Salit: Last summer, due to the lack of space here in Bat Melech, we referred a woman from one of the “closed” chareidi communities to a non-religious shelter. She arrived there in mid-August, her children’s peyos curling down their cheeks while the other women at the shelter were minimally dressed and a large wall plasma TV was broadcasting some inappropriate movie. All week long, during dairy meals, she was assured that there is absolutely no problem; the dishes are all kosher, the dairy has a fine hechsher, etc. On Friday, as they were cooking the Shabbat meal, she noticed that the same dishes were being used. She shuddered. In our shelter, the women are guaranteed that they can continue to observe kashrust l’mehadrin without fear.
Is the violent husband typical to both the religious and non-religious sectors?
Tzilit: The religious abuse has added another twist which the non-religious woman does not experience. For instance: The husband insists that she is “not clean” and therefore refuses to touch or even get near her. Or the husband whose religious practices are so stringent they border on craziness, yet he has no problem in forcing her to have relations during her non-clean days. This is something the non-religious find difficult to comprehend. One husband decided that his wife’s clothing was not modest enough so he proceeded to cut all of her clothing to pieces. One woman related that in her husband’s zeal to clean for Pesach he forced her to move the heavy bookcases (without his help, of course) and to clean and re-clean the refrigerator a dozen times. Still not satisfied with the result he would pour bleach all over her Yom Tov clothing and destroy them.
Salit: There are quite a number of degrading episodes that revolve around religion. One husband demanded a written note from the mikveh attendant that his wife actually immersed; otherwise he wouldn’t believe her. And this abuse has been going on for twenty-five years. Can you imagine the embarrassment and the insult? Not long ago, sitting at the shelter’s Shabbat table, one of the women got up to make the Kiddush, due to the absence of any male. Her little girl piped up: “Ima, you are doing it different than Abba does.” Questioned as to what the difference was, her answer shed more light on what her mother went through. It seems that every time Abba was saying the words “You should do no work, you, your son and daughter, your servant, maid and your animals…” he would repeat the word “animals” a number of times while staring at and gesturing towards the mother. This type of ridicule went on for ten long years, all in front of the children.
All of the different Social Service agencies know Bat Melech well and refer women to the shelter. Some are sent over by the Police Department, emergency rooms, anti-abuse service centers, rabbanim or through ads prominently displayed in pediatric health clinics, doctors’ offices, maternity wards, mikvaos and other information centers. The community phone directories also display Bat Melech’s full-page ads. “Unfortunately,” says Noach Korman, “the pressing question is not how they find out about our shelter but rather how we can possibly accommodate so many requests for help.”
Taking into consideration that the phenomenon of secrecy is so prevalent in the religious community, the numbers of requests are simply astonishing. The shelter’s emergency phone lines operate 24-hours a day and on a monthly basis Bat Melech receives 70 calls on average from religious or chareidi women. Many of the calls are requests for information and help in filing legal complaints. The shelter is their option of last resort; the woman feels that her life is in danger, her children are being molested or she has no outside support of any kind. Examples of those who lack any outside support are new immigrants, ba’alei teshuva and women whose families have cut off any connection with them because they dared defy the parents and went on to marry the very man who now makes their lives miserable. The shelter also absorbs women who simply are too terrorized to lift a finger and take the necessary first step to freedom. Most of the shelter’s residents are chareidi women and they will not go to non-religious shelters.