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Another Way Shelter Headed for a
Meltdown?
Last week my column revealed the all-too-common
mistreatment of children in abuse shelters around
the country. The article highlighted two incidents
involving a Florida shelter, a former director who
was cited for contributing to the delinquency of
minors, and the sexual assault of a 4-year-old
girl. [www.ifeminists.net/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.360
 ]
Following publication of that essay, several
former employees of Another Way came forward to
tell me there was much, much more to the story.
What follows is an account of three Queen Bees, a
demoralized and depleted staff, and a shelter in
disarray. The sordid tale calls to mind the old
saying, “Absolute power corrupts
absolutely.”
Another Way, located in the northern Florida
town of Lake City, has a gleaming facility with 35
beds and is headed by a director paid the tidy sum
of $95,000. The staff consists of 30 persons and up
to 20 volunteers. Over the last 2 years, the
shelter has been plagued by an epidemic of staff
“resignations” -- 150 employees, more or
less.
The former staffers shared with me eye-witness
accounts of prison camp-like working conditions,
misappropriated shelter assets, falsified
documents, sex discrimination, illicit drug
activities, horrific child abuse, illegal
cover-ups, complacent oversight agencies, and
more.
The shell-shocked women told me many of their
former co-workers are unqualified, untrained, and
even under-age. Some employees are required to work
overtime without pay. Many are subjected to random
tongue-lashings and at-will terminations.
A few felt set up for failure. One staffer,
ordered to pull together extensive tax records on
short notice, recounted her ordeal: “Toward
the end of my deadline, I felt like I was going to
have a mental break down…There [are]
no words that can express the mental anguish that I
was made to feel throughout the day.”
There were widespread reports of management
using the shelter van and other resources for
personal use. Staff training records were known to
be falsified. When state auditors came to town, the
managers would pull all-nighters to make sure the
records were brought up to snuff.
The Queen Bees went out of their way to avoid
helping abused men. One employee revealed, “I
was personally instructed to do everything possible
to discourage males to report abuse.”
Oddly, fewer than 15% of residents came to the
facility with any physical injuries. Some of the
residents had been charged with beating up their
boyfriends and thrown in the clink. So shelter
staff worked their feminine charms to procure their
release and hide the law-breakers from their
probation officers.
Druggies openly plied their habit. “I, on
numerous occasions reported illegal drug use that I
had witnessed take place on Shelter property and
often my complaints were ignored,” a former
employee revealed. “We always knew not to call
the law unless you were prepared to be
unemployed.”
One appalled woman described the shelter’s
cover-up this way: “We’re here to empower
women, not teach them how to lie, cheat, steal, and
manipulate the system.”
Most troubling were the recurring incidents of
child neglect and abuse -- all swept under the rug.
These are just three examples:
- Returning to the 4-year-old who was sexually
assaulted by the 9-year-old girl, it turned out
her perpetrator had been involved in
inappropriate sex acts with another child at the
shelter just two months before. That was never
reported to the authorities.
- A one-month-old was left unattended in a
baby swing. Despite the infant sobbing all day,
a shelter manager upbraided the concerned
employee with the rebuke, “We don’t
tell these women how to parent their
children.”
- An 8-year-old boy became angry and started
to cry. Someone stuck him in a closed van in the
middle of summer. Advised of this barbaric
punishment, the manager ordered the boy left in
the vehicle until he “decided to stop
throwing a fit.”
Some incidents were reported to the Florida
Coalition Against Domestic Violence. But the group
never saw reason to take action. Maybe that’s
because the FCADV director, Tiffany Carr, is known
to be buddy-buddy with the Another Way head.
After they were expelled like a worn-out pack
mule, many former workers experienced
post-traumatic stress syndrome. Some required
psychiatric treatment.
One ex-worker revealed to me, “They took
advantage of their knowledge of my history of being
an abuse victim and my desperate circumstances to
intimidate me into accepting the abuse that they
heaped on me.”
Comparing her employer to a perp, another woman
reflected, “I later realized that like a
battered woman my loyalties were still to my
abuser.”
No wonder so many victims of abuse would never
dream of going to an abuse shelter.
© 2008, Carey
Roberts
See Books,
Issues
Carey
Roberts probes and lampoons political correctness.
His work has been published frequently in the
Washington Times, Townhall.com, LewRockwell.com,
ifeminists.net, Intellectual Conservative, and
elsewhere. He is a staff reporter for the New Media
Network. You can contact him at E-Mail
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