Some victims of domestic violence in Milwaukee and Dane counties in Wisconsin are getting a new route to rescue: voice mail.
Twenty free private voice-mail boxes for victims of domestic abuse were opened by Cellular One in Madison and are being assigned this week to victims seeking to leave their abusers.Since February, Cellular One also has provided 12 victims with free cellular phones programmed to dial 911 in emergencies.
A similar voice-mail system will be available within two weeks for 50 victims in Milwaukee County from Frontier Communications of Wisconsin through the Task Force on Family Violence.
Fifty free cellular phones programmed to dial 911 should arrive within a week, said Ron Redmond, manager of community giving for Frontier, the nation's fifth-largest long distance service provider.
"We'll use our judgment and experience to triage the situations that are most urgent and assign the phones or voice-mail boxes to these," said Kitty Kocol, executive director of the task force, which follows 420 victims a month through domestic violence proceedings in the Milwaukee County courts.
"We do at least three safety checks on every person who gets a restraining order to make certain they are all right and prepared to show up for court," Kocol said. "A lot of these women are on the run. A voice-mail message will increase the probability that they will know what they have to do to increase their safety."
Redmond said his company's small, lightweight phones also would provide a bit of security for abuse victims traveling to work or to pick up children at day care.
In Dane County, one woman who asked not to be identified has been using a cellular phone for several months. "I would be driving home from work, and he (her abuser) would show up from out of nowhere - out in the middle of country roads or on streets where you would never expect to find him," she said.
Deb Spangler, outreach coordinator for Dane County Advocates for Battered Women, said voice-mail boxes could help victims arrange for counseling, alternative housing, employment and prosecution of their abusers, all without the knowledge of their batterers.
Dane County District Attorney William Foust said not being able to find work or housing without alerting their abusers had been a major obstacle for victims trying to escape abusive situations.
Spangler said: "So many phone options now make it unsafe for a victim still living with an abuser to use a home phone to seek safety."
Terry Perry, coordinator of the Milwaukee Commission on Domestic Violence, hopes to establish a cell-phone safety net for Milwaukee County domestic abuse victims not linked to the Task Force on Family Violence. She met with representatives of Cellular One earlier this month.
"The voice-mail box is critical to maintaining continuing contact with individuals who may be just beginning to seek a way out of an abusive situation," Perry said.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)