- We have a very high homeless population.
There's about 1200 homeless individuals
living on the streets.
We have four times the national average
of domestic violence and most of the women
that come into the shelter have been victims
of domestic violence or sexual assault.
The have been trafficked, they have been,
I can't think really of very many
that I have talked to that have not had some kind
of violence in their lives.
And so most of them come in with very, very little hope.
The ultimate goal of a woman that comes into the shelter
is that transformation of their life.
That starts with them getting that little,
just the last drop of hope restored.
- [Man] I want you to open your eyes,
and just think about the first time you met Sherrie.
Okay, one, two, three, go ahead.
(laughing)
- All these things just eat away at a person's identity,
and so when the women come in many times they're hidden.
It's like they're hidden behind coats,
they're hidden behind anything
to not let anybody see them.
And then while they're with us for awhile
we start seeing them and they become a name,
and they become a person that you love.
And you really genuinely fall in love with these people
and they feel it.
I was up in my office working late
and I got a call from downstairs
that said there was a situation they needed me
to come down and address and so when I went down
there was a man dressed in a pink nightgown
and had a pink suitcase and they were very inebriated
and had a big gash down their face.
The ladies that were already in,
they were familiar with this person
because they had seen him at the other shelter
so they were scared, they scattered to the walls
and I was very aware that they were watching
how I handled this because later on
they told me had I let him in that
they would have left the shelter that night
because they would have felt so threatened by him.
A male's presence in the shelter,
even in the facility at any time,
there are women in there that are so severely abused
they don't even know that men can be kind.
To ask a female that has been sexually assaulted,
sold in sex trafficking, any of those kind of things,
to let a man sleep three feet next to her,
it just increases the trauma they've been through.
It's just imperative to have a safe place
where biological women are safe from that threat
of having a male come into the environment
and for many that's the first in their whole life
that they've ever felt safe.