On March 22, 2012, Sherri Foster, not her real name, arrived at the Sheltering Wings Center for Women with only what she was wearing – a tank top, shorts and house slippers. It had been two days since she left the man who mentally and emotionally abused her for more than 30 years.
Danville-based Sheltering Wings has helped more than 13,000 victims of domestic abuse. The idea to start the organization came from food pantry volunteers at Cornerstone Christian Church in Brownsburg who one day helped a woman exhibiting signs of abuse. According to Sheltering Wings Executive Director Cassie Martin, volunteers were rattled by the experience and wondered how many women like her were served by the pantry. There weren’t any shelters in Hendricks County to help abused women then, but there was interest in starting one. Work began in 1999 to make it happen, and the 32-bed shelter at Sheltering Wings took in its first resident in 2002.
The day Foster left – March 20, 2012 – she prayed.
“Please God, if I’m going to have another night like I’ve been having, push me in the right direction. I need Your help.”
She knew when she walked through the door, she was going to need it. He was in a bad mood. After he went to the bedroom that night, he took his prosthetic leg off, put on his CPAP, and set his pants and gun on a portable toilet next to the bed. Then, he made a sexual advance toward Foster. She stood in the middle of the bedroom and told him no. They argued. He screamed and called her names. It escalated until, finally, he threatened to kill her. He reached toward the toilet.
“Okay, this is probably going to be it,” Foster thought. “Lord, please help me. Please help me.”
In that moment, something happened.
“It was like somebody had their hand and put it in the middle of my back and gently pushed me,” she recalled. “My heels actually came off the floor.”
She ran. By the time she collected her purse and keys and got the van started, he had put his prosthetic leg back on and started after her. She drove away and never looked back.
One in four women and one in seven men are victims of domestic violence. It can take the form of mental or emotional violence as it did for Foster, physical violence as it did for the woman at the pantry, or any number of other forms.
“It’s all about one person exerting control over the other,” Martin said. “So many times, that control looks like isolation.”
Foster’s husband wouldn’t allow her to see friends. When she spoke on the phone, he had to know who it was and what they were saying. She could go to work, but if she was even five minutes late, he wanted to know where she was. He controlled how she saw her family – if he was there, they left when he wanted to leave and, if not, she had to be back by the time he chose.
“When a person feels isolated,” Martin explained, “it’s really hard for them to find the courage or the resources to seek assistance.”
Foster didn’t think she would be staying at Sheltering Wings for more than a few months. She got a storage unit early on and began collecting furniture and other household items she would need.
The shelter staff worked closely with her to help her prepare for life after the shelter. Besides being a shelter, Sheltering Wings offers job training; classes on education, childcare, parenting, stress management and more to help men and women build the skills they need for independence; legal advocacy; age-specific classes for children; and more.
At first, Foster spent a lot of time with a counselor. Then Linnette Garcia, her case manager. She took an embracing empowerment course and began equine therapy at Strides to Success, which helped her develop healthy relationships with others again.
“The ladies there are wonderful is all I can say. They’re definitely angels to work with that kind of thing,” Foster said. “I felt really close to all of them.”
When she left for good on July 19, 2013, she had enough to fully furnish the three-bedroom apartment she has lived in for the last three and a half years.
“I have never felt so free in all my life,” she said, adding, “It means a lot. I can actually talk to people. I can go to places. I don’t have to worry.”
The shelter expanded in 2014 and grew to a capacity of 68 beds. Despite more than doubling capacity, it continues to reach its maximum often. According to Martin, shelters in Indianapolis and Anderson and, probably, across the state struggle with the same issue. Part of the growth in demand at the shelters is increased awareness.
“When we bring to light just the conversation about abuse, it has this great opportunity to empower victims to understand that they’re not alone, there is help available, and there’s hope for them. They don’t have to travel this road alone,” she said.
Sheltering Wings does education and outreach through a variety of channels. It conducts workshops for businesses, churches and other organizations on domestic violence and teen dating violence. It spends two to five days in each high school and middle school in Hendricks County, except for one, each semester communicating with teens about healthy relationships.
“What we’re finding is we’re not getting to people, teens, early enough, even when we’re in middle schools,” Martin said. In response, the organization is working on a children’s curriculum.
Addressing growth in demand through prevention, she said, will be one of the organization’s main focuses as it moves forward.
“It’s all about what more we can do to help more families. Our main focus is to be able to respond to the demand and then, also, work ourselves out of a job.”
Sheltering Wings’ 24-hour crisis hotline number is 317-745-1496.
Originally published in Hendricks County ICON, 2017. Republished here for archival and portfolio purposes.