The first 24 hours after a domestic abuse incident have been found to be critical for survivors, their ability to get help and get out of the abusive situation.
That front line response often falls to a team of doctors, hospital workers and community activists when law enforcement and the courts can’t get them help fast enough. Those responders say they often see abuse victims on a repeat basis.
“We have seen patients who’ve come here with one injury and the next time they come, they don’t make it,” said Dr. Anne Stey, a trauma surgeon at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. “And so that’s a reality.”
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Stey said she has seen domestic violence incidents grow significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020.
“Violence often becomes a language that people start being exposed to in the home, sometimes from a very young age, and then it is recreated when they create their own families,” she said. “And it can even bleed out into the community, and it can ultimately be the cause of a lot of the community violence that we can see.”
Stey is part of the hospital’s first response to domestic violence cases. Outside of the emergency room, she does research on ways to break the cycle for her patients.
Studies show survivors of intimate partner violence are more than twice as likely to return to the ER within 30 days, which is why Stey says the follow-up matters just as much as the first response.
She said poverty and unemployment are among the strongest predictors of domestic violence. According to Bureau of Justice statistics, women in households earning under $25,000 a year face abuse at three times the rate of those with higher incomes.
Unemployment increases the risk of domestic violence by more than 30%.
Daisy Vega works alongside Dr. Stey as Northwestern Hospital’s violence intervention coordinator, helping survivors access resources like a safe place to stay, or victim compensation funding up to a year after their hospital stay. It’s a critical time to help them escape any ongoing danger.
“Unfortunately, with the work that I do, some people are like, ‘I was meant to get shot at some point,'” she said. “And that’s just the life that they think they are going to have.”
Gwen Baxter has herself lived with domestic violence, at a time, she said, when resources were scarce. Now she works with Acclivus, an Illinois state program that partners with six hospitals to help connect survivors to everything from housing to food and legal aid.
The hospital-based programs can reduce the risk of reinjury by up to 60%, according to the American College of Surgeons.
“And if they just know they got that type of support system, they become strong, you know,” Baxter said. “They see outside of that relationship because some of them feel like they’re in too deep.”
This team works not just to heal wounds, but to give hope.
“They’re afraid all the time,” Stey said. “Having these opportunities, knowing they’re not going to be on the street, knowing that they’re going to have enough food for their family, knowing that they’re going to be able to, you know, if their attacker comes after them that they’re going to have legal recourse to prevent that person from hurting them or their family, is incredibly important.”
More than 12,000 victims of violence have turned to Acclivus for help during that “what’s next” period after an incidence of abuse.
