Choosing Your Life or Your Livelihood

If you had physical injuries from a domestic assault or a sexual assault, would you choose medical care or keeping your job?

If you had medical bills from one of those crimes, would you choose to get help from a victim service agency or keeping your job?

If you had a hearing for an Order of Protection for abuse or stalking, would you choose your safety or keeping your job?

If you had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from abuse, would you choose counseling or keeping your job?

These are every day choices that clients of Crime Victim Advocacy Center and other agencies have to make. Getting an temporary Order of Protection in the City of St. Louis can take the better part of a day plus at least one other morning in court for the full hearing. Going to the emergency room can take many hours. The average counseling client at CVAC attends 8 one hour sessions, some far more. Clients, many of whom are hourly workers, must choose between receiving the help they need to overcome the negative effects of domestic violence, sexual assault, and/or stalking and keeping their jobs.  Many clients do not get leave as a part of their employment or have used all of their leave with previous instances of violence. Thus, taking more time off could realistically mean being fired.

Victims are forced to choose between potentially life-saving interventions like legal assistance, medical treatment, counseling, or obtaining order of protection because they face losing their livelihood. A loss of job could mean defaulting on bills or loans, physical injuries that don’t heal properly, increased mental health issues, and homelessness. In a region where there are thousands of requests for domestic violence shelter nights annually that cannot be met, keeping victims employed and in stable housing is vital to their success and safety.

Crime Victim Advocacy Center, along with other victim service agencies and victims of all of these types of crimes, took to Jefferson City last year to testify on behalf of a state bill to guarantee unpaid leave to victims of domestic violence. This would have guaranteed that victims could keep their jobs while taking the leave necessary to receive counseling, victim services, legal assistance and to attend civil and criminal court. Unfortunately, that state bill did not make it out of committee.

At the St. Louis City level, however, a similar bill has been introduced. St. Louis Board of Aldermen Board Bill 261 would bring those protections to city residents. It would require employers with 50 employees or more to offer two weeks of unpaid leave to victims; employers of 15 people or more would have to offer one week of unpaid leave. This protects employees who would otherwise not be protected by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The bill will be heard this week in committee. As a city, as a county, as a state, and as a nation, we must make it clear that we don’t want any victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking to have to choose between their life and their livelihood.