusers take their elderly parents’ medical or living money for their own purposes,” Noble said. There is also a distressing amount of sexual and physical abuse to children in our area. In Drew County alone, numbers show that 25% of the calls to police are related to domestic violence. 50% of the population will experience one episode of domestic violence in their life.

Options, Inc. receives funding from private and state funding, as well as some grants. However, all current funding is inadequate to operate the center as it should be. The Arkansas Coalition Against Domestic Violence lobbied the state legislature for assistance in funding for the 26 domestic violence centers in Arkansas. In response, the legislature tacked on a fee to the Arkansas marriage license which is set aside for the shelters. Options also receives some funding from Violence Against Women office in Washington, DC, as well as funding that is produced by the Family Violence Act. The Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration in Little Rock oversees the federal funds brought into the state for these purposes.

There is a $100,000 limit, however, in funding for each shelter. “It’s very difficult to operate a shelter on that,” Noble said. “Especially in rural areas that are poverty-stricken. We don’t receive much community support. We find ourselves grasping to survive day by day. We struggle just to stay in existence.”

In 2000, Options opened a thrift store in the building on Main Street to help defray expenses. It gave them a presence in the community and an opportunity to create more awareness. However, it also gives them more overhead costs. The vast majority of their funding currently goes just to operating expenses and salaries. Being open 24 hours a day requires that an employee always be available at the shelter to answer phone calls and to be prepared at a moment’s notice to aid a victim.

People suffering from domestic violence can stop by the center or call 367-3488. “We’d like to expand our publicity and create more awareness, perhaps through a website,” Noble said.

Recently, because of financial crisis, Options sent letters out to all the churches in the five counties served by the center. “If every church were to give just $5 a month to our program, we would have no money problems,” Noble related. There was no response from the letters. Likewise, a letter to the editor requesting help and trying to create awareness was published in the Monticello Advance, but there was “no response.”

When asked how the region could best support and aid the program, Noble described two ways:

1. Financial. More support would relieve a very tight situation, and it would enable staff to focus on the primary reason the program exists: victims of domestic violence. “We want to be more concerned about victims and getting the word out than we are about the light bill and rent,” Noble said.
2. Education for citizens, city leadership and law enforcement officials. Describing several situations, Noble explained that not only do victims not know how to respond or where to seek help, but that often those in a position to refer them or send them to the proper sources do not. “We have to interpret the law correctly in order to provide victims with the protection and help they are afforded by the law. Interpreting the law according to your own philosophy leads to poor enforcement which leads to a violation of civil rights, and then victims are re-victimized. It’s an atrocity, to say the least,” commented Noble.

“It’s important to understand how cunning and manipulative some of the offenders and abusers are out there,” she said. “They know how to work the system and how to make it appear as if it’s the victim who is at fault or is lying.”