OFFERING HOPE, HELP — Jodi Scheetz is the executive director of ALIVE Inc., which is in its fourth decade of providing a wide array of services to victims of domestic violence in Jefferson County while also helping victims of sexual assault, a newer, additional way it lends assistance. Scheetz has been the director since the shelter opened in 1981. -- Janice Kiaski

STEUBENVILLE — In a perfect world, October wouldn’t need to be Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and Jodi Scheetz would be out of a job.

Instead, she’s 28 years into serving as the executive director of ALIVE Inc., an acronym for Alternatives to Living in Violent Environments.

And that nonprofit is in its fourth decade of providing a wide array of services to victims of domestic violence in Jefferson County while helping victims of sexual assault, a newer, additional way it lends assistance.

“We’re still going strong — we struggle, but we’re still going strong, and it’d be nice to work ourselves all out of a job because we ended domestic violence, but that’s not really reasonable, but we’re proud we’ve been around 40 years,” Scheetz said after she was the program presenter Oct. 21 for the Wintersville Woman’s Club.

“We’ve seen a lot of changes in the community, a lot of changes with the laws for Ohio, not just domestic violence but sexual assault in how that’s being taken more seriously, the rape kits are now being processed, so 40 years has been a long time,” Scheetz reflected.

Although October draws to a close and so, too, the annual observance, the work continues just the same.

Scheetz’s talk to the club during its meeting at the St. Florian Event Center in Wintersville included a mini-history.

“This year we celebrated 40 years of service in our community,” she began. “It started back in 1981, and we had a bunch of citizens who were concerned about battered women and where they were going to go and who was going to help them, and so, from my understanding, back in the day we would help women and actually pay for them to stay in a hotel room for a night or two or however long because we didn’t have a shelter at that time,” Scheetz said.

“Then the Catholic Diocese (of Steubenville) donated the building where we’re currently housed in,” she said, noting that in the course of all those years, its location isn’t really much of a secret anymore to the vast majority.

The mission of ALIVE Inc. is to provide safe alternatives to living in a violent environment and educate citizens. It provides emergency sheltering, a 24-hour crisis hotline and advocacy services to all victims of domestic violence and their children,” according to promotional brochures Scheetz provided to the club members.

Support groups, court/legal advocacy, housing and financial advocacy, emergency 911 cell phones, community education, school and youth dating violence programs and community information and referrals constitute a roster of services.

“In 2015 we took on sexual assault services in Jefferson County as well,” Scheetz said. “There was no agency doing it at that time. There was an agency out of Wheeling called Sexual Assault Help Center helping with rape victims and then they decided to pull out of Jefferson County,” she said, adding that the local Red Cross stepped in briefly to assume that responsibility. When that ended, ALIVE Inc. added that. “Us being a women’s organization, it made sense for us to take it over,” she said.

“When we have a sexual assault victim, we have two advocates who answer our crisis hotline. We have a separate number for that service. They will come to the hospital, usually they’re called by the hospital or law enforcement to go up and help a survivor of sexual assault go through that rape kit,” Scheetz said.

“It’s very time consuming, very traumatic and very scary if you’ve just had something really, really bad happen to you and usually, unfortunately, the sexual assault that we’re coming across is involving somebody they know. They’re more than likely to be sexually assaulted by someone they know vs. the stranger off the street who’s going to abduct you or something along those lines,” she said.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month is April. Sexual violence, according to a promotional flier, is verbal harassment, phone calls, stalking, photos/videos, indecent exposure, staring/winking, hand gestures, rape, sexual battery, gross sexual imposition, unlawful sexual conduct with a minor and human trafficking.

Internet dating and social media have wreaked havoc when it comes to domestic violence, according to Scheetz.

“Somebody was asking if we took suitcases and tote bags and things like that, and we surely do because there are times when we have women who are meeting somebody online and then they are uprooting their whole life and moving to Jefferson County, and once they get here, it’s not what they thought it was going to be, and they are isolated, they don’t know where to seek help, they are not from this area, they have no friends or family here and the only person they know is the abuser and most likely the abuser’s family,” Scheetz verbally painted a common scenario now.

“So there have been occasions where we have helped survivors with a bus ticket and driven them to the bus terminal in Wheeling. One lady actually came here from Nashville to Wintersville and had met a man on social media and talked to him two whole weeks before she packed up all the things and moved to Wintersville,” she said of the woman who had a drug problem.

“Wintersville police had called us, and I went out and spoke with her, and we helped her to get another bus ticket, and I drove her to Wheeling and put her on the bus and thought she was good to go,” she told the club members. “Eight months later I get a call — she came back to Wintersville, back to the same guy, and when I got involved with her again, she had told me when she went back home, she was doing really well, she was in a treatment program and didn’t have a cell phone and as soon as she got a cell phone and logged onto Facebook, he found her,” Scheetz said.

“And of course he tells her ‘I miss you, please come back,’ and she bought into that whole line again and she came back, so that time I helped her with a bus ticket again and a ride to the Wheeling Bus Terminal which we missed the bus, and so then I had to drive her to the downtown Pittsburgh bus terminal to get her so she would not miss the bus again and have to be in the shelter another night,” Scheetz continued.

“The Internet and social media and online dating have wreaked havoc, and so we need to be aware that there are some ladies who come here who aren’t from here and are in very vulnerable positions,” she said.

ALIVE has an emergency shelter. “When I first started the shelter, we would shelter victims for 30 days, sometimes even longer than 30 days, but in recent years, three to four years, we have taken significant funding cuts from our federal funding source, which is called our VOCA grant that stands for Victims of Crimes Act,” she said.

The federal money is dispersed to the states. “Then you write a grant proposal to the attorney general’s office, and they dole out the money, In the last two years, we have taken literally an 80 percent cut in our federal funding,” she said, noting the funding for the shelter went from $263,000 a year to $107,000, “which as you can imagine does not pay for much.”

Such funds don’t represent tax dollars. “That money is actually generated from fines and penalties on large corporations so a good example is Enron. When they got in trouble for those bad business practices they were given a fine and it was deposited in the VOCA money, but what we saw in the last probably four years was a decrease in deposits in that VOCA money, so not as many corporations were getting in trouble for bad business practices,” Scheetz said of such funds only going so far for facilities nationwide tapping into that same pot of money.

“We’re unable to keep people for 30 days anymore because we cannot afford to do that and not even so much on the utilities but on paying staff to be there because we do not leave survivors in the shelter by themselves,” she said.

The ALIVE staff includes 13 people, five of whom are full time. The staff covers evenings and weekends

“We really start off with about a 24-hour period and deciding how else we can help this person,” Scheetz said of the procedure when someone comes to the shelter for help. “We’ve been working a lot with our local homeless shelter at Urban Mission. We might take someone in and help them to get a civil protection order saying the abuser has to stay away.” They collaborate on finding housing and programming help.

“That’s kind of a bummer and been kind of bad as far as not being able to keep people as long as we used to. We also operate the 24-hour crisis hotline so staff is always available if somebody needs our help,” she said.

“When we have somebody in the shelter, we provide them with food and clothing and personal hygiene products and all that kind of stuff that comes along with staying in the shelter, and we also have a support group free of charge that meets on Tuesdays from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., and it is open ended so folks can come once, they don’t have to talk if they don’t want to, they can come and sit and listen and they can never come back or they can come as long as they would like and feel like they need the support of the shelter,” she said of the support group’s structure.

Participation in the support group is never mandated. “Judges are not allowed or law enforcement to tell a victim that they have to go to the ALIVE shelter or you have to attend a support group,” she said. “We at the shelter try to approach helping survivors of domestic violence with the least restrictive environment so I can’t make anybody stay at the shelter. They can come, they may be there an hour and decide it’s not for them, and they go right back out the door, which is totally their choice,” Scheetz said. “I can’t make them do anything. We don’t force anybody to do anything. The one thing I will tell you, though, is if somebody is looking for housing, then we’ve got to get a jump on that. We have a little bit of a shortage of affordable housing here in Jefferson County,” she said.

“So housing is critical, and if we’re going to help someone find housing, we need to get on that very quickly because that can be a process, several weeks, sometimes upward of a couple months to get into housing,” she said. Another challenge is that each housing application involves a $25 fee.

“If I’m indigent and have two children and not working, where am I getting $25 to apply for each of these locations? I don’t have the money to give them that kind of money. That’s one of the areas that’s like a gap in the services we have,”she said of what can be a vicious cycle. Sometimes, Scheetz said, it can be reason by why victims will allow their abusers to come back in their lives.

“They may be financially dependent on them, may need them for babysitting, they sometimes feel they can’t make it without them, and so it’s a tough thing to leave your abuser,” Scheetz said.

“This is why it takes survivors so many times — the statistics say it takes the battered woman an average of seven to 10 times of leaving the abuser before she will leave for good,” she said.

“We feel like every time she leaves or makes a phone call to us, that’s inching toward that final time she will end that relationship for good, but abusers can be very manipulative, and they can really tug at their heart strings and make all these promises. Things will usually get good for a while,” Scheetz told the club members.

“Sometimes it gets good for a while because we know domestic violence happens in a cycle. It’s always good when we first meet somebody, we’re in love, it is all hearts and flowers and daisies and you can’t stand to be apart, but the longer things go on, we start to get to get know each other and that’s what we call the tension-building stage, Things may start to go awry,” she said.

“This is very often when victims are missing those red warning signals because an abuser doesn’t punch out his partner on the first date,” she said of what starts out with little things. “He’ll say ‘you’re wearing too much makeup today — you kind of look like a whore,’ ‘why is your dress so short, who else are you trying to pick up?’ I see you talking to this guy in the checkout at store –why are you talking to him so long — you must be sleeping with him.'”

It can build to physical violence.

“I have had a lot of women say they’ve been spit in their face; their hair pulled; grabbing them up by the arms; kicking; and a big one is strangulation, which is a huge fatality indicator,” Scheetz said. “It only takes 3-to-5 pounds of pressure on your neck to cut off your air supply and in a matter of minutes you could be out and be killed.

“We try to take strangulation very seriously, but a lot of victims like to call it choking. We don’t because choking infers something is lodged in your throat, and that’s not what is happening — someone is manually cutting off your oxygen, so a lot of survivors have told me. ‘It’s not like he punches me out, Jodi,’ but meanwhile they have bruises up and down their arms and legs but because he doesn’t punch them or because after the violence subsides there’s a side of remorse stage to the cycle of violence where the abuser is sorry and remorseful and very often gifts are purchased during this time,” she continued.

One abused woman packed her bags and returned to her abuser simply because he’d given her a little ring. “That ring meant he loved her and he was sorry and she was packing her stuff and out the door she was going to go back to him.”

“Years ago, one lady’s husband dropped off a pack of cigarettes for her at the shelter and she left because he left the pack of smokes and that meant he cared and still loved her, so they (victims and abusers) have a very hard time separating themselves, and even if we physically get them removed from the abuser, in their brain, in their mind, they’re still connected, and if we throw children on top of that, now we’ve got, ‘I don’t want to take my children from their dad, I grew up without my dad and I don’t want that for my kids,’ so for every reason that I have for somebody to leave, they have a reason why it’s a good idea for them to stay so we do see a lot of the same people kind of repeating,” she said.

“The other thing we see quite a bit of is they may have gotten rid of one guy, but then they didn’t take enough time between a breakup to collect their thoughts and get their mind right and try to go into a healthy way and they get involved with yet another abuser and now they’re calling me because that guy is being bad, if not worse.”

Scheetz said some women who have stayed at the shelter are upset when it’s suggested that they not date anyone for a while, that they focus on their children and themselves.

“When you feel better about yourself, you’re going to attract a more positive person but if I’m still feeling down and terrible about myself and thinking I’m not deserving of respect and to be treated nicely then that’s the kind of person who’s going to be attracted to me,” she said.

“Men who are going to be abusive have almost a sixth sense of who to latch on to and it’s usually that person who has low self-esteem, who isn’t doing so well, who financially can’t take care of themselves. That’s probably the biggest reason they stay, well they love them, but it’s very difficult to get yourself out of that situation and then certainly it’s a process and it takes all of us,” Scheetz said.

“We try to have a coordinated effort in Jefferson County among law enforcement, victim service providers such as the ALIVE shelter and the prosecutor’s office because we’re not going to get anywhere if we don’t start putting people in jail and putting them in for a period of time, not 24 hours, not five days — that doesn’t send a message. Thirty days sends a message — 90 days sends a message but if we don’t have that coordinated effort, and if we don’t try to help that victim from the time law enforcement is called until the very end of that criminal trial and for us it’s beyond that,” she said.

“We are still there months, sometimes years later trying to provide support to a person who is left, so it can be very, very hard and very, very frustrating,” she said.

Statistics paint a gloomy generational picture.

“Sixty percent of little boys who grow up witnessing violence go on to be abusers in their adult relationships; 50 percent of little girls who grow up witnessing violence go on to become victims in their adult relationships — thus the 40 years of ALIVE being in our community,” Scheetz said.

“I would love to say we’re seeing headway, that we’re seeing domestic violence decreasing, but that would be a lie.”

The shelter accepts items such as clothing — comfy clothes — toiletries, luggage and tote bags and snacks and bottled water. “Jefferson County has been very generous,” Scheetz said, encouraging people to donate to the United Way of Jefferson County, as ALIVE is one of its member agencies.

“If someone needs help, call the ALIVE Shelter at (740) 283-3444 or 1-(888) 611-SAFE. There’s a chance you might catch the answering service, but we’re always available. They’ll get a hold of us,” she said.