Lai is a 38-year-old woman with three children and a husband who beats her every time he drinks. He drinks almost every night. She would like to get a job and start a new life for herself and her children, she said. But first she must learn to read and write. Like others at the Good Shepherd Domestic Violence Protection center in Hualien, Lai has low self-esteem, made worse by a lack of work-related skills.
Her counselor said that by next week she'll be back with her husband.
"I have no way of making my own money. If I divorce him now, how could I take care of my children? I can't even read the divorce papers," said Lai, who out of fear that her husband would beat her for talking to media, asked not to be identified.
The Hualien Good Shepherd Center provides psychological counseling, legal advisers and medical services for victims of domestic abuse. They also have an emergency shelter for those who qualify for funding from the local government.
The shelter has space for eight women, but it doesn't have the funding to provide daycare services, so if a woman enrolls in a job training or literacy course she must first find someone to watch her kids.
Hence, women like Lai, whose son is at home with her husband, will likely go back. But then, when her husband gets drunk and hits her head so hard against the kitchen wall she ends up in the hospital, again, she'll eventually go back to the shelter.
It's not her first time and it won't be her last, said Wu Wen-fung (吳汶芳) a Good Shepherd social worker. Roughly 80 percent of the women who go to the shelter leave after one-to-three weeks. "Many of them, we see again," Wu said. "It's a cycle and it won't be broken until Hualien opens a halfway house."
Emergency shelters are typically dormitory-style rooms inside an office building. A halfway house, however, is a home in a local community where women and children can stay for longer periods of time to regain control over their lives, physically, emotionally and mentally, before moving out on their own.
Good Shepherd Center CEO Chen Zai-hui (陳在惠) and his employees have drafted a proposal for a halfway house that will accommodate five families and one in-house social worker. The first floor will provide counseling, job training and daycare services, so women can work or attend school.
The reason there is no halfway house in Hualien now is not for lack of want or need, it's for lack of money.
The facility will cost NT$2 million a year to run. It is estimated at least half will have to come from public donations, the rest will depend on the county government's budget for next year, Chen said.
This year's budget for [dealing with] domestic violence and sexual assault in Hualien is NT$9.95 million. "Based on the manpower we have right now, this budget is enough," said Chen Wen-chi (陳玟祺), the women and children section chief of the Bureau of Social Affairs in Hualien County.
The social work director at the Good Shepherd Center, however, sees it a different way. Hsiao Jui-yun (蕭瑞雲) said once administration costs are subtracted, less than 10 percent of the money is spent on women who need help. It's not enough, she said.
Statistics provided by the bureau's office showed 800 cases of domestic abuse and sexual assault filed last year. The office said they had no way of determining how many are strictly cases of domestic abuse.
RSS