Domestic violence call rates for Asian American women have skyrocketed and are continuing to rise, NBC reports.
While calls for help stalled in March during shelter-in-place orders, loosened restrictions in April and May led to more women reporting abuse, according to NBC. As fall and winter approaches, calls are still coming in as women seek to escape abusive situations while they still have the chance.
According to Orchid Pusey, executive director for the San Francisco-based organization, Asian Women’s Shelter, the pandemic has resulted in heavier power imbalances between perpetrator and victim, Hyphen Magazine reports.
“I think of COVID-19 as a giant toolbox that got handed to batterers,” Pusey said, according to Hyphen.
Anti-Asian racism means that victims feel unsafe at home and outside the home, Pusey continued. Survivors who escape abusive situations may also find fear of discrimination triggering.
“Many of the survivors with PTSD were trying to be comfortable going to the grocery store before COVID-19. Now, the fear is so much higher,” Pusey continued. “There is a lot of hesitancy and people want to stay back.”
The economic ramifications of COVID-19 are also detrimental to survivors’ safety, NBC reports.
Many of her clients, Kavita Mehra said, are low-wage workers who are more likely to be laid off, making them dependent on abusive partners.
Mehra, the executive director for New York City’s Sakhi for South Asian Women, also said perpetrators use immigration status as a control tactic, preventing undocumented women from speaking out or seeking help.
“166 women called Sakhi for help in January. In March, as New York went into quarantine, the number plummeted to 53,” NBC reports. “In April, calls started rising, and in June, reached 224, exceeding pre-pandemic levels.”
These conditions are exacerbating, especially as Asian American already face barriers to reporting abuse, such as cultural stigmatization, NBC reports. A report by the Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence showed ‘lifetime prevalence rates as high as 55 percent.’
According to Hyphen, Asian American women are at a greater risk for domestic homicide, and the ‘presence of guns in abusive households can increase the risk of domestic homicide for women by as much as 500 percent.’
Despite the demand for resources, many organizations are underfunded and many service workers are overworked, Hyphen reports.
Many survivors require language accessibility, and the ‘demand for interpretation is at an all-time high’ as providers attempt to help survivors with legal paperwork or counseling.
“Organizations like us who cater to a niche population get overlooked, but when disasters like this happen, it’s these really vulnerable populations that get disproportionately impacted,” Yeonju Ahn, Development Associate for Chicago-based KAN-WIN, said.
“Our counselors are working crazy hours trying to meet these needs,” Ahn continued. “We have been allocating all of our time and resources into direct services and at this point, we don’t have the capacity to write all these compelling letters [to funders] and just don’t have the … brand recognition among the public to garner the kind of support we need to meet these surging demands.”
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