Loretta Frederick, Senior Legal Policy Adviser to the Battered Women’s Justice Project, joins Tom to discuss the incidence of intimate partner violence (IPV) during the stay-at-home periods of the pandemic. She points out that those who were previously living with coercive controlling domestic violence are even more entrapped in these dangerous situations. This is especially alarming in Minnesota with the significant increase in purchases of firearms by first-time gun owners. She highlights the new tactics used by abusers, for example, where an abuser may withhold a child from an essential worker-parent on the pretext that the essential worker may endanger the child through exposure to COVID-19. She addresses the challenges survivors face in fleeing to a safe house that may expose the survivors own family and the host family to COVID-19. She discusses the challenges in rural areas that had relied upon hotels to temporarily shelter survivors when those hotels are now closed. All of this compounded when shelters are full and staff and other supports are not available. Further, survivors do not have access to libraries or coffee shops where they may have accessed help through the internet. The supports they need to get to safety are largely unavailable. 

There is the additional concern that children are exposed to more abuse than they were. School counselors, nurses, neighbors, clergy, doctors are all no longer in regular contact with survivors and their children. Options for survivors like independence through housing, employment, support services, and the courts have been less accessible or even not available during the heart of the quarantine.

She discusses the challenges of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) and court trials via videoconferencing. For example, what if the abuser and survivor are in the same location during videoconferences?

She posits the possibility of entering into temporary, pandemic-related settlements lasting perhaps six months so that a more thoughtful solution can be devised once the pandemic has abated. This is one way to try to limit the long-term negative implications of the pandemic.

The video she references is available at bwjp.org.