It took all the courage and strength Marie possessed to flee her abusive boyfriend and get herself and her 3-year-old child to safety.

Marie's situation was unique — she was in a foreign country visiting relatives when the abuse began — but the isolation, fear and hopelessness was not.

Thanks to the benevolence of friends who could help spirit her back to Sheboygan, she and her child found shelter at Safe Harbor and she began working to rebuild her life.

"It was really, really really hard," said Marie, who isn't being identified by her real name to protect her identity. "I lost everything. I lost my job."

Marie spent four months in the shelter — three months longer than the shelter's 30-day limit — because it took her that long to find a job.

The local economy has had a devastating effect on domestic violence at every level, said Katy Pruitt, director of services at Safe Harbor.

Starting over

Women who want to leave an abusive home now have a harder time finding a way to support themselves, Pruitt said, and the reasons are many — services like those offered by Safe Harbor and other community resources have been cut because of funding problems. In addition, abusive partners who lose their jobs and their sense of control over their lives may act out even more violently because of the stress.

"Domestic violence is three times more likely to occur when there's a high level of financial strain," Pruitt said. "It's not the cause, but it's a catalyst for violence. We see people staying in abusive relationships when they want to leave."

Safe Harbor is considered a dual agency because it provides services for both domestic violence and sexual assault.

On the domestic violence side, Safe Harbor can house 19 people at once under the same roof as its administrative offices, and the number of people who have reached out for help has skyrocketed in the last two years.

The recession is considered to have started in December 2007.

Pruitt said the number of calls Safe Harbor received jumped 75 percent from 2007 to 2008 and the shelter provided 4,889 nights of shelter during that time.

As of mid-October this year, 335 women and men have received services at Safe Harbor, which equates to 3,156 nights of shelter.

Their stories

Pruitt said there are no statistics to prove that economic hardship increases the incidence of domestic violence.

"We're hearing it as part of people's stories but we don't take stats on why someone is in an abusive relationship," she said.

Still, those stories are compelling.

There was the woman who had left her abusive partner and spent a year working and supporting herself before losing her job. Unable to find another job, she felt she had no choice but to return to the man who had abused her, and a week later the violence started again. She came to Safe Harbor for shelter after an incident of physical violence.

Another woman went back to school after losing her job, while her husband continued to work. Their relationship deteriorated because she wasn't able to contribute to the household finances, and her husband became abusive toward her. She ended up in the Safe Harbor shelter as well.

A third woman contacted Safe Harbor for help because her boyfriend didn't allow her to work. When he lost his job, he began drinking more and he became physically violent. After discussing her options with the staff at Safe Harbor, the woman opted to stay where she was because she didn't work and couldn't support herself without him.

Funding cuts

Pruitt said in addition to temporary emergency shelter, Safe Harbor can also help women — and men, when they are the victims of domestic violence — get out on their own by providing referrals to help in the community and other services.

They used to be able to do a lot more, however.

A $33,000 Housing and Urban Development grant, which paid for a transitional living program, was cut to $5,000 this year, Pruitt said. That eliminated the program, which supplied women with rent assistance, gas money for job hunting, help setting up housekeeping and other expenses.

"Everybody's hurting," Pruitt said. "It's just hard times. More women are in the shelter for longer — finding a job is harder. Sometimes it forces them to go back because they just don't have any alternatives."

Picking up some of the slack are local churches and other organizations who work with Safe Harbor to help women get settled in their own apartments so they can get back on their feet.

Helping to fill the need now that the transitional living program has been slashed, a local family bought a two-family home, fixed it up and donated it to Safe Harbor to be used as temporary housing for women who need it, Pruitt said.

The paradox

Although the number of calls for help to Safe Harbor has increased over the last two years, the number of domestic violence cases referred to the county's Victim/Witness Services office has remained the same, said Sandi Konitzer, a family violence specialist in the Sheboygan County Victim/Witness Services office.

Victim/Witness Services, which is part of the District Attorney's Office, assists crime victims in various ways, including getting them referrals to organizations or agencies that can help them and guiding them through the court system.

Annually, about one-quarter of the victims whose cases are referred to Victim/Witness Services are domestic violence victims, and that hasn't changed, Konitzer said.

There are many possible reasons for the disparity between the number of emergency calls to Safe Harbor and the number of incidents that become criminal cases, she said, including the established fact that only a fraction of the people who are victimized by domestic violence ever report the abuse to authorities.

"Our numbers really are not changing," Konitzer said. "That doesn't mean it's not happening out there. We're hitting the very tip of the iceberg."

Pruitt said that economic factors could be among the reasons the number of reported cases of domestic abuse isn't rising.

"I can't necessarily give you a reason," she said. "I do think people looking for more resources, and not necessarily wanting to go as far as (filing a report). … They're coming to us and saying, 'What do I do? Where do I go?'"

Konitzer said pressing charges is one of the hardest things for victims of domestic violence to do because of the emotional attachment they have to their abusers.

"When I talk to domestic violence victims, (I tell them) domestic violence is a different animal," she said. "If somebody did what your perpetrator did to you, that you only knew slightly or didn't know at all, you would have no problem prosecuting that person. Because of the dynamics of domestic violence, the victim feels they are partially responsible for the perpetrator going to jail or getting probation. They want to believe the perpetrator cares enough about them to change."

The numbers

A study conducted in May by the Allstate Foundation, a charitable organization funded by contributions from subsidiaries of The Allstate Corporation, found that the majority of Americans believe the biggest barrier to leaving an abusive relationship is financial stability.

The study, "Crisis: Economics and Domestic Violence," was released in June.

It found that more than half the respondents agreed the main reason people stay in abusive relationships is because they don't have the money to leave. More than 75 percent of respondents believe the poor economy has made it more difficult for victims of domestic violence and two-thirds believe the economy has caused an increase in domestic violence.

In Sheboygan County, 413 domestic violence cases have been referred to the Victim/Witness Services office as of Nov. 12.

Of those, 350 were misdemeanors and 39 were felonies. There have been 13 felony strangulation cases, one domestic violence stalking case, 15 cases where a weapon was involved and 22 restraining order violations.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline conducted a study in late 2008 about the link between financial stress and domestic violence by asking hotline callers questions about their households.

From Nov. 12 to Dec. 31 last year, 54 percent of the hotline callers answered yes when asked whether there had been a change in their household finances, and 64 percent said they believed abusive behavior had increased in the preceding year.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline is a non-profit organization that provides crisis intervention, information and referral to victims of domestic violence, perpetrators, friends and families.

The breaking point

Conventional wisdom says it takes a battered woman five to seven attempts to leave an abusive home before she can get out for good.

Domestic violence never goes away, and Pruitt said when you add the financial pressures that come with losing a job or not being able to make ends meet, the tension in an already stressed-out family can reach the breaking point.

"We think it's gonna get worse before it gets better because a lot of people's unemployment is coming to an end," she said. "Those of us who have jobs, I don't think we really get it."