Tracking a Single Day at the National Domestic Violence Hotline

To listen to the National Domestic Violence Hotline is to witness how a confluence of stressors — high prices, a lack of affordable housing, easy access to firearms and drugs, the ubiquity of technology — can leave a person vulnerable to another’s cruelty and manipulation.

Spikes in calls often align with highly publicized events: natural disasters, recession, quarantine during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, a celebrity’s acknowledgment of being a survivor of domestic abuse.

But in recent years, staff at the hotline said more of the spikes could be traced in part to crucial court rulings, as people press for answers about the impact of the decisions or how they have factored into the violence they have experienced at home.

Already, the number of calls that mention forced unprotected sex or a partner sabotaging birth control — as by puncturing condoms or hiding pills — have nearly doubled in the first year since the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, according to an analysis of calls and surveys done by the hotline. And calls mentioning firearms rose 40 percent after an appeals court in New Orleans last February struck down a federal law blocking people subject to a domestic violence protection order from owning a gun.

Staff members had been focused on the outcomes of two cases resting with the nation’s highest court, involving gun access and the availability of a commonly used abortion pill. On Friday, the Supreme Court reversed the appeals court ruling, saying that the government may prohibit people subject to restraining orders from having guns.

But even before the courts took up the gun case, the hotline, understaffed and underfunded, struggled to keep pace with an escalating number of calls over the years. The legal battles have underscored the pervasiveness of domestic violence and the strains on existing support for survivors.

“That makes me sad that we need lives to be in jeopardy for this to become a national conversation around domestic violence, because it shouldn’t take a Supreme Court case,” said Katie Ray-Jones, the chief executive of the hotline.

To capture a snapshot of the experiences of domestic violence survivors, The New York Times observed some of the calls and messages the hotline received in one day. The Times agreed to only disclose certain nonidentifying details and limited excerpts from the conversations to protect the safety of those who consented to speaking with a reporter present.

Congress approved creation of a national hotline dedicated to domestic violence in 1994, including it in the landmark Violence Against Women Act. Founded two years later in Texas, the hotline now receives as many as 3,000 calls and messages a day. Everyone is kept anonymous, with the only formal record describing basic demographic and circumstantial categories, often leaving other details unclear.

They are typically women, but their ages, ethnicities and locations vary, as do the circumstances of their relationships. In a single day, those contacting the hotline included a 51-year-old Latina in California; an Asian mother, 38; and a white woman asking how to quietly document her partner’s physical abuse.

Sometimes it is a question of finding housing during a nationwide shortage or seeking protection after leaving. Other times, it is about wrestling with the emotional contradictions of still having love for someone who makes you feel alone.

Working under pseudonyms remotely or at its headquarters in Austin, Texas, staff respondents spend as much as an hour at a time on calls and messages sent through a digital chat that arrive from across the country, at any time of day.

They pose sensitive but probing questions to uncover how a relationship has spiraled into deceit or danger, before connecting the survivor to support nearby. Many of the 158 staff respondents are women and survivors themselves.

They cannot directly offer legal or medical advice, but give encouragement or recommendations.

On a recent morning, a young Black woman from the South called in, describing the relationship she had recently escaped: “I still sometimes have dreams of that night — hearing the glass shatter and seeing stars.”

Around the same time, another woman wrote from New England, expressing uncertainty. “Is this gaslighting? Is this why I feel like I have no idea what is real and what isn’t?”

The rise in calls reflects an increased willingness to confront domestic violence, as survivors have publicly shared their experiences and lawmakers have moved to improve support.

It also reflects a deeper understanding of what abuse can be: monitoring someone through their devices, keeping a person financially dependent, twisting emotions to isolate someone from their loved ones.

“Domestic violence is very complex, and I felt like at different stages in my life, the people around me kept trying to simplify it,” said Jose Tobias, 29, who has worked at the hotline for nearly two years. A soft-spoken Mexican immigrant who once enrolled in Catholic seminary, he turned to the hotline in part to more directly counter what he sees as the weaponization of faith and other, more nebulous, forms of abuse.

“It’s never the same, so the solution is never the same,” he added.

Conversations at the hotline take on a new urgency once a caller confirms an instance of strangulation or the presence of a weapon. Research shows that millions of women have been threatened with a gun by an intimate partner.

“If he does have access to the weapon, that can increase the lethality a lot,” Mr. Tobias told one woman, who was unsure whether her former partner had access to a gun.

To a tearful father, who recounted how his daughter’s abuser had access to a gun and already had physically assaulted her, he outlined the heightened risk: “We’ve seen this person weaponize his body. We could see him take it” further.

And while gun rights groups highlight the experiences of survivors who arm themselves as a means of self-defense and their constitutional right to own a firearm, many domestic violence groups say the presence of a gun exacerbates the psychological trauma of being threatened with one.

If the Supreme Court had upheld the ruling by the appeals court, it would have rolled back a federal law that makes it a felony to possess a gun while under a domestic violence order.

In the three states covered by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the increase in calls mentioning a firearm was even more significant after the lower court ruling, the hotline said: 47 percent in Texas, 59 percent in Mississippi and 63 percent in Louisiana. And given how difficult it can be to ensure that any person subject to an order no longer has access to a gun, domestic violence groups fear losing a crucial means of ensuring the safety of survivors.

“One way or another, the survivors are going to be affected — it’s just about to what extent,” Mr. Tobias said.

Staff members have also struggled with a swiftly moving landscape on abortion laws, as reports of forced acts like unprotected sex have flooded their lines and as the prospect of further limits on abortion access and reproductive care looms.

In an analysis of nearly 3,500 responses to a survey conducted last fall, the hotline found that nearly a quarter of respondents were pressured into becoming pregnant, 20 percent were forcibly prevented from using birth control and nearly 10 percent faced threats of violence over seeking an abortion.

And even as the Supreme Court last week maintained access to a commonly used abortion pill, it did not weigh in on the merits of medication abortion or rule out the possibility of other challenges. On the day of the ruling, hotline employees said calls mentioning interference in reproductive health increased about 75 percent from what had been a daily average of about seven calls this month.

“Thank goodness that I was able to have an abortion because my life — I would not be sitting here,” said Hannah Tucker, 33, an employee with a shock of green hair and an array of colorful tattoos, adding: “I can’t fathom being attached to that person.”

The outcome of the two cases does not eliminate the financial and physical barriers that ensure a person stays in an abusive relationship. It will not change ingrained cultural and societal stigma about leaving, or the fact that certain communities are already more at risk.

And the hotline has only the resources to answer about 53 percent of its calls and messages. Ms. Jones and other staff estimated that it would take at least $20 million a year to fully staff the hotline.

“Domestic violence does not discriminate,” said Josie Slawik, 74. “Domestic violence affects everybody — no matter what race you are, how much money you have, you don’t have, it happens.”

She still remembers what it felt like in 1978, as she fled, her rib broken and two young daughters in tow, to a shelter in El Paso. With a warm personality, bright red curls and gold eye shadow shimmering around her eyes, she was there when the hotline took its first call in 1996.

Like others, she said she still had the capacity to be moved by hope and by horror.

“He was punching me in the stomach when I was pregnant,” a woman told her by phone. She soon hung up, saying she needed to return to work.

Ms. Slawik paused, removing her headset.

“I’m going to take a reset — that was hard for me,” Ms. Slawik said, her voice soft. “This movement has come a long way, but we have a ways to go.”