Creating Sustainable Safety for Battered Women

Safety planning is nearly always placed at the center of all advocacy and systems change interventions. New advocates are insistently taught that victim safety must be the most important concern in their work. Yet, we have only begun to recognize that safety cannot be arranged formulaically. What might appear to be definite safety — such as a woman leaving an abuser — may not translate to actual safety for all victims. In fact, we now know that the period around separation from the abuser may be the most hazardous time for some battered women”…