Trixie is a young woman in her mid-20s who recently left an abusive relationship with a boyfriend. She came to my workplace, Walnut Avenue Family & Women’s Center, in Santa Cruz, California, seeking help from our restorative justice program, Space for Change.
What she was looking for wasn’t an accountability process for her abusive ex-boyfriend, however, but a means of addressing the trust broken by her friends who didn’t believe that the abuse was real.
Space for Change is a collaborative program that aims to hold community members accountable for domestic violence, provide education to prevent future violence, and offer healing circles that bring the survivor together with loved ones who were not supportive when the survivor needed them. It was this last option that Trixie needed.
Trixie’s case is not a rare phenomenon. Because social isolation is such a common side effect of domestic violence, and because loneliness…