The close-knit culture of small towns can help foster a strong sense of community. But it can also make it difficult to come forward in sensitive situations — particularly in cases of domestic violence and sexual assault. Heart of Grant County formed in 2008 to provide support services to survivors of domestic and sexual violence in John Day and the surrounding county. The organization recently opened a new shelter that aims to maximize client privacy and comfort.
Rayme Lacey is an advocate at Heart of Grant County, and Beth Simonsen is its executive director. They join us to talk about the importance – and challenges – of providing survivor support services in rural communities.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller, coming to you from Grant County in Eastern Oregon. The close knit culture of small towns like John Day can help foster a strong sense of community. It can also make it difficult for people to feel comfortable coming forward to seek help when they’re dealing with things like domestic violence or sexual assault. The nonprofit Heart of Grant County formed in 2008 to provide support services for people in these situations. The organization recently opened a new shelter that aims to maximize client privacy and comfort.
We visited the shelter yesterday and met Beth Simonsen and Rayme Lacey there. Beth is the executive director, Rayme works as an advocate for the nonprofits clients. I started by asking Beth if she could give us a sense for the number of people they serve.
Beth Simonsen: Oh, it varies quite a bit. Usually, the statistical reports I do are on a quarterly basis, and sometimes we can be serving up to 60 people during the quarter.
Miller: In a report to county leaders at the end of last year, you noted that you’ve been serving more males and more people under the age of 18 and over the age of 59. Can you give us a sense for just who’s calling you up or who’s walking in?
Simonsen: It’s just quite a variety. I think because we are so rural and people know what everybody else’s business is, now that we have this building and we have a lot more privacy, I think they feel a little more comfortable coming forward to talk about their issues and see if we can help them.
Miller: What was the old building like?
Simonsen: It had a little two bedroom apartment above an office. We were right on main street, and even though we’re kind of downtown anyway, anybody driving by could tell who was staying at our office or who was at the office.
Miller: Including potentially abusive boyfriends or husbands.
Simonsen: Right, it was not as protected as this building is with all the locked doors and heavy duty doors and all the other security features we have here.
Miller: When you were designing this space, can you give us a sense for what you had in mind?
Simonsen: Primarily a place where people could go and feel safe, not feel like everybody in the community could see everything that they were doing.
Miller: How did you do that?
Simonsen: Well, it was hard to find a piece of property. We bought this property thinking this would work. The county had offered us a variety of properties, but with the way the hillsides were designed on them, we thought angry abusers could be up on the hill with their guns or whatever and look down into the property. So we kind of exed that out. But that’s why we have the high fence around here.
Miller: You had to think about snipers as you were scoping out real estate?
Simonsen: Yeah. Not that that’s really happened here. But you don’t know.
Miller: It was a serious concern that it swayed the way you thought about properties.
Simonsen: Yeah. We have had quite a few people killed in the community. Domestic violence issues. It doesn’t seem to matter if they have a restraining order or not. If somebody is mad enough, you don’t know what they’re gonna do.
Miller: Rayme Lacey, how did you get involved with Heart of Grant County?
Rayme Lacey: Well, I came to Heart of Grant County in 2018 as a client. I was leaving an abusive situation. Every relationship I’ve ever been in has been abusive. Some of the coping skills I used were turning to drugs, so I was 10 years in active addiction, and left a relationship that I had came over here from Salem to be in this relationship and then found myself out here and I didn’t know anybody. And I called the hotline and came into shelter here, and was able to get a job, get back on my feet, find my own place to live. And after a few years of healing and not being a client here anymore, I was offered a job here.
And I love it. I don’t think I’ll ever leave here. We were talking about this earlier, even if I won the lottery I would still come to work every day.
Miller: Why?
Lacey: All the pain that I went through in my own domestic violence and sexual assault situations, I learned a lot of coping skills. And then throw in the addiction, I’m five years clean and sober now. I’m passionate about showing other people that are dealing with this that their life doesn’t always have to be like that. They can reach out, get some help, and make a whole new life for themselves.
Miller: The kinds of services and help that you eventually got here, had you sought that out earlier?
Lacey: Yes. I was involved in a very violent situation with my partner in North Plains quite a few years ago, almost 10 years ago. And there was SWAT team involvement, it was a really big case and very scary. And at that time, I had the help of the victim’s assistance office related to the District Attorney’s office in that county. And they didn’t tell me that there was other advocates available that could help me.
Miller: Aside from the criminal justice system.
Lacey: Yes. Nobody told me about community based advocacy. And I believe if I would have had somebody who does what I do now help me then, I wouldn’t have gone back into active addiction.
Miller: Well, this gets to a key point. How is what you all are providing different from the criminal advocacy or victim’s advocacy world that is often a part of DA’s offices?
Lacey: The District Attorney’s Victim Assistance Office, they advocate for the client within a criminal proceeding. They can let them know everything that’s going on, they can be with them to go to court and just advocate within a criminal case.
As community based advocates, we help anyone. If somebody comes to us and they don’t want to make a report to the police, we still go for them 100% and give them everything that we can, the tools to get them through this situation. We work closely with the Victim’s Assistance Office, because like I said in my own situation, there’s a lot of things that we do that they don’t have time for. We are pretty much available to talk because sometimes people just need to talk. We can help somebody find a new place to live, we can help them get out of the area, we can help them connect with other resources like counseling, the housing authority. I could talk all day and never give you a complete list of what my job description is.
Simonsen: We’re basically hand holders for whatever they choose to do.
Miller: Whatever they choose to do, right? When people come here, it’s your clients who lead the way. Is that hard? If someone comes to you and says “this is the abusive situation that I’m in right now” and they also say “I’m not ready to leave yet,” is it hard to not urge them to leave?
Simonsen: It is. But then that’s where we do a lot of safety planning. Because it takes a long time for them to decide “I’m ready to leave the relationship” or “it’s not going to change.” They have to make that decision.
Miller: Why?
Simonsen: We can’t make them make a decision. They have some security, even if it’s an abusive relationship, whether it’s financial or anything else, that’s what they know. They need to be ready to change. And all we really do is provide all their options of what they can and can’t do.
And sometimes some of the clients that come in, they know they want a divorce, but maybe they can’t afford it. Or they know they want to do this, and we can help them do that because maybe that’s the only piece they were missing. So those are easy to help, because they know, they’re ready, and they’re ready to go on and move on and we can help them do that.
But the ones that don’t know, and especially if they have addiction issues, that’s preventing them from making some decisions too. So we just kind of hold their hand and help them decide for themselves what they want to do. And a lot of our clients come and go. They come in, we give them some information, and then we might not see them for another year because then they’ve gotten some information, they’re thinking about it. And then we always hope that they’ll come to us before a crisis occurs so that we can help them through a process. But sometimes they wait until the crisis occurs.
Miller: Rayme, where do you see the housing shortage overlapping with what we’re talking about?
Lacey: A lot of the people that come to us for help, the biggest thing is if they leave the situation, where are they gonna go? We have limited shelter space. And then if somebody comes into our shelter, it’s for a limited time. This is not a long term solution. There is no housing here, especially low income. And somebody starting over is gonna need some low income housing, subsidized. Most of the time, if we get somebody out of the area quickly, we can get them into some of the larger surrounding towns and there’s a little bit more housing there. But unfortunately I have many clients right now that are not leaving their very dangerous abusive situation because there’s no place for them to go. We desperately need more affordable housing, but all kinds of housing here.
Miller: Beth, you talked about one of the challenges here in terms of providing the supports that you are, simply the size of this community and that everybody knows everybody else. What are the other challenges that you think are specific to the size of this place? Because part of what we’re talking about in terms of the work you do seems universal in terms of these services, for people seeking relief from domestic abusers. But I also get the sense that some of the things you’re dealing with are specific to a small rural community. What are those pieces?
Simonsen: Well, part of it is, I would say our community is split in some ways. They would like everything to be the way it was in the 50s and 60s, with the white picket fences and everything perfect and nobody talked about their problems. And then as the younger generations, they’re willing to talk about anything, and they would like to see a little more forward thinking here and see change. It makes it a little bit difficult. And a lot of families have been here forever, and so in their minds they go “oh, so and so would never do that.” Well, how do you know?
Miller: “I knew his father and his grandfather, he comes from a good family?”
Simonsen: Yeah, those kinds of things. Or because of the abusive situation and they have addiction issues, and so they’re taken advantage of in this community. I mean the sexual assaults in this community are horrible, just because the victims are taken advantage of.
Miller: Are there any sexual assault nurse examiners in Grant County right now?
Simonsen: Technically, no. To keep your certification, you have to perform so many exams in a year and we don’t have that many. Although I think if more people would come forward… but because of the old boy system, they won’t get to see justice, so they don’t come forward.
Miller: Why go through that sort of bureaucratic trauma if at the end they don’t think there’s going to be justice?
Simonsen: Right.
Miller: But does that mean that if somebody reports a sexual assault and they do want to be examined to gather evidence for possible prosecution, they’d have to go to Bend or to Pendleton?
Simonsen: That’s what we’ve done just lately. Alicia took quite a trip just to take someone to Bend to get the exam done. We are in the process of working to improve the stuff at the hospital so that we can do a telesafe type exam where someone who is certified is available through the telehealth system and can direct the examination process.
Miller: What about the police? The John Day Police Department, as I understand it, folded in the fall of 2021, leaving the sheriff’s office as local law enforcement. What does that mean for response times?
Simonsen: It’s horrible.
Lacey: I went to a client’s house out in Prairie, which is 15 or so miles out. They had called me to come out there because their abuser had come over and was in the house and wouldn’t leave. I went out there, I asked the abuser to leave. Not exactly a safe situation for me. I went out to my car and called dispatch and asked for a deputy to come out, and they said it’ll be an hour and a half or so before they can get there because the only deputy on duty is on the other side of the county. And luckily nothing bad happened, the person left on their own and I was able to call dispatch back and have them tell the deputy that we didn’t need help anymore.
But that was really an eye opener for me. It wasn’t even a volatile situation. What if it was? Not only for my client, but for myself? I know that everybody here, all of our law enforcement here is spread thin. They’re doing their best to give us good service and make sure everybody’s protected here. But there’s only so much that can be done with a limited amount of deputies.
Miller: Beth, what do you think would make the biggest difference for the work you do here?
Simonsen: That’s a hard question. Our community partners, we all work together pretty well. Occasionally, we’re not always on the same page on how to help a family. Sometimes the families don’t cooperate.
Lacey: In a perfect world, we could do some interventions on school-age children. If somebody grows up seeing their parents being abusive to each other, then they’re almost destined to repeat the cycle. But that’s in a perfect world, and there’s limited funding, and we can’t make kids learn how to be in healthy relationships.
Funds. Funding is always helpful, especially for housing. I don’t think that there’s any magic answer to stopping domestic violence and sexual assault. It’s a lot of different ingredients.
Miller: What does a good day here look like?
Simonsen: That nobody comes.
Miller: But does that mean that people aren’t dealing with abuse?
Simonsen: No. To me a good day, could also be we’re really busy helping people, but they’ve engaged and we made the connections with community partners, and we’re able to provide the services right away. Because sometimes the waiting list just for counseling is horrible, or waiting lists if they want to go to rehab. If they could get services right away, things could move a little bit faster.
Miller: Beth Simonsen and Rayme Lacey, thanks very much.
Simonsen / Lacey: Thank you.
Miller: Beth Simonsen is the executive director of Heart of Grant County. Rayme Lacey is an advocate for the nonprofit’s clients.
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