Meeting T.E.S.S.A.: an intern's hard lessons

From the outside, T.E.S.S.A. (Trust Education Safety Support Action) looks like a bomb shelter. It is a windowless rectangular building hidden in a lower-class residential neighborhood in Colorado Springs. A small white sign out front reads, "T.E.S.S.A.--a community without domestic violence." When you walk in, there's a poster on the wall that reads like a police fact sheet: "1 in 4 Colorado women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime." "At most, 16 percent of rapes are reported to law enforcement." "Eighty percent of sexual assault victims know their perpetrator," it continues, and "32 percent of rape victims are between the ages of 11 and 17; 22 percent are between the ages of 18 and 24." Startling statistics. I can't vouch for their accuracy, but the problem they describe is real enough.

At 7:30 a.m., the waiting room is already full of weary, battered women clutching tired children and a few shopping bags of belongings, hastily grabbed in flight. One woman carries her children's coloring books and crayons, another her children's raincoats. A single woman sits with only a water-damaged romance novel and her purse. Often the women who come wear sunglasses, to hide black eyes, and the dirty sweatpants they've probably slept in, left the house in, gone to the police station in.

So began my internship at T.E.S.S.A. as a nineteen-year-old unpaid advocate for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Those first few days, I felt uneasy. I felt sorry for people, but I didn't understand them, and I worried that I could not help them.

Some dressed like businesswomen and wore winter scarves in May. They'd take off the scarves later in the cubicles. They'd let an advocate snap photographs of the strangulation marks. "I don't remember much. I passed out," they'd say, and the advocate would assure them: "That's okay." Even though it wasn't. None of it.

In the waiting room there was the occasional male victim--avoiding eye contact, looking sheepishly at a magazine, whispering to a woman at the front desk, "I need a restraining order. She'll kill me if I go home." They came in wearing the uniforms of day laborers: jeans, T-shirts, and laced-up boots.

At times there were perpetrators in the waiting room, rapists and batterers who had said the right thing and got past the front desk. Some were crazy, many were angry and noisy, and a few were armed. They caused the all-female staff to push buttons under desks, and to send out pages about air conditioners and leaky faucets, code for "Be careful, one of the perps got in."

When I first started at T.E.S.S.A., I liked the way my job title sounded: "Victim's Advocate." It had an official ring. On that first day, the advocacy coordinator showed me to a basement room with a computer, a desk, and a phone. I'd never had an office before. The previous summer, I'd been a maintenance worker for the school district, now I dressed up for work. When I entered the waiting room to call a client's name, I carried a clipboard. Some people say such things--a phone, a desk, a business card--don't matter. They do. The stuff of it--the props of administrative work--helped to ground me in the role of advocate, and helped the clients trust me--trust that I knew what I was doing.

When clients arrive at T.E.S.S.A., it's usually because the police have sent them to start the process of obtaining a restraining order. First they fill out lengthy intake forms. There are pages titled "What the other person has done to you" with lists of words and phrases like "spitting," "choking," "punching," "hinting violence is possible," "threatening to take children," "making you do things sexually that you do not want to do." There are boxes on the sheet to be checked: "in the past" or "in the past thirty days." There are words to circle: "oral," "anal," and "vaginal," as well as questions such as: "Were there scratches, cuts or bruises?" There are pages with headers such as, "What has been done to the children?" including words and phrases like "slapping," "kicking," "pushing," "biting," "witnessing intimidating incidents," and "not supporting basic needs." When clients finish the twelve-page form, they often say in disbelief, "I didn't realize how much he'd done."

After clients have filled out the paperwork, they wait for one of the advocates to meet with them. Advocates help with even more paperwork, explain the restraining-order process, listen, and offer support. They contact other--mostly governmental--agencies on behalf of the victims.

With a signed release for confidential information, advocates like me can call the DA's office, welfare agencies, probation officers, landlords, the Department of Human Services, Pikes Peak Mental Health, and the housing authority. We say things like, "Sir, the defendant is harassing an eighty-five-year-old woman and you're telling me you don't have grounds to evict?" And "Mr. Sadler, this is Anna at T.E.S.S.A. I'm calling on behalf of Amber. I understand that your daughter is living on her own, but she is a minor and she's been the victim of a sexual assault and needs your help. She can't get a restraining order or go to court to press charges without your signature."