Vulnerable and victimized: Violence a leading factor women become homeless, where assaults continue

KAILUA-KONA — It was the strong arm of desperation that pushed Claire through the hotel room door, despite what awaited inside.

She’d slept in hotel rooms like this one, just as she’d slept in cars, on the beach, on strangers’ couches and, occasionally, in their beds.

“I didn’t have a pimp or anything like that,” Claire said. “It was basically for drugs and money at certain points to survive. It wasn’t something that I did completely to support myself.”

A prisoner of the needle by the age of 15, selling drugs for other dealers was one avenue Claire pursued to satiate her addictions. But after she was robbed, Claire found herself on the hook for missing cash with what she described as “some pretty scary people.”

Unable to come up with the money, she had no recourse but to settle her debt using a different kind of currency. But Claire’s intention as she walked into the hotel was not prostitution — just something in the vicinity.

“If you take your clothes off and walk around the room, I’ll give you $200,” the man said as she closed the door behind her.

Out of options, Claire did as he requested. He then motioned her over to the bed.

“If you let me give you a back massage, I’ll give you another $200.”

“I don’t really want you to touch me,” Claire replied.

“It’s fine,” the man said calmly, “I promise, I won’t do anything else.”

Hesitant, she acquiesced. A few minutes later, the situation escalated further.

“I’ll give you $500 more to have sex with me,” the man proposed, his tone and body language growing more predatory.

Claire refused. For her, the night had gone far enough. She’d take her $400 and leave.

She moved to redress herself, and that’s when the man grabbed her. That’s when he subdued her. That’s when Claire — who spent much of five years between the ages 17 and 22 living on or close to the streets — was raped.

Some minutes later, as Claire dressed to leave, her offender offered a second proposition.

“I’ve got $1,000 for you if you’ll stay the weekend,” he said, as though he hadn’t just brutally assaulted the young, half-dressed woman who stood shaken in front of him.

Violated and angry, Claire stormed out. But as a drug addict with a criminal record, she never involved police. And two months later — strung out on meth and heroin, homeless and again desperate, this time for cash simply to survive — Claire picked up the telephone.

She punched in her rapist’s number.

“I knew I could call him. It wasn’t easy to do at all at first, but it became easier,” she explained. “He was a lot older, so I tried to play different angles. I’d try to build a connection in another kind of way, so he’d still want to take care of me, but I wouldn’t have to have sex with him. That never really worked.”

An all too common, all too quiet occurrence

The incident in the hotel room was Claire’s first experience with rape in the most literal sense of the word, but it was hardly her first encounter with sexual assault.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC), a study of homeless and marginally housed individuals published in 2003 found that 32 percent of women in that population reported physical or sexual assault within the previous year.

Another study referenced by the NSVRC and published in 2002 indicated that roughly 38 percent of women engaging in ‘survival sex’ — a more appropriate term for Claire’s experiences than prostitution — reported forced sex.

The rate of homeless and marginally housed women assaulted, as well as those engaging in survival sex, is likely much higher than studies indicate. Statistics from the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) as well as the Bureau of Justice estimate that only about one in three sexual assaults are ever reported.

“I think homeless women are more (susceptible to) sexual assault and repeat assaults because they’re a vulnerable population,” said Lorraine Davis, Chief Operating Officer at the YWCA of Hawaii Island, which offers a sexual assault support services program. “Perpetrators look for the vulnerable person. Because there is such a low rate of reporting sexual assault, perpetrators know they can get away with it, so they go back to the same area or go back to the same victim.”

Or in Claire’s case, a desperate victim returns to her abuser when there’s nowhere else to go.

Davis said that last year, she was aware of six homeless women on the Big Island who were repeat sexual assault victims. Of the more than 225 sexual assault cases worked by the YWCA of Hawaii Island involving females of any demographic, more than half were 17 or younger.

At different points in her life, Claire fit both bills.

She arrived on Hawaii Island at the age of 17, having just finished a year in rehab at an inpatient facility in Utah. At the behest of her father, Claire was set to register at Youth With A Mission — a Christian educational program meant to prepare future missionaries for discipleship throughout the world.

It was less than a day before she bolted, and that night she ended up drinking heavily at the home of a handful of male strangers she’d met earlier in the afternoon while strolling down Alii Drive. She woke up on the couch the next morning with signs of sexual activity visible across her body, including a large hickey on her neck, but had no recollection of the evening before.

It was a pattern that would continue.

“I wouldn’t say I was raped, but I got way too drunk and people had sex with me,” Claire said. “It was kind of rape, but I was putting myself in the situation. I kept drinking around people I couldn’t trust and that kept happening. Unfortunately, I think that is pretty common for a lot of women nowadays, especially for ones who are alcoholics and addicts and living that lifestyle.”

Despite her perception of her abuse, which she openly admits is tinted now by the guilt and shame of a life she’s left behind, the treatment Claire described is encompassed by the FBI’s definition of rape — any sexual penetration perpetrated against someone without his or her consent.

How drunk or high a victim is doesn’t matter. Whether the victim occasionally or frequently trades sex for other considerations doesn’t matter. Marital status, too, is an irrelevant factor from a legal standpoint.

And sexual assault isn’t the end of exploitation. Consensual intercourse can also produce traumatic effects and alter behavior and perception of one’s self and the world for years to come.

A short while after Claire started beach bumming off Alii Drive, she found herself in Hilo, again with a man of advanced age.

“I was hungry,” she said. “I knew he wanted to use me, and I almost felt like I kind of had to let him so he’d let me stay there and feed me. I remember feeling disgusted with myself at that point because I was like, ‘Did I just have sex with someone for Top Ramen?’ But I didn’t know anyone else over there, and I had nowhere else to go.”

It was the first time Claire truly understood she could utilize her body to meet her needs. It was a lesson that would one day lead her to a hotel room with a man who refused to take no for an answer.

Assault as a catalyst for homelessness

Sexual and physical violence, as well as exploitation, aren’t just dangers for women once they hit the streets. They are frequently the root cause of homelessness.

Paula, who now works a security job on Hawaii Island, spent a year of her life living in a car and a tent on Kona’s streets and beaches back in the early ‘90s. She was 21 at the time and caring for three young children between the ages of 1 and 5-years-old.

“I felt danger all the time, and I hardly slept,” Paula said. “I was always on my toes, I mean every little noise, I’m looking around. It was very hard back then, but it was safer on the street. I would rather stay on the street than have to go home.”

On one occasion, as Paula and her children camped out in a tent at Honokohau Harbor, a man she suspected was high on drugs pulled one of the stakes anchoring the tent from the ground. He began screaming and wildly stabbing holes in the canvas – the stake’s pointed end tearing through the flimsy walls of her young family’s temporary abode.

Paula grabbed a small bat she kept with her at all times and emerged from the tent swinging, eventually chasing the man off.

On several other occasions, strangers tried to smash in the back window of her vehicle to get at the possessions inside.

But as dangerous and volatile as homeless life could be, it was still preferable to her environment at home. Paula and her husband had married young, and the abuse started early on.

“He would sit the kids on the couch while they were crying and make them watch as he beat the s*** out of me,” Paula said, a tear rolling down her cheek from beneath her sunglasses. “It happened at least once or twice a week.”

Bruises, black eyes, a dislocated shoulder: these were the visible signs of Paula’s torment. But some injuries cut deeper and were more difficult to discern.

“The sexual assault was very brutal. There was no consent. I was just like his property, and I had no say. They can do whatever they want with you,” Paula said. “When you say no, and you get held down and someone is on top of you, what are you going to do? There’s a lot of psychological injury for a female, and a lot of pride is stolen.”

The same shame and guilt that haunts Claire also plagued Paula, who had grown up in the Mormon Church. She was too ashamed to share the details of abuse with her family on Oahu, who she felt would judge her and try to control her.

“I didn’t have trust,” Paula explained. “They would want me to do this, or move here, or try to control me. I’d already went through that (with my husband).”

Initially, Paula was too afraid to go to the police. According to RAINN, the most common reason sexual and physical assaults go unreported is fear of retaliation.

But finally, her maternal instinct afforded her enough courage to file a restraining order against her husband, which was eventually followed by a filing for divorce. Without a job, however, she had no choice but to brave the streets.

“Domestic and sexual violence are leading causes of homelessness nationally,” according to the ‘No Place Like Home’ report on homelessness and poverty published by the National Law Center in 2012. “In some areas of the country, 1 in 4 homeless adults reported that domestic violence was a cause of their homelessness, and between 50 percent and 100 percent of homeless women have experienced domestic or sexual violence at some point in their lives.”

Some of the incidence of homelessness among assault survivors is caused by fleeing the home, as was the case for Paula. But other factors — such as an abuser’s interference with a survivor’s ability to do her job or discriminatory housing evictions or housing denials — have left those terrorized by physical and sexual assault to fend for themselves on the street.

Amendments to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 2013 made housing discrimination against women living in any public housing unit explicitly illegal.

Stipulations added to the law allow for emergency transfer assistance — helping women with a reasonable fear of violence to move to another unit — as well as allowing landlords to take victims at their word that they’re being assaulted, and subsequently use those accusations as cause to evict abusers.

States are also able to provide extra housing protections at their own discretion.

Hawaii has a possession of property and exclusion of abuser law on the books, which allows a court to exclude a violent sexual or physical offender from a shared residence regardless of ownership or lease status, according to the National Law Center.

As of 2013, Hawaii offered no other state laws specifically designed to protect the housing rights of sexual or domestic abuse survivors.

At the time of her abuse, Paula didn’t have available to her the same legal recourse survivors can pursue today.

Getting off the street

After a year of restless nights and fretting over how she’d keep her children fed and healthy, Paula was dealt a blow she couldn’t overcome. She returned to her vehicle one evening to find it stripped — the tires removed and the trunk broken into and cleaned out.

“I sat there with my kids, hungry, and thought ‘What the hell are you doing?’” Paula said.

In the first stroke of good fortune she’d had in recent memory, Paula’s two sisters, an aunt and a good friend — all of whom had been actively trying to find her — located her the following day.

“I guess the Lord was looking down on me,” she said. “The next day, they came and put me in a hotel, cleaned up kids, got me into welfare and contacted housing.”

The path to serenity was rockier for Claire. After she left Hawaii and returned to her home in Washington state, she struggled with drug addiction for several more years. It required a stint in prison and a car accident that almost claimed the life of one of her best friends in January of 2015 before she was finally ready to turn her life around.

“I opened my eyes and was surrounded by police officers,” Claire said. “I kept asking what happened. They told me I was in a car accident with (my best friend) Jim. They didn’t know if he was going to make it, and my whole world … I thought to myself, ‘What did I do?’”

Claire has been clean since that day, nearly 18 months. Approaching her 24th birthday, she now works two jobs as a waitress, is enrolling to pursue her associate’s degree in psychology in the fall and is an avid skydiver.

“The way my life is today, I never imagined it could be, so I didn’t know what I was missing out on — how much more there was to life,” Claire said.

Both Paula and Claire had family and friends on whom to lean — but for many women rendered homeless by sexual and/or domestic violence, or ravaged by such violence once they hit the streets — there is no family. There are no friends.

For those women, Hawaii Island offers several outreach centers that offer an opportunity to transition from assault victims to assault survivors, while raising up off the street in the process.

Programs include HOPE Services, the YWCA of Hawaii Island, Lokahi Treatment Centers and Child & Family Services West Hawaii. Those interested can also reach out to the Domestic Violence Action Center and the Sex Abuse Treatment Center, headquartered on Oahu.

“There is shame and guilt for the way I left family, and learning how to have healthy relationships has been a slow process of learning to trust people,” Claire said. “Addiction and mental health issues are problems for many homeless, but there is help. You can find those who can relate, who figured out how to get out it, and they will help you.”