YWCA grateful for $100,000 truckload of goods

 

Dr. Pam Chatman (left), the CEO of BossGiving,
nd Gwendolyn Turner, who runs a Memphis
YWCA shelter, show off some of the items — 
more than $100,000 worth — that Chatman
donated to the facility. Photo by Wiley Henry

MEMPHIS, TN – A local women’s facility recently received a generous donation of household items from Amazon and electronics worth more than $100,000 — thanks to BossGiving, a philanthropic organization.

Delivered by an 18-wheeler in early April, the sizable haul was unloaded at the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) of Memphis, where survivors of domestic violence are given a safe place to stay unbeknown to their abusers.

The donation also includes support for a Women Crisis Transportation Assistance program.   

“All that I tried to do and wanted to do was help victims of domestic violence,” said shelter coordinator Gwendolyn Turner, whose initial plan to start her own shelter was nixed due to extenuating circumstances. 

But a silver lining would eventually materialize in the form of a key position at the facility.

“God so fixed it that He laid it right here in my hand. Everything that I wanted to do is right here,” said Turner, now in a better position to help women on the lam from their abusers.

More help would arrive, however, after a visitor touring the facility suggested that Turner get in touch with Bolivar County, Miss.-native Dr. Pam Chatman, the CEO of BossGiving.

During a tête-à-tête, Turner and Chatman found common ground. Both women love God, both had overcome domestic violence, and both resolved to help others take back their lives.

“We started talking about the goodness of the Lord,” said Chatman, and decided to bless Turner for what she’s doing at the facility and thank her for helping those who cannot help themselves.

Like Turner, Chatman grappled with a form of domestic violence. “For 17 years of my life, I was degraded every day. So why not be a blessing to women that are going through to say, ‘Look at me. Look what God has done for me.’”

Chatman said God cleaned her up and changed her life. “Then He gave me a gift of speaking to tell my testimony,” she said. “I’m truly honored today to do the Lord’s work.” 

A retired news director who last worked for WABG-TV in the Mississippi Delta, Chatman promised God that if He’d remove her tormentor, she’d continue to serve Him for the rest of her life.

She kept her promise after serving 25 years altogether in television. “About 10 or 15 years, we’ve been giving,” she said. “We started out small and now we have graduated to this large scale: $100,000 trucks [filled with a plethora of items].”

BossGiving, a non-profit, is supported with private funds, including support from the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi.

The donation to the YWCA is part of BossGiving’s mission to empower and uplift communities by providing “nutritional and essential items needed to support a selective spectrum of women and children.”

Memphis is the first leg of a national tour, said Chatman, also known as “Boss Lady.” Next month it’s Atlanta, GA, then Dallas, TX. From there it’s Alabama and back to Knoxville, TN.

“The journey that I will continue to take every day of my life is all about giving, all about serving,” said Chatman. “I started out using my own money buying 18 wheelers to give to small communities that didn’t have grocery stores, that have high numbers of poverty, that had a lot of low-income families with children.

“I’m from the Mississippi Delta. We’re talking about poverty. I wanted God to use me so I may be able to help people on a large scale,” she said. “We do clothes. We do trucks of food. We do household items.”

To determine who gets help, Chatman said she works a lot with child protection services, a lot with counties and supervisors, youth courts, and other nonprofit agencies that deal with families and children.

“These are seeds, and God is going to do exceedingly and abundantly what you have planted in this administration,” Karen Todd, a YWCA board member, conveyed to Chatman. 

“We are so grateful.”  

Abuser and Victim Call Attention to Domestic Violence

Greg Williamson and Gwendolyn Turner

MEMPHIS, TN – Domestic violence is not a respecter of persons, Greg Williamson, a former abuser, believes. “It’s multicultural,” he said. “Abusers come in many forms, different ages.”

Likewise for the victims. Many of them are women whom men have battered or degraded. Or both. 

Men have been victimized too, though only a miniscule number. Women have been known to batter or degrade men as well.

“It is a power and control type situation. That's where it starts,” said Gwendolyn Turner, a survivor of domestic violence. “Whatever the reason for the power and control, it’s always a main component.”

Williamson and Turner agree that the root cause of domestic violence is environmental and because of one’s family dynamics, which impacts both abusers and victims. 

It affects the entire family, he said.

The environment was Williamson’s introduction to domestic violence. He grew up in the inner city in the former (William H.) Foote Homes housing project where violence was commonplace. 

He sold drugs too in a drug-infested environment of hoodlums, pimps, prostitutes, and other seedy characters. It was a toxic environment that was normalized, he said, “when you see it on the regular.”

“I saw domestic violence all my childhood and growing up as a teenager,” said Williamson, calling such wanton violence a traumatic experience that manifested later in his life.

“When you get to a point where you're old enough to act out on them…you will find out that when you get angry, those are the things that you go back to because those are the things that you witnessed,” he explained.

He’d abused women in relationships, he said, only when the abuse was triggered by something from his past. “Mine was more verbal,” he said, “a little bit of physical with the grabbing under the arms and shaking.” 

Turner’s story differs. She’d never witnessed domestic violence – until she was embroiled in a volatile relationship that began with a constant barrage of verbal abuse, mental abuse, and emotional abuse. 

“With emotional abuse, those are hidden scars, hidden wounds. My downfall was I did not know the red flags, the signs, the warning signs of domestic violence,” Turner explained.

 Turner was seven years into the relationship before realizing she was a victim of domestic violence. “It’s hard to detect violence before you get into the relationship,” she said.

Her parents argued, she pointed out, but they didn’t fight. “There was never any violence,” she said. “There was never any turmoil.” 

Domestic violence was foreign to her. She was clueless. “I simply thought that this was an expression of love,” she said. “It's that controlling and mental abuse that you don't recognize.”

Williamson grew up without a father in the home. There wasn’t a male figure to teach him to respect women, he said – even though he didn’t see as much abuse in his single-parent home. 

He said his mother wasn't the kind of woman who would capitulate to an abusive man. “So, when it happened, it immediately stopped,” he said.

But the violence Williamson had witnessed outside the home, in and around the housing project, would find its way into his relationships as an adult. 

He’d picked up negative traits and bad behavior from the perpetrators of violence and employed them when he was angered or agitated. There were triggers that unleashed his fury.

Turner had had enough and broke free from her abuser. Then she turned her victimhood into advocacy. A former employee at Family Safety Center of Memphis and Shelby County, she went to work to help battered women – men too.

“I had the opportunity of working with three generations (of women). They were all being physically abused. It's an acceptable part of the family dynamics,” said Turner, now a renown domestic violence advocate.

“I heard a pastor say once, ‘you draw what you saw,’” she said, adding: “Abusers also target their victims.”

Williamson managed to turn his life around as well. He met an evangelist in the church and befriended her. “I started going to church every Sunday, and God started to work on me,” he said.

During lunch one day, she confided in him that she’d been a victim of domestic violence. He told her he’d been an abuser. Then they brainstormed and a non-profit organization was launched called Circle of Life Transformation Center. 

The center provides domestic violence training for companies, schools, churches, and other non-profit and for-profit organizations. Ex-offenders are given a new lease on life as well via the center’s re-entry program.

“God worked on me and showed me the value of a woman and the purpose of a man,” said Williamson, owner of Kings Barber & Beauty Emporium. Now he intends to return to school for a mental health counseling degree.

“The process of healing starts with separating yourself from the abuser,” Turner said. In society, “we don't have enough hard conversations about what a healthy relationship looks like.”

Victims can call the YWCA Greater Memphis helpline at 901-725-4277; the helpline for CAAP’s Domestic Violence Program at 901-272-2221; and, of course, the Family Safety Center’s helpline at 901-249-7611. 

Young men can contact Dr. Jeffery Ryan Futrell, president of Young Man University, Inc., at 901-825-3326. There is help for married couples too. Contact Rickey Floyd, lead senior pastor of Pursuit of God Transformation Center, at 901-353-5772.

Floyd is the president of The Husband Institute, Inc., a boys-to-men mentoring program, and he’s the founder of the School of Marriage Enhancement, a Ricky and Sheila Floyd Ministries, Inc. program.

Corinthian Hope House set to open for women and children affected by domestic violence

The love of God that Gwendolyn Turner espouses in church helps to heal the emotional scars left behind by a man she was in a relationship with for a number of years. But not all victims of domestic violence are fortunate as Turner, who found refuge in the church and support from family and friends.

“I tell people all the time that I’m a bold and beautiful survivor of domestic violence,” said Turner. “So my heart goes out to those who have no support system, nobody behind them that can say, ‘You can do this. You can start again. You can live, love and laugh again.’”

Gwendolyn Turner was a victim of domestic
violence. Now she's opening the doors to
Corinthian Hope House to help victims
seeking refuge from the perpetrator.

The members of Golden Gate Cathedral, where Turner worships, had heard her story before, so had friends, preachers, entertainers and radio personalities who gathered Oct. 24 at the Hard Rock Café on Beale Street to support Turner’s Domestic Violence Benefit in advance of the opening of Corinthian Hope House, a home for women and children affected by domestic violence.

Most people who know Turner are aware of her public persona as a songbird and one of the founders of the original Angelic Voices of Faith, a community choir known around the contemporary gospel circuit as Billy Rivers and The Angelic Voices of Faith.

Turner had no problem soliciting help from the AVOF and others, including the incomparable Melvia “Chick” Rodgers, who breathed life into the lyrics of her songs. The evening, however, was devoted to Turner and her mission and ministry.

 “I always knew that what was once my life’s misery would be my mission and my ministry,” said Turner, who hopes the Corinthian Hope House will help victims get back on their feet. “I’m very passionate about it, because I’ve been in that place.”

A process will be in place for victims seeking refuge or a getaway to Corinthian, Turner said. “It will be long-term housing. The first thing we’ll do is do an intake on the victim to see exactly where they are. The second step is a safety plan.”

Domestic Violence Awareness Month was observed in October. However, the number of assaults is serious enough that warrants attention to domestic violence year-round. Turner has sounded the alarm since fleeing her perpetrator.

According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations, a little more than 232,000 incidents were reported to law enforcement in the state of Tennessee between 2013 and 2015. Roughly 68 percent of that number, the report concluded, were simple assaults, which included slaps, punches or kicks.

“Some victims grew up in domestic violence situations,” said Turner. “I never saw domestic violence. My downfall was I did not know the red flags…the warning signs of domestic violence. It was a while before I knew that I was a victim.”

About seven years into the relationship, she added.

Two hundred seventy six domestic violence victims were murdered, the three-year TBI study pointed out. Turner was fortunate enough to escape what could have resulted in physical abuse: slaps, punches, kicks and, in some cases, death.

Women are three-times likely to be victimized than men, the TBI noted. In some cases, children suffer emotional unrest, or a similar fate, if they witness domestic violence in the home by the person purporting to love the victim.

“We need more places where we can house these women and children who’ve gone through this traumatic experience,” said Turner. “The difference in what we’re trying to do is not only house them but connect them with resources that they won’t have to go back to those relationships.” 

Battling domestic violence

The news of Sept. 2nd hit Gwendolyn Turner like a ton of bricks. Tasha Thomas, a woman she knew, had been shot and killed outside the University of Little Scholars daycare in Whitehaven. Thomas’ estranged husband had instigated the deadly encounter on the parking lot where Thomas worked.

     “I was breathless and speechless to learn that another woman had become a victim of domestic violence,” said Turner, who’d suffered verbal, emotional, mental, sexual and physical abuse off and on for nearly 20 years.

While friends, relatives and the Memphis community were mourning Thomas at her funeral on Monday (Sept. 8), another woman was shot. This time the triggerman was a former boyfriend who reportedly had stalked and accosted her on several occasions.

Torhonda Cathey, 33, was shot multiple times in a Target parking lot in East Memphis. She was taken to Regional One Health, where she later died. Ronald Ellis, a Memphis firefighter, fled the scene. He is wanted for first-degree murder.

Gwendolyn Turner, who works at the Family Safety Center
of Memphis and Shelby County, assists a client with an Order
of Protection. (Photo: Wiley Henry)

The violence directed at Thomas and Cathey is deeply troubling and all too common, Turner said. It is a reflection of a persistent scourge that gained national attention after a video surfaced recently showing former Baltimore Ravens running back Raymell Mourice “Ray” Rice knocking out his then-fiancée, and now wife, in an elevator in February.

Turner escaped her nearly 20-year ordeal, but other women aren’t as fortunate. She was appalled by the video. So was Vernetta Eddleman, director of Client Services at the Family Safety Center of Memphis and Shelby County.

“It’s fortunate that it was caught on tape,” said Eddleman. “For so many women, you don’t see the premeditation of domestic violence. We saw what went on. Unfortunately, there isn’t a tape for women who experience this every day.”

Just like Eddleman, Turner, also an employee at the Family Safety Center, is working to end domestic violence. “My life’s misery has become my life’s mission and ministry,” said Turner, who speaks out against domestic violence as the center’s unofficial ambassador.

The Family Safety Center often is the first point of contact for domestic violence victims and hurting families. It is a conglomerate of civil, criminal, health and social services that are available to help the victims and reduce incidents of domestic violence.

“The Memphis Police Department, the sheriff’s department and the district attorney are right there to help,” said Turner, noting that 30 partner agencies are available within the center, including legal services. And all services are free.

‘Order of Protection won’t stop a bullet’

An Order of Protection is a legal tool designed to keep the abuser at bay. Tasha Thomas had filed three trying to end the abuse that Charles Thomas was accused of meting out. But the orders didn’t stop him from gunning her down.

     Two days earlier, Tasha Thomas was in the Raleigh community attending services at Golden Gate Cathedral, where Billy Rivers and the Angelic Voices of Faith (BRAVOF) were celebrating their 35th reunion concert. Turner, BRAVOF’s co-founder, announced that evening that the group had a new foundation to combat domestic violence.

     An Order of Protection hinges on whether victims such as Thomas can prove to the judicial commissioner that abuse has indeed taken place. And while Thomas’ case met that standard, it is unclear whether Cathey had filed an Order of Protection against Ellis. Records do show that she’d reported several incidents of stalking to MPD and that her ex-boyfriend tried to run her off the road several times.

     In all cases where a permanent Order of Protection is granted, the alleged abuser is ordered not to have contact with the victim for one year. Also, after signing an affidavit, he or she is not allowed to own, possess, or carry a firearm.

     Charles Thomas was in possession of a firearm. He took his wife’s life and turned the gun on himself, leaving a community on edge wondering how he was able to get to Tasha.

     So questions abound: Is the Order of Protection worth the paper it’s written on? And can domestic violence really be stopped?

     According to the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference in Nashville, the victim of domestic violence is not safe just because an Order of Protection is granted. After one is filed, the victim – in most cases – may still need a safe place to stay.

     “It’s good in all 50 states and it’s in the national database,” Eddleman added. “The abuser can be arrested, but the Order of Protection won’t stop a bullet.”

     Between 2,400 and 2,500 Orders of Protection were issued in Memphis and Shelby County last year. The laws, however, aren’t stringent enough to keep the domestic abuser in jail after he or she is arrested, Eddleman said.

     “For simple assault domestic violence is 11 months and 29 days. Abusers spend 30 percent of that time and most of them get diversion, or probation, and don’t go to jail at all. They need to strengthen the laws.”

‘A lot of work to do
 in the community’

Between two million and four million women are battered each year in the United States. There are two thousand deaths each year as a result of domestic violence. And at least 25 percent of battered women commit suicide.

     Although the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission’s Operation “Safe Community” crime statistics showed a decrease in domestic violence crimes between January and July, the statistics are still alarming and shouldn’t be overlooked.

     The following are additional facts for domestic violence in the state of Tennessee between 2011-2013, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation:

• There were 247,069 incidents of domestic violence offenses as reported by all law enforcement agencies in the state.


• Of that number, females (71.9 percent) were three times more likely to be victimized than males (28.1 percent).  


• 99.2 percent of domestic violence victims were either white (57.6 percent) or African-American (41.6 percent).


• By race and sex: Black females (31 percent), white females (41 percent), black males (11 percent) and white males (17 percent).


• From 2011 to 2013, victims were six times more likely to be abused by a spouse than an ex-spouse in domestic offenses.


• Domestic violence resulted in 288 murder/non-negligent homicides during this three-year period.

So can domestic violence be stopped altogether?

“We may not be able to eliminate it, but we can reduce it significantly. We just have a lot of work to do in the community,” said Eddleman, adding that the Family Safety Center enacts a safety plan for victims seeking a way out.

     Domestic violence is a pattern of controlling behavior that is often physical, sexual or psychological and committed by an intimate partner against another. So why don’t victims just leave?

     “If they leave, they go back because it’s about a relationship,” Eddleman explains. “They have children together and want the children to have a relationship with the father (who’s the abuser in most cases).

     “A lot of women stay because they want to stay safe. You’re less likely to die if you stay. The issue is you’re still alive. Most women are killed because they leave. We’ve had two people back to back to get killed.”

(For more information about the Family Safety Center of Memphis and Shelby County or any of its partner organizations, call 901-222-4400)