Domestic Violence Survivors Supported By Local Groups, Purple Purse Campaign

GLENCOE, IL — Between Friends, a local nonprofit agency dedicated to breaking the cycle of domestic violence, is marking the beginning of National Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Month Sunday before holding a breakfast fundraiser the following Saturday. For the third consecutive year, the agency has been named a partner in the Allstate Foundation’s Purple Purse Challenge, a fundraising competition where organizations across the country compete to raise and win grand money to benefit domestic violence survivors throughout October.

On Sunday, Between Friends and community members will gather at North Avenue beach for a moving candle-lighting, followed by a short program led by survivors of domestic violence, to commemorate the thousands who have been killed by abusers.

Every year, more than 12 million people suffer domestic violence. Every minute, 24 more people are affected, and every day, three people lose their lives as a result of domestic violence, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One in four women will be impacted by domestic violence in her lifetime, according to the Department of Justice. It is more prevalent than breast, ovarian and lung cancers combined. And no group is immune. Financial abuse is a part of 98 percent of abusive relationships and takes place across all socio-economic, educational and ethnic groups. Victims are prevented from acquiring, using or maintaining financial resources, making it harder for survivors to escape their abusers. (Get Patch real-time email alerts for Winnetka, Glencoe or Bannockburn, or the latest news from your Illinois community. And iPhone users: Check out Patch's new app.)

Then on Saturday, Oct. 7, Beth McCormack, Family Law Partner at Beermann, along with Lindsey Paige Markus, shareholder at Chuhak & Tecson, Pam Flaherty, Nancy Freeman, Elyse Hahner, Heather Locus, Balasa Dinverno Foltz LLC, Marla Mogul and Elizabeth Long will host a networking breakfast fundraiser at the Skokie Country Club in Glencoe in order to raise awareness and funds to support and empower survivors of domestic violence.

McCormack, a member of the Between Friends Advisory Council, said attendance at the event has grown from just 50 people three years ago to an expected 200.

"There’s this common misconception that people of affluence are not perpetrating or surviving domestic violence, McCormack told Patch. "We are working on an initiative on the North Shore specifically to raise awareness about the economic abuse that’s involved often in domestic abuse situations, educating the world that domestic violence is not always physical abuse." She said there were few resources for domestic violence survivors on the North Shore between Chicago and Waukegan, although the YWCA Evanston/North Shore provides comprehensive domestic violence services in the area between Devon Avenue and Lake Cook Road east of I-294. Other local groups for domestic abuse survivors include Shalva, which specializes in providing services to Jewish women in metropolitan Chicago, Lake County and the North Shore, and A Safe Place, based in Zion and Waukegan.

"On the North Shore, they may not go to a shelter, for example, but if there were a safe house or something that’s like that was very discreet, they may go there," McCormack said. "Another woman’s home on the North Shore may feel safe but I’m not going to take my kids to a shelter."

McCormack, a Northfield resident who works out of her firm's Bannockburn and Chicago offices, has spent more than three decades advocating for survivors of domestic violence. She remembered witnessing her best friend in college suffer verbal and eventually physical abuse. And later, while clerking for a Champaign County judge and as a legal secretary, she encountered countless domestic violence survivors struggling to navigate the criminal justice system.

McCormack started the first domestic violence unit in downstate McLean County and has represented thousands of domestic violence survivors over her career. She now oversees all domestic violence cases as a partner at Beermann, where she became the first woman owner in 2013.

While she appreciates the ability to make concrete improvements in the lives of survivors, she said the slow pace of progress to reduce domestic abuse has been frustrating.

"When I came into this in the early 1980’s, I had thought that domestic violence was something that would be severely lessened – or even – eliminated by the time I was dead, but now I’m kind of hoping that it could happen in my daughter’s lifetime," McCormack said.

There have been improvements, though, in the way the court system handles survivors.

"The legal system tends to further victimize survivors – judges who don't get it or prosecutors who don't get the unique emotion involved with the power of control," so some jurisdictions are offering different options to stem abuse short of signing criminal complaints and testifying in open court, she said.

"There are some people with the proper training who can pull survivors out of court and do some form of alternative dispute resolutions so that they’re not having to face their abuser in court – with a very refined protocol – to have a safety plan everybody can live with," McCormack told Patch.

But those programs remain in their early stages, and she said abusers on the North Shore are often lawyers, businessmen and other well-to-do men who are able to manipulate the court system and maintain the power imbalance with their partners.

» Find out more about Between Friends
» Help Between Friends win the Allstate Foundation Purple Purse Challenge

Event info:

22nd Annual "Light Up the Lakefront" Luminaria

• Sunday, Oct. 1
• Candle lighting at dusk, program begins 7:30 p.m.
• North Avenue Beach
• 1600 N Lake Shore Drive, Chicago

Purple Purse Breakfast Fundraiser

• Saturday, Oct. 7
• 9 a.m. - 11 .m.
• Skokie Country Club
• 500 Washington Ave, Glencoe

_{Top photo: A past "Light Up the Lakefront" Luminaria | Credit: Javier Ayala, via Between Friends, used with permission}