The NFL's effect on domestic violence advocacy

As the National Football League struggles to confront domestic violence in its ranks, shelters across the nation are feeling the fallout of the scandal that peaked with the Ray Rice video.

The video, leaked Sept. 8, shows Baltimore Ravens running back Rice punching his then-fianceé in an elevator at a New Jersey casino in February.

“We’ve seen all too much of the NFL doing wrong. That starts with me,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Sept. 19, announcing pending changes to the disciplinary process for players. He also revealed new league partnerships with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

“The hotline received an 84 percent increase in their call volume just last week,” he said, referring to the days after the Rice video broke. “They did not have the resources to reach even half of those calls.”

Roughly 95 percent of the hotline’s calls come from women facing abuse. The center had been overwhelmed long before the NFL scandal. “Last year, because of this lack of resources, more than 77,000 calls went unanswered,” CEO Katie Ray-Jones stated.

The hotline is not alone in its struggles. Increased demand has come to domestic-violence advocates who have faced growing shortages for years. From Flagstaff, Ariz., to Maine, shelters often are full. The Domestic Abuse Council in Daytona Beach, Fla., began a waiting list two years ago, and demand has since doubled. In the 2013 fiscal year, Indiana shelters turned away 601 of 11,719 victims, down from 1,564 in 2012. The problem extends to public housing, which gives preference in some sectors to domestic violence victims. In Philadelphia and New York City, waiting lists for victims can range from several months to several years.

“There’s over 3,000 animal shelters within the United States, but only 1,500 domestic violence shelters. You can kind of see where our society’s priorities lie,” said Kris Houghton, a therapist and the programs and services manager at Christian Care Domestic Violence Shelter in Rock Island, Ill.

Christian Care is one of only two shelters in the Quad Cities region bordering Iowa. Whether due to NFL publicity or the approach of October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the waiting list has grown in recent weeks. “We’ve operated at capacity for pretty much the last two years now,” Houghton said.

Houghton has learned from her 14 years in ministry that patterns of abuse often take a toll on minds already facing mental or relational problems. The cycle of abuse goes back seven generations of women for one of Houghton’s clients, she said. “It gets to be a much more involved process than, ‘OK, she can leave at any time,’” she said. And because of shortages of resources to help, those who do want to leave often can’t find help anyway.

“Domestic violence is not an NFL problem. It’s a societal problem—every aspect of society,” said Rick Houston, head of prevention at Domestic Violence Shelter & Services, Inc. in Wilmington, N.C. And society includes the church, which is why Houston has worked with churches for years as part of his group’s grants from the CDC.

Two-thirds of Protestant pastors in a 2014 LifeWay Research survey said they address domestic violence one time a year or fewer, and nearly one-third didn’t consider it a church issue. Houston hopes the NFL scandal can help recruit more Wilmington participants in his ongoing effort to develop a congregational policy model, from ministry programs to standards for how to deal with perpetrators.

“It appears the barrier of silence that usually surrounds the issue of domestic violence has been broken,” said Hailey Bain, the communications manager at Genesis Women’s Shelter & Support in Dallas, Texas. That’s given shelters like Bain’s and Houston’s opportunities even though they haven’t necessarily seen spikes in demand. “I think many people are getting a perspective on domestic violence that they've never had to think about before or never realized was out there,” Bain told me.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline, which relied on government for 70 percent of its budget, says its NFL partnership will allow it to answer virtually every call for the first time. That the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s call volume increased by 84 percent didn’t surprise Houghton in Rock Island. What did surprise her was that so many women felt free to ask for help. Fear often shames victims into silence, perpetuating the problem. And that makes shortages that much more heartbreaking.

“If … that amount of individuals are willing to at least call in and try to get some help,” Houghton said, “then we owe it to them to actually provide that and follow up as a society.”