Why Do They Stay? Interpersonal Violence and the Battered Women’s Movement in Idaho.

From Working on Wife Abuse, a directory of services 
for survivors of domestic violence,
compiled by Betsy Warrior, 1978.
Courtesy: National Library of Medicine.

On July 5, 2018, five people were fatally shot in the state of Idaho. Three of the victims were female, allegedly killed by their male partner or spouse. Two of the deceased were suspected suicides; men who shot themselves after killing the women. In an article published in the Idaho State Journal on July 9, 2018, reporter Madeleine Coles spoke with Bannock County Sheriff Lorin Nielsen, who noted that domestic violence was a common occurrence in southeast Idaho and that his deputies had “arrested more people lately for domestic violence incidents than they have for drunk driving,” reversing a previous trend.[1] Bannock County Prosecutor Steve Herzog pointed out that in many domestic violence cases, victims were unable to sustain themselves financially due to lack of education and/or employment, and their abusers often isolated them from friends and family, limiting their ability to leave.[2]

More than four decades ago, the battered women’s movement in the United States brought the issue of Interpersonal Violence (IPV) into the public consciousness, creating battered women’s shelters and organizing at the state and national level to lobby for legal and legislative changes.[3] Despite such efforts, IPV remains pervasive and the reasons women give for staying in violent relationships are nearly identical to what they were forty years ago. Women in abusive relationships often justify remaining married or in partnership with violent mates because they feel they have no other alternatives. In addition, the relationship between women and their abusers is complicated by the fact that their feelings of fear and anxiety are mixed with love and need. Finally, many women are often overcome with feelings of shame and failure for their own inability to leave, as well as for the problems within their marriages. As Susan Schechter wrote in her history of the battered women’s movement, “When activists speak about battered women, even sympathetic audiences continually scrutinize the victim’s behavior ... returning repeatedly to the question, ‘Why do these women stay?’”[4] Until the 1970s they had no access to resources that could address their need for shelter, advocacy, and legal services. Looking at Idaho’s response to IPV in the 1970s through a historical lens offers an opportunity to deconstruct the ideologies and systems of power that inform institutions throughout the state and their relationship with violence toward women.

In their book, Intimate Violence: The Definitive Study of the Causes and Consequences of Abuse in the American Family, Richard J. Gelles and Murray A. Strauss wrote that society ignores violence in the home “precisely because it is so predictable and because whatever harm it does is traded off against the safety and sanctity of the family.”[5] While Idaho is certainly not alone in its establishment of policies that sought the primacy of the family over potential social disorder, IPV remained persistent in the state’s history because of religious organizations that sought to protect men’s privacy and status as the family provider over women’s liberation; because of socioeconomic conditions that offered little recourse for women to find work that paid a livable wage; and because of a culture that relied heavily on gun ownership, first as a means of survival in a rural environment then as the nostalgic relic of a masculine, individualistic past.

From 1830 to 1850, thousands of white settlers crossed through southern Idaho on their journey to Oregon and California, but “only those who had the misfortune to die in Idaho stayed there.”[6] Statehood for Idaho came in 1890 and, in 1896, it became the fourth state to extend voting rights to women. Geography defined early Idahoans just as it does for residents today, as the establishment of towns and institutions that make up the state today often faced “harsh physical and social environments.”[7] Idaho has also been defined by a diversity of political ideologies, cultural practices, environments, economic structures, as well as community beliefs and traditions. Social institutions such as churches, powwows, political parties, women’s clubs, and labor unions “offered mutual aid in trying times,” particularly important in rural communities where job opportunities were limited.[8]

As influential as community building was to Idaho, many groups, from Latter-day Saints, Chinese miners, Latino migrants, Japanese farmers, Native Americans, and women experienced many forms of inequality, “from officially sanctioned legal discrimination to interpersonal violence.”[9] Both the social institutions that defined Idaho communities as well as a history of discrimination and violence converged in the mid-1970s, as national efforts to highlight IPV revealed it to be a social crisis in the state.

By the 1970s, more women were joining the workforce to help makes ends meet on a national scale, and Idaho was no different. However, work prospects for Idaho women remained bleak. Authors Laura Woodworth-Tey and Tara A. Rowe noted that homeless people in rural areas were more likely to be younger, highly educated women with children than their urban counterparts, and that female-headed families faced persistent poverty due to fewer employment opportunities and a lack of public housing and transportation options. The authors argued that there was, and remains, a lack of historical literature that analyzes the consequences for mothers and children of “extractive economies,” particularly in the small towns of northern Idaho, where if one was lucky they might find a low-paying service sector job.[10] When analyzing the persistence of IPV in Idaho, attention must be given to these endemic socioeconomic factors as they are influential in keeping women with their violent partners.

The battered women’s movement in Idaho arose from a historical reliance on social organizations that worked to connect disparate members of rural, isolated communities. Organizers were also able to tap into the national call for more aggressive legislation dealing with violent crime and newspapers within Idaho played a supportive role by publishing articles about the efforts of activists working at battered women’s shelters. By providing an analysis of how sometimes-radical ideas move from the margins to the center of mainstream society, the historian provides a chronicle of the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions faced by different generations of men and women. Peeling away the layers of Idaho’s history to find the hidden voices of its women provides a deeper understanding of a state that is often at odds with itself.

In 1977, Women’s Advocates, a rape crisis center located in Pocatello, Idaho, began offering a 24-hour crisis line for women experiencing IPV. According to an article written by Pocatello Police Officer Randie Barthlome, and published in the Idaho State Journal on October 30, 1977, in addition to telephone counseling, Women’s Advocates would offer temporary housing for one woman and up to two children in urgent situations. Women’s Advocates’ services were modeled on some of the same principles that battered women’s shelters adopted nationwide, mainly that the best advisers for women in violent situations were women who had survived similar circumstances. Women’s Advocates was also formed by local community members and, like many shelters that were established in the late 1970s and early 1980s, refused to accept state funding. Idaho shelters drew upon the state’s tradition of solving local problems through community action.

Because of firmly held beliefs centered on self-reliance, many shelter advocates in Idaho did not see the connection between the struggle to help battered women with the need for women’s liberation.[11] While many of the philosophical beliefs espoused by feminist grassroots organizations in other states, such as “principles of cooperation, egalitarian treatment, and caring self-help,” were shared by advocates in Idaho, the state’s history of conservatism was especially strong in regard to family matters.[12] Advocates did not set out to overturn the patriarchy, but they did seek to change how the state’s institutions responded to women in crisis. Again, drawing on the state’s history of relying on community organizations as sources of identity, networks of kinship, and mutual aid, a combination of church groups, women’s organizations such as the YWCA, and health care advocates joined to address IPV throughout Idaho.

In 1978, the Idaho Network to Stop Violence Against Women was founded as an outgrowth of 10 programs around the state to provide services for survivors of IPV or rape. The Network joined forces with Church Women United, the Idaho State Nurses Association, the National Organization for Women (NOW), and various other women’s organizations in 1982 to form the Idaho Council on Domestic Violence. Under the umbrella of this organization, the groups lobbied to pass legislation that would add a $15 surcharge on marriage license fees, which were then channeled into a fund supporting the operation of shelters across Idaho. The legislation passed in 1982.

While IPV activism in Idaho didn’t end in 1982, the legislation was instrumental in moving the state forward in the public debate on how to respond to IPV. The process is far from complete, as the reliance on patriarchal structures within families, particularly in rural communities in Idaho, reinforces the idea that the state has no business interfering with how families address violence, despite the personal, community, and financial devastation that it engenders. Contemporary media outlets publish articles about IPV in conjunction with sensationalized cases such as the murder-suicides that have plagued Idaho this year, as well as during the month of October, which has been designated as Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM).

Often during the holiday season, local news stories proclaim the fallacy that incidents of IPV increase during the holiday season. According to an article by Melissa Jeltsen for the Huffington Post on December 12, 2016, there is no verifiable data that supports an uptick in reported IPV cases during the holidays. However, call volumes for domestic violence hotlines tend to be far lower on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day than other times throughout the year. This may be due to victims feeling pressure to keep their families together during the holidays. Presuming that the added tension of the holiday season encourages increased acts of violence ignores the fact that power and control, two pervasive characteristics of abusive relationships, remain a constant and do not fluctuate like cycles of physical violence can.[13]

Viewing IPV through a historical lens reveals how women and communities have coped with violence and why backlash occurs when power structures within the family are challenged. Approached through this framework, the battered women’s movement becomes an exploration of what actions were successful in challenging ideas about privacy within the home, what public efforts to address IPV were successful, how groups worked together to address a common cause, and how their differences undermined the movement. This historical perspective provides a guideline for younger generations to utilize in addressing the violence they face today.

About the author: Samantha Edgerton is a second-year MA student studying modern U.S. history with Dr. Laurie Mercier. Her research interests include gender, race, ethnicity, and popular culture in the post-World War II American West. Her thesis is a regional case study of the battered women’s movement in Oregon and Idaho covering the period 1975 through 1989.

[1] Madeleine Coles, “Five killed in domestic violence incidents in one day,” Idaho State Journal, July 9, 2018, accessed October 10 2018. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/jul/09/five-killed-in-domestic-violence-incidents-in-one-/.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Author’s note: Men also experience severe intimate partner physical violence, but the movement to bring national attention to this issue in the 1970s and 1980s primarily focused on women. For this reason, this article does not address male survivors of IPV.

[4] Susan Schechter, Women and Male Violence: The Visions and Struggles of the Battered Women’s Movement (Boston: South End Press, 1982), 16.

[5] Richard J. Gelles and Murray A. Strauss, Intimate Violence: The Definitive Study of the Causes and Consequences of Abuse in the American Family (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 20.

[6] William Gruber, On All Sides Nowhere: Building a Life in Rural Idaho (Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 13.

[7] Adam M. Sowards, Idaho’s Place: A New History of the Gem State (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2014), 6.

[8] Ibid., 6.

[9] Ibid., 6.

[10] Laura Woodworth-Ney and Tara A. Rowe, “Defying Boundaries: Women in Idaho History,” ed. Adam M. Sowards, Idaho’s Place: A New History of the Gem State (University of Washington Press, 2014), 138.

[11] Schechter, Women and Male Violence, 105-106.

[12] Ibid., 106.

[13] Melissa Jeltsen, “Why It’s Dangerous to Claim Domestic Violence ‘Spikes’ Over the Holidays,” Huffington Post, December 12, 2016, accessed November 29, 2018. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/domestic-violence-holidays_us_58406b43e4b017f37fe35634.