Jersey Battered Women's Service Combating Domestic Abuse

Steve Adubato sits down with Helen R. Le Frois, Vice President, Development, Jersey Battered Women’s Service, to discuss the services that her organization provides to handle and prevent domestic abuse.

1/26/19 #3130

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Welcome to Caucus. I'm Steve Adubato. We're about to introduce a young lady who is fighting the fight every day for a lot of women and their families who need protection. She is Helen Le Frois, and she is the Vice President of Development, Jersey Battered Women's Services. Is it Le Frois? Le Frois. Which comes from where? "Fwa." From France. I love that. Yeah. I'm from Jersey, it's sort of the same. Yeah, I'm from California, so nowhere close. So you know, it's so interesting... your organization... I know it well. To disclose, we have a mutual friend, our good friend Tracy. Absolutely. You brought people together for a terrific fundraiser... Yes, last Thursday. ...for your organization. For those who don't know, what does your organization do, and for whom do you do it? So we are a domestic violence agency based out of Morris County, serving victims of domestic violence who live or work in the Greater Morris County area. How serious is the problem? Steve, it's quite serious. One out of four women, at some point in her life, is gonna be a victim of domestic violence. One out of eight men and one out of three teens are currently in relationships that are unhealthy. Do most people, Helen, know the person who is perpetrating this violence against them? Most often, yes. It's... domestic violence is really defined by intimate partner violence. So, whether it's their partner, live-in partner, their... who they have a relationship with, intimate partner... violence is really... It's interesting, people talk about violence and worry about fear of strangers, fear of, quote, "immigrants"... whatever. Yeah. And the most dominant, prevalent violence is with... in fact, the home. The people that you know, absolutely. Those people that you trust the most, that you share your life experiences with, oftentimes have children with, they are oftentimes the ones that are... the ones that are hurting... hurting the most. So, as we put up your website and let people know, there's a 24-hour hotline, what is that hotline for? Someone calls, they feel they're in jeopardy, something is happening. Yeah. They're in... they're... They're fearful? They are, in fact. And we not only have clients that call in to the helpline, but it's friends, it's family members, it's co-workers, it's neighbors, it's anyone in the community that's looking for information. You know, they might be in that situation where they're... they think there's something going on with their coworker or they hear something amongst their neighbor and they don't really know how to help, and so they can call into the helpline 24/7 and talk to someone about what those next steps are. If you are in need of services... if you're a..."