Better effort required to protect shelter address
Warren County’s battered women’s shelter continues to absorb abuse from local phone companies.
For the second straight year, the address of the facility, called Families in Crisis, has been published in a local phone book.
First it was Frontier which published the closely guarded Families in Crisis address in its phone book released in October, 2003. The mistake prompted the shelter to temporarily close due to security concerns. It didn’t reopen until some $35,000 worth of security measures had been complete, including a six-foot fence around the premises.
Now Ben Lomand has aggravated an already touchy situation by publishing the address in its October, 2004 phone book. As a result, Ben Lomand has been added to a $1 million lawsuit Families in Crisis has filed against Frontier.
The baffling question is how can the same mistake be made twice? An error of this magnitude seems difficult to overlook, especially after the wave of negative publicity which surrounded Frontier after it first printed the address.
The need for secrecy is essential for the most obvious reasons. Families in Crisis is a safe haven for women and their children in the most desperate situations. These are women who fear for their safety. Some fear for their lives.
Some have endured years of bruises and broken bones, and all they long for is a place to escape the onslaught of physical abuse. It takes courage for women to muster the strength to try and flee such a relationship, but some 200 women in Warren and surrounding counties use Families in Crisis as an escape mechanism each and every year.
That’s why the Families in Crisis address is not supposed to be public knowledge. The facility is a hiding place, a place enraged husbands aren’t supposed to be able to find by picking up a phone book. It jeopardizes the safety of the women, and the safety of those who work at the shelter.
When the mistake was first made by Frontier, Families in Crisis director Tammie Gribble said, “It’s made us feel like we’ve been stripped naked.” Gribble said Ben Lomand’s error “adds salt to the wound.”
It’s hard to be overly critical of a company for a mistake that’s certainly regrettable. With three newspaper editions each and every week, the Standard realizes typos do happen and errors slip by. And Ben Lomand did correct the mistake in a number of its editions.
At the same time, keeping the address of Families in Crisis a secret should always remain a top priority. It shouldn’t be an afterthought because it defeats the purpose of having a battered women’s shelter if the location is public knowledge.
Our local phone companies need to exert a little more effort to ensure the address of Families in Crisis doesn’t continue to be published. It’s evident the precautions they have in place are not working. When that carelessness could jeopardize the safety of a woman fleeing a hostile situation, it needs to be corrected.