Episode 196: Where Partner Violence Meets the Workplace
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
This time…maybe at some point in your work life you’ve worried about a colleague. There have been enough signs that you’ve wondered, is her partner hurting her? It happens more often than we like to think.
“I went back into the house. And that is when I received the worst beating that I have ever received. And two days later I had a job interview at the CBC. And I had a ring of bruises around my neck from his hands. I realized I had to try to cover it up.”
Covering up is the norm for victims…but some employers are uncovering what’s happening, and trying to do something about it…stepping into challenging new territory.
“Even as lately as 2020, at least half regarded this as something that would be dealt with by their employee assistance program. And so they didn't need to do or say anything else about it. Reflecting the idea that this isn't a company's business.”
Where partner violence and the workplace meet. Coming up on The Broad Experience.
Over the years I’ve thought on and off about doing a show on this difficult subject. But it was earlier this year, when I heard a CBC podcast called Welcome to Paradise, that I finally pushed myself into action.
It’s a six-part show hosted by Canadian journalist Anna Maria Tremonti. Anna Maria has had a stellar career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on radio and TV. She’s worked all over the world, reported from conflict zones, hosted the flagship CBC radio show The Current for 17 years. She’s told many stories of trauma during her career. But until this year, she’d never told her own.
I should let you know that you will hear some descriptions of partner violence during this episode.
Back in the early 80s Anna Maria married a guy she’d met through work. She was in her early 20s at the time, the daughter of Italian parents. Her family was close and protective. She loved them, but she told me she couldn’t wait to leave home and get out into the world.
“When I look at myself back then, I was very ambitious. I felt I knew lots of things, but I was pretty naive about love. I hadn't had a lot of boyfriends. I had these dreams about finding a perfect partner who could, you know, forge out into the world with me. And I thought I'd found that with the man I married whose name, his first name was Pat. But I was really naive. And in the sense that I wasn't expecting the kind of trouble I got into, and I didn't know how to handle it. And I blamed myself. I thought I was doing something wrong. You know, in retrospect that's not naive. That's what happens.”
To back up for a minute: Anna Maria got a job out of college at a radio station in Nova Scotia, and one day this guy shows up to work at the same station.
“He's got this Irish setter and he's cute. And he seems much more worldly than me. And he, you know, he's running his Irish setter on this big beach and I think, wow, what an athlete. And of course he lets the dog out and drives next to it. <laughs>...I should have seen that coming. But anyway, we become really good friends over time, and then I fall for him, but we go our separate ways. I move on to another city and then I move again, and then we end up not very far from each other and end up together.”
At age 23, she married him. She was thrilled - this was going to be the start of her exciting new life with a charming man who wanted to explore with her. But that’s not what happened.
AM-T: “When was the first time he was violent with you? How long had you been together?”
“It was a couple of months into the marriage. It was actually after we sacramentalized the marriage. So we eloped in October and we went to my parents' house in January and we got married by a priest in their living room and had a little party with my relatives in early January. And it was shortly after we got home from that he just went after me one day. He had been withdrawing. He wasn't very communicative, something was bothering him and I was trying to get him to tell me what was wrong. And he just, you know, blew. And he threw a pot of hot coffee at me and I turned and it hit my back and he just started pummeling me on my back and screaming at me.
And I was just hunched over, I didn't know what to do and I - no one had ever done that to me. I didn't know really what was happening…and I kind of got away from him and I went to the bathroom, and my back was wet because of the coffee, but my back was already discolored, like, and I remember thinking, wow, you bruise really easily. And I don't bruise really easily. I bruise if you hit me really hard. But that was the very first time. And I was in a, I can sort of see myself still, like almost like a little movie playing like to somebody else when I talk about this. And at some point I went back into the kitchen and sat down across from him, or he sat down across from me and he said, essentially that I drove him to this like, look what you made me do to you. And it started right there. ‘Look what you did. You made me do this to you.’”
Anna Maria was confused but rationalized that he must be right. She must have annoyed him. She’d be more careful in future.
But he kept doing it. She never knew when a beating was going to come. One day a neighbor heard something, called the police. Anna Maria sent them away.
On one occasion her husband beat her while they were staying with relatives of his in Ottawa. She says there’s no way the relatives upstairs couldn’t have heard the beating downstairs. But no one said anything. Afterwards Pat left. He made the long drive home, leaving Anna Maria in this strange house.
She got her stuff together and took an overnight train back east…to apologize.
In this clip from Welcome to Paradise, courtesy of CBC Podcasts, you’ll hear Anna Maria and the voice of her therapist.
Anna Maria: “I just remember being on this overnight train…”
Therapist: “Mm-hmm…”
Anna Maria: “And I spent the time on the train thinking about how I had really screwed up. How I had clearly said something to upset him. I thought about how I needed to be a better person and I was going to go and tell him we could talk it out.”
AM-T: “When I heard that story on the podcast of you going back on the train, telling yourself, you know, I'm just gonna be a better wife, it really moved me because it's that sense of shame, you know, where does that come from? But, and I haven't been in this same position, but it's certainly familiar to me, especially as a young woman thinking, I'm doing something wrong in this relationship. I mean, I had a relationship when I was at university with a guy who was several years older. It felt a lot older, you know, when you were 21 and he was 25 and much more sophisticated than I was. And he was good looking and I thought, ‘and he wants me?,’ you know, it was one of those situations, but yeah, I wasn't terribly experienced and he was, and he was quite bold.
And he wanted to do things that I wasn't comfortable with yet, ‘cause I really didn't know him, but I didn't know how to articulate that. In fact, I felt that I couldn't, I couldn't articulate that, you know, and I remember one night in particular where he was doing this particular thing and he got angry because I wasn't responding. I wasn't responding with pleasure. And the truth is I was so scared. I remember I was, I was shaking. My whole body was trembling because I was so scared, but I was all mixed up and ashamed ‘cause I felt well aren't I supposed to like this? He's so good looking, what's wrong with me? Oh no, I've upset him. You know, I blamed myself. So I do understand that. And I think it's such a shame that, that so many of us do that, especially when we're young.”
“You know, I think there's a narrative out there that we're supposed to be all of these things. And part of that is we're supposed to please our partner and it's our job to do all of that. And um, I mean, I think the narrative has changed somewhat, but I think also when it comes to that violence, the shame, I don't know where that comes from, but I think it comes with the mistreatment, whatever kind of mistreatment it is, because I'm astounded at the letters I'm getting from people now that my podcast is out, and that's the thread. So many people are ashamed. So many people have said nothing over decades or they're still going through it. And they haven't told anyone. I have received notes from women I used to walk by in the hallway. I've received notes from women I've never met, from women who are my age or older, from women are decades younger.
And that shame thing is there. And it's, you know, it's not what's in us. It's what… I guess it's, you know, I'm not an expert on shame and I'm not a therapist, but it it's part of the package. We don't just get bruised. We get shamed.”
But while Anna Maria was being attacked at home, she was thriving at work. No one there had a clue what was happening at home. Even she had trouble making the connection between her personal life and some of the things she reported on…as you’ll hear in this clip from the podcast.
“On my last day of work in Halifax, I read the lead story, without missing a beat”
Co-host: “Crime is up and down at the same time…”
Anna Maria: That's right Randy, the overall crime rate in Halifax is down by eight and a half percent. However the just released 1980 police report says there’s been increases in violent crime - the most alarming, indecent assaults against women, they climbed 64 percent last year. Sexual offenses are up 33 percent. The number of reported rapes, however, is down…”
“I rattle off the numbers as if this kind of violence has nothing to do with me…” [Fade down podcast music]
“That’s how much of a disconnect I thought I had…I understood by that time that I was one of those women, one of those women I read about - that was me, who were beaten by their husbands or their partners and who hid it from everyone. I understood that that was me, but in the wider stats, I didn't put myself in there, I guess I just kind of, I compartmentalized even more than I realized I was doing at the time, because more than once I went to work making sure I covered my bruises.”
AM-T: “Yeah. And I think once you even went for an interview for a new job, for which you dressed specifically to do that, to cover something up, right?”
“My first job interview at the CBC, which was a very big deal. Yeah…in Fredericton. It was for the morning show host and I was 24 years old. And he had just a few weeks earlier, like maybe two weeks earlier, tops, had sat across from me and told me that if I didn't leave, he would kill me, that it would just be a matter of time. And I left and I was hysterical. I didn't know what to do. I actually drove to friends, you know, in another province, down the highway, crying. And I spent a couple of days with them, I guess, maybe a little longer. And then I thought, I'm going back. He doesn't mean that he, he's not capable of killing me. I love him. This will work. And besides, I have a CBC radio interview that I need to do.
And I went back, and I went back into the house. And that is when I received the worst beating that I have ever received. And two days later I had a job interview at the CBC. And I had a ring of bruises around my neck from his hands. Like his fingerprints were literally on my neck. And, um, I realized I had to try to cover it up. So I, you know, I put on different blouses. I had this suit that I really liked. And I put on different blouses to see what you could see and kind of twist it around in the mirror to make sure that they wouldn't see the bruises on my neck.
And then I spent a long time just kind of giving myself a pep talk about - because I was, I was really fragile at the time. And I knew I couldn't go back again. And I was walking into an interview where, you know, CBC interviews, there's a table full of people asking you questions. And they knew him. It's a small town, we're both in the media. And I thought, oh my God, they're gonna ask me about him. They're gonna make a joke. How is he doing, how's this? And I thought, what will I do? And I just thought you will not cry. They didn't ask me about him actually, but you will not cry. You will not get emotional. You will just…you want this job. And I did it, I got the job. And I didn't cry and they didn't see the bruises. They had no idea.”
She had the job but she was such a mess she had to give herself daily pep talks to tell herself get back on the air after every break. Pat wouldn’t let her return to the house to get her things. She was living in a boarding house for a while, crying every day after she got home from work.
And still she kept quiet at work for a long time, for a few reasons.
“I was ashamed and I didn't want people to know. I also thought I would be perceived as weak. Later when I got out of that marriage and I moved away and moving, like I moved across the country and it was actually - that distance was very helpful for me, but I wanted to cover something related to domestic violence. And I remember my boss at the time suggesting that I might be in a conflict and it was, it was subtle, but it was clear to me that somebody had called ahead and maybe they had said, you know, this happened to her, you know, be kind to her or give her a chance or something. I don't know what was said, but I have a feeling that a male boss called ahead and, you know, I had a couple of levels of bosses. Um, some were more like colleagues. But I kind of got the message that, that the person I was working for at the time, would've seen that as a conflict of sorts.”
She says this is just one reason why others like her don’t want their situation known at work. For one thing work feels like a safe place, somewhere they get fulfillment. And they don’t want people judging their abilities negatively, seeing them as a victim instead of a worker. They may fear being fired if their situation is known.
Anna Maria was able to get a divorce, move away, and begin to pick up the pieces of her life, though none of that was easy. Her marriage lasted just a year. But the trauma has followed her for decades.
She’d had nothing to do with Pat for a long time when a work assignment took her many miles from home.
“I had not seen him for about I guess it would've been five or six years. Like not even run into him down the street or anything, ‘cause I had moved away and I was covering an election campaign, a federal election campaign. And I was on a plane of one of the opposition leaders. And uh, we showed up at the television station where he was working and I knew everybody there. I had worked, you know, it was attached to the radio station. And so I was waiting for this leader to finish an interview. And I was just kind of hanging around talking to a few people who I knew and I could see someone in my peripheral vision standing there and I turned, and it was him. And he said, ‘hi.’ And he reached out his hand to shake my hand and I shook his hand. I didn't know what to do. And he said, ‘you're doing really good work.’ And I thanked him and that was it.
And I remember saying to my sound man, I used to be married to that guy. And he was like, you know, I didn't even know you were married, Anna Maria. Like, really? And, and I didn't say anything else, but it was really, it was awkward and just strange. And I just played along. So in the same way that I had played along before I continued to play along, I didn't want to cause a fuss. I didn't want to say, how dare you even talk to me? How dare you? You know, I was kind of flattered that he thought I did good work.”
During their marriage her abusive husband had won an award for his human rights reporting.
Only decades later did Anna Maria really begin to grapple with what had happened to her all those years before. And she had a lot of questions. In Welcome to Paradise, she sits down with her therapist, revisits her past, and sets out to track down her ex- husband to find out whether he remembers things the same way she does.
Anna Maria has spent a LOT of time at work over the years. And I wanted to find out how she feels about workplaces as spaces where colleagues can discuss partner violence…
“I'd like to think that if we know it's happening to a colleague, we can have a talk to try to find out how we can help them. But what's not helpful is to say, ‘You have to get out of there. Why are you staying? How can you go back? How can that happen?’
And that's still the go-to for people who don't understand. And I mean, statistically, you know, in studies, we know that even people who have been victims of intimate partner violence don't always wanna believe other victims of intimate partner violence. So it's very fraught. It's a process, you know that people are at their most vulnerable in that period of time after they leave. I think that I was unusual in that I was told if you don't leave, I'll kill you. Many people are told if you do leave, I’ll kill you.”
You’ll hear from Anna Maria again toward the end of the show. But after the break…we meet someone who works with employers to help them recognize the signs of partner violence and respond.
Beth Lewis is the director of Standing Firm, an organization based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that works with employers to address the impact that intimate partner violence has on their employees.
Standing Firm got started in 2009 after a big local healthcare organization did some research and found 40 percent of new hires - mostly women - said they’d either been a victim of domestic violence or they were experiencing it right now.
Beth says it’s one thing knowing some of your employees are going through this; it’s another to grasp that you have a role to play.
She and I had technical difficulties the day of our interview so we ended up speaking by phone.
“When you think about society in the United States it wasn't so long ago that laws permitted men to discipline their wives, there was no such thing as marital rape. So the attention that an employer might pay to an individual who experiences domestic violence is somehow encased in the societal perspective that that's not their business, that that's private, that that's between a man and a wife. Certainly over the last 20 years as our society has evolved, and the definition of domestic violence has evolved to intimate partner violence, acknowledging that this happens between intimate partners of all genders and that they may be ex-partners, they may be dating partners. They may be living partners and not married. The point is that it has only been, I would say, in the last, probably 15 to 20 years that employers even considered this a concern and largely, even as lately as 2020, at least half regarded this as something that would be dealt with by their employee assistance program. And so they didn't need to do or say anything else about it. Again, reflecting the idea that this isn't a company's business.”
But Beth says what could be more your business…given how much violence at home affects people’s ability to do their best at work, not to mention time taken off to recover physically and mentally from attacks. Also she says abusers often use company resources to send harassing messages.
And violence at home can follow the victim into the workplace and end up putting them and coworkers at risk there. Which is why some companies’ first reaction is to fire the victim rather than protect her. And it’s nearly always her.
Beth tells the story of one health aide whose violent ex-partner entered the nursing home where she worked and tried to drag her away…
“...and on the way out the abuser slashed tires in the parking lot, because he was so angry that he couldn't take her with him. And it's terrifying for the individual obviously to think that even work can be not a safe place, but more upsetting, I think, was the response of the organization, which at that point immediately said, ‘well, we have to get rid of her because we don't want that kind of thing coming to work.’”
The company was also very worried about reimbursing people for the slashed tires. In the end a senior employee stood up for the woman, she was not let go, and the company began a training on partner violence.
Standing Firm helps employers spot signs of abuse, trains staff in how to respond, and makes them aware of resources they can offer employees who are going through this.
AM-T: “There's something I've wondered about: if you are a colleague in the workplace and you are a bit worried or suspicious that something may be going on with a coworker, either you see an injury, and maybe you ask about it and you are not quite sure that the answer sounds genuine, or maybe there's some behavior you're observing that makes you a bit suspicious that there may be violence going on at home…I mean, what do you do… or what should you do and what should you not do?”
“Well, they're both important. We always encourage people despite your inclination, all of our inclinations to protect or to rescue somebody, not to say, ‘come home with me, you can stay at my house,’ because that puts your own home and family at risk. ‘Cause we don't know what an abuser might do. What you can do though, is express support and concern. One of the things I always say to people, when they say, gosh, I'm really worried about a colleague or a coworker I've seen this, this and this. It's usually more than one situation. It could be, oh, they can never come out with us after work for a drink. And then you notice that they're texted by their significant other dozens and dozens of times a day. And then on top of that, you either witness or hear abusive language or marks on the person.
And as hard as it is to say these words and I encourage people to practice it, ‘cause it's not always easy. But just to say, ‘I'm really concerned that somebody's hurting you at home, and I'm here for you. And whatever's happening, I don't believe it's your fault.’ And so beginning to change the direction of that dynamic and put in their heads, whatever's happening, isn't your fault, and that you are there to help and that you'd like to help them get to the right support. That's the most important thing that anybody can do.”
That’s not to say that the person will necessarily admit there’s anything wrong. They may deny it, be angry, offended. But she says at least you’ll have opened the door.
AM-T: “Do you ever hear once you've done trainings of any stories, you know, somebody might get in touch and say, I did approach this person and it turned out she was in an abusive relationship and this is what happened next?”
“We hear of those stories. We know that that occurs. I actually had a situation where a chief development officer for a big organization had an individual come in to ask them if they would just witness some signatures, because they were changing beneficiaries on their insurance and savings.”
Now the training this executive had had was fairly recent. And that request from the female employee to change her beneficiaries struck her as a bit random. So she said, is everything OK at home?
“And the woman looked at her and said, ‘I'm doing this because I'm leaving my abusive husband and I'm pretty sure he is gonna kill me and I wanna make sure my kids get my savings.’ And so what happened was, if she hadn't had that training, she might not have opened that door and the door that was open allowed this woman to access things like a personal safety plan and a workplace safety plan. So that the workplace could support her as she walked through this process, because it's a dangerous process. And it's never more dangerous than when somebody's trying to leave.”
She says one of the most basic things companies can do for survivors is allow them paid leave to do things such as meet with a lawyer.
As I’ve put this show together I’ve been thinking that probably some of you are thinking, well, I AM a lawyer, or I’m an engineer, or a professor…this kind of thing doesn’t happen here. Beth says unfortunately, it does. And even if the situation isn’t one of physical violence, there are many cases of coercive control. That’s where the woman is intimidated by her partner, emotionally abused, she may be threatened, kept isolated from others and dependent on her partner. Beth tells one such story.
“Not too long ago, we had a conversation with a team at a consulting company and they started, where, where you suggested some organizations are with, ‘well, we're a group of professionals. This doesn't happen here.’”
But then the conversation went on, and Beth and her colleagues began discussing coercive control…
“And as we talked about it in this meeting, the people started looking at each other and said, remember so and so, a young woman who was kind of a rising star in this consulting firm, but she ended up not being promoted and ultimately leaving, ‘cause she was never allowed to go on an out of town trip. Well, everybody knows consultants end up being sent to this client or that client - she wasn't allowed to go. And it was always one excuse after another. In the end it turned out it was her spouse. And the big point of demarcation was they didn't see it before she married this man. And once she was married, she was suddenly no longer allowed to travel unless he was with her, and it completely undermined her career. And they had never appreciated the impact of that kind of coercive control until they put it all together and could put a face on it.”
AM-T: “Have you any idea whether these programs that you provide to organizations… has there ever been a guy who's ever come forward and said, ‘I do that, or I've done that, and I really want to stop,’ or is that one stretch too far for this work?”
“You know, part of our training is recognizing patterns that suggests that you may have an abuser in your employees and how to address that, how to offer them the opportunity to get help. But the truth is that batterers don't generally, in fact, almost exclusively do not seek help for themselves. They need to face a set of circumstances that say, you know what, this isn't gonna work. You need to get help or you are going to lose something of value to you. And so I wish it were true that we had people come forward and say,’ I don't wanna act like this, but I don't know how to act’. I'm sure there are examples. I haven't seen them personally.”
Beth Lewis of Standing Firm.
Before we go I want to come back to Anna Maria Tremonti and the comfort she found in her workplace. Once she was finally separated from her abuser, working meant more to her than ever.
“Work was a haven. It was a place that I could concentrate on something else. And I actually said to myself, you know, you're not very good at relationships, but you could be good at this. And I kind of almost put blinders on. I used it that way. But in those immediate months after leaving, work was a place that made me feel safe. So I'd be in there early and I wouldn't leave until late. And in fact, at one point the union was going to grieve me because I was working too hard and they checked to see if I was filing overtime and somebody told them I wasn't and they were gonna grieve me. And I was so livid, right? Like, how dare you? Like, this is the only place I wanna be right now. And it was a big misunderstanding and it got cleared up.”
AM-T: “And when you say grieve me, does that mean, like…”
“Oh, the union was gonna complain. The union was going to officially make a complaint, a grievance, because I was working too hard, but that was how big the disconnect was. I, for me, it was a safe haven, and people thought I was just working for free. And I probably was, but I was like, I needed to, I just needed to be there. I don't know how efficient I was. Maybe I was staying there because I wasn't very efficient and I needed more time to get things done. But it was a place of great camaraderie. It was a wonderful place to be when you felt adrift, because it was a small group of people who really did work together and play together. And it did kind of launch me onto feeling I could continue, continue to pursue a career. And that’s exactly what I did.”
Thanks so much to Anna Maria Tremonti for being my guest on this show.
I found her through the wonderful CBC podcast Welcome to Paradise, and I’m very grateful that she agreed to talk to me.
And just to be clear, I’m recommending that podcast because I thought it was so well done–I am NOT being paid to mention it.
I also want to thank Beth Lewis for explaining how the workplace can help. I’ll link you to more information about both women, Anna Maria’s podcast and Beth’s organization under this episode at TheBroadExperience.com.
As ever if you have thoughts about this episode I’d love to hear from you. You can post a comment under this episode on the website or email me at ashley at TheBroadExperience.com
If you are being abused by a partner right now, I’m listing some resources on the page for this episode at The Broad Experience.com.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. Thanks so much for listening.