Thursday, September 19, 2024
MARINETTE – Beginning in the 1970s in Marinette, the Rainbow House started as a grassroots effort to create safehouses and prevent domestic violence. During that time, domestic violence was thought to be a “family matter.”
Now, more than 50 years later, Rainbow House has expanded into both the counties of Florence and Octonto.
“We really try to meet survivors where they are at and utilize their knowledge of their own family situation to support the decisions that they, themselves, are making,” said Rainbow House Executive Director Courtney Olson. “We offer a whole lot of different resources so that could look like anything from helping develop a safety plan or writing helping them With a restraining order. We do court accompaniment. We provide emergency short term shelter, but we really do a lot around trying to keep survivors safe in their own homes.”
Giving resources to survivors in their own homes may seem counter-intuitive, but trying to find new housing provides additional challenges that aren’t easy to overcome.
“[Safety in the home] might look like trying to have the perpetrator removed from the household, if that’s the victim’s choice — if there’s a restraining order in place, that certainly helps — but then putting in safety measures like security cameras or window alarms, providing them with cell phones and all of those kind of things that can help create greater safety in the household for that survivor and their children,” she explained.
Domestic violence is often stigmatized or presented in a very specific way in media; however Olson says that there is no “typical victim.”
“It doesn’t have any socioeconomic barriers or boundaries, and it can impact you, regardless of your gender, your orientation, your age, your level of education or your financial capacity. So, we really do not limit who can come for services to the Rainbow House, even if both partners report to the Rainbow House. Sometimes situations are messy. I mean, there is no perfect, ideal domestic violence situation.”
Abusive patterns can be difficult to recognize at first because they begin subtly and escalate over time – they don’t just happen.
“Domestic violence is all about power and control. So it might be that your partner is trying to control decisions about how you spend your time, who you’re talking to. There’s a tendency to isolate victims from their friends and their family members so that they don’t have any support, and it makes it harder for them to escape that relationship. It’s all about trying to keep that person in the relationship,” Olson explained.
For friends and family who are aware of a domestic abuse situation, reaching out and offering support is the best way to get involved.
“Maybe it means coming with your friend to support them while they make a report to the police station, or maybe it means allowing that person to sit with you while you make that phone call, because making that first phone call for help is really hard. And so if you have a friend or family member who loves you right there with you that can certainly help. We can’t do like, make anybody do anything, obviously, and we do get phone calls from upset parents who are like, ‘What do I do? I want my daughter or my child to get out of this relationship.’ You know, ultimately, it’s got to be that individual’s choice in terms of when they do it.”
She added, “If you understand that it’s a process that isn’t going to be like a once and completed, it makes it, I think, a little easier for family members to accept if they realize that’s just part of the typical pattern and that you shouldn’t lose hope or faith that change is possible.”
Rainbow House offers a myriad of resources for those in need of help: a website, a 24-hour phone number and a text line. Their website can be reached at www.therainbowhouse.us; to reach the phone number, contact (715) 735-6656 and to text the line, contact (906) 290-9081.
