When Tatyana divorced her now ex-husband in 2018, it was the culmination of a 12-year relationship that included repeatedly escalating instances of physical abuse.
Tatyana, who asked the Mercury to not use her last name out of privacy concerns, compared her situation to the oft-used “frog in hot water” analogy—because the domestic violence ramped up slowly over many years, she said she missed several red flags and continued to stay with her ex even after it became clear her marriage was unsafe. When she did make the choice to leave, the three young children she had with her ex were a deciding factor.
“The situation got so bad, and I knew I couldn’t do it anymore,” she said. “I realized, ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t protect my own kids in my own home because of this person.’”
Tatyana filed for divorce and was granted full custody of her kids, but the family court judge ruled that her ex was still allowed one hour of visitation rights with the children each week. After her divorce was finalized, she was referred to Safety First, a free Multnomah County program that provides a safe location and trained supervisors for parental visits.
Tatyana calls the program “a lifesaver” for two reasons: First, it took the financial and logistical pressure to find a safe visitation arrangement off of her. And second, it was good for her kids.
During their yearlong separation period, Tatyana had relied on different relatives to supervise visits between her children and their father, but that hadn’t gone well—the relatives couldn’t control her ex’s erratic behavior, and her children would often leave the visits in tears because of something upsetting he had said. That changed after the family started using Safety First’s services.
“They seem much better than when I would try to have family watch them, because he wouldn’t listen to family,” she said. “He would say things that are just so traumatizing, but at Safety First, he gets cut off if he ever attempts to go to a subject that’s not okay.”
“Now they come out happy—they saw their dad,” she added. “It’s actually a safe place where they can have a healthy relationship with their dad.”
But it’s likely that Tatyana will soon have to find an alternative to Safety First. That’s because its funding is poised to be cut in the county’s 2020 budget.
Multnomah County faces a $6 million budget shortfall for 2020, and the problem is projected to only get worse in coming years. The county’s Department of Community Justice (DJC) alone has a $2 million gap to make up for in the coming fiscal year. That’s why the $350,000 it takes to operate Safety First, which lives within the DJC, is on the chopping block in the county’s proposed budget. The Multnomah County Board of Commissioners will vote to finalize the budget during their Thursday, May 30 meeting.
Erika Preuitt, DJC’s interim director, calls the choice to eliminate Safety First as one of the “really hard decisions” that comes with the kind of sweeping budget cuts the county’s up against.
Safety First was built on an unstable foundation. When the program started in 2013, it was funded by a federal grant distributed by the US Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women. The program lost federal funding in 2016, and the county has been picking up the budgetary slack ever since.
“This is what you risk every time you apply for grant funding,” Preuitt said. “When the grant ends, you have to find a way to either continue the funding in your current budget, or you have to find other funding sources, or decide whether this program is going to go away.”
Currently, Safety First serves 38 families (it stopped accepting new families earlier this year, when it became clear the program might soon lose funding), and it has served over 500 children since its inception. Safety First’s staff is connecting the parents it still serves with private supervised visitation services, but those cost money. Tatyana said the private centers she was referred to asked for an average of $60 an hour.
Those centers also do not necessarily have staff members trained in the dynamics of domestic violence, or on-site security personnel—which DCJ guarantees. Christina McGovney, the shelter and housing services manager at Raphael House, a domestic violence shelter, said that she has met “countless survivors” over the years who have utilized Safety First.
“There is simply no other option available like Safety First, which provides supervised parenting time and exchanges in a private space with a secure building and on-site security,” McGovney wrote in an email to the Mercury. “No other parenting time program offers that, and many other supervised visitation and exchange programs refer families with complex safety needs to Safety First.”
During a recent Multnomah County public budget hearing, dozens of people—including survivors of domestic violence like Tatyana—testified about how helpful Safety First had been for their families.
“Safety First is a middle ground where I feel at peace leaving my children so that they can visit with their father, whom they love and want to have a relationship with,” Tatyana told the county commissioners. “If funding for Safety First stops, the middle and low class will not be able to afford a supervised visitation center.”
“If this program is cut,” Tatyana added, “I am not sure what I will do.”
