CONNECT:
Women's Shelter and Alex & Brandon Child Safety Center
The Mid-Minnesota Women's Center wouldn't be here without Louise Seliski.
Louise grew up in poverty in Minneapolis and knew, even while in seventh grade, that she wanted to become a social worker. She had a passion for helping others. After graduating with a degree in Social Work, the founder and first Executive Director of The Women’s Center and the Alex and Brandon Child Safety Center spent about a year working in Morrison County before accepting a social worker position in Crow Wing County, a job she held for more than four years, before returning to graduate school. She then spent the next two years at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, earning her Master’s degree in Social Work. She chose her own field placement for her degree, a six-month project that would seem daunting for anyone: start a battered women’s shelter.
A friend, Marlene Travis, had started Sexual Assault Services, a non-profit organization in Crow Wing County, and recruited Seliski to write a grant to develop a battered women’s center. Battered women were calling Sexual Assault Services, not because they had been sexually assaulted, but there was nowhere else they could turn. The need for a battered women’s shelter in Brainerd was tremendous.
In 1978, Louise Seliski wrote a grant through the Minnesota Department of Corrections to develop four battered women’s shelters in the state. Only two existed in the Twin Cities area at that point. The Legislature provided funding (the fourth one was built elsewhere) & the Mid-Minnesota Women’s Center became the fifth battered women’s shelter in the state to open and Seliski was selected as executive director, although at that time she wasn't getting paid.
That first shelter, which opened to its first family in August of 1978, was a large old home at 13th and Oak streets in southeast Brainerd. While the shelter was supposed to house six women and children, Seliski said often they had as many as 25 people staying there. Louise would say, “I’d rather have a woman sleep on the floor than get herself killed.” In 1995, a new shelter was built in southeast Brainerd, which houses about 20 women and children at a time. It serves easily over 130 women and about 100 children a year, as well as offering other programming to help these families get back on their feet. The shelter operates 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Sadly, Seliski has seen too many women and children who were later killed by domestic violence after leaving the safety of the shelter. She said eight women and two children — Alex and Brandon, for whom the child safety center is named — have been murdered during the shelter’s existence.
On March 30, 1988, Lillian McDermott, 45, was shot by her abusive husband in her own home, becoming the first murder victim who had sought help from the shelter. She had obtained an order for protection and stayed at the shelter until a judge ordered them back to their rural Crow Wing County home. Seliski said McDermott got a dog and rearranged the furniture, making it harder for her husband to shoot her through a window. No one knew he had purchased a gun until he broke into the home, hid in a closet and shot her when she returned from work. Her body was left in the home to be discovered by her two youngest school-aged sons.
“It was devastating,” Louise said of McDermott’s death. “I always knew this could happen in this line of work but when it happened I was not prepared in any way. Lillian did everything she could have done.”
Seliski said if she had known McDermott’s husband had bought a gun, she would have told McDermott and her youngest of five children to immediately move back into the shelter. Seliski was on the Department of Public Safety’s Minnesota Crime Victims Council at the time, and tried to get lawmakers to pass a bill that would require victims who have orders for protection against someone to be notified if that person buys a gun. She said unfortunately such a bill would have been difficult to enforce.
When a battered woman returned to her home from the shelter to find out if her husband had carried out his threat by slowly beating her cat to death with a baseball bat, Louise said the shelter then began accepting the family’s pets as well. Louise said the Humane Society told her that her shelter was one of the first in the country to also house animals. Quite often pets are also abused in the home and it's not unusual for a battered woman to choose to stay in that situation because she did not want to leave a family pet behind.
When 5-year-old Alex and 4-year-old Brandon Frank, who lived with their mother in Brainerd, were murdered by their father in July of 1996, their deaths devastated Louise and those who knew them from the shelter. Louise and other supporters raised about $450,000 to build the Alex and Brandon Child Safety Center, a place for court-ordered, supervised visitations and safe exchanges of children between custodial and non-custodial parents. Seliski said the boys’ mother, Angie Plantenberg, had asked for supervised visits for the boys but a Stearns County judge turned it down.
Louise believes Alex and Brandon would be alive today if they would have had supervised visits.
The child safety center opened in Brainerd in 2000 and typically facilitates about 1,200 supervised child visits per year. Louise said retiring in 2011 was a hard decision to make but it was time. There were many difficult times during her 33 years of working with battered women and children, but she said there were many rewards, too. “The reason I can do it is because of the women and children I’ve worked with who are leading better lives,” said Seliski. “I always believe in the goodness in people. The greatest thing I would like to see is the shelter shut down because we don’t need it anymore.”
Those whose lives were changed because of the shelter include Kathy Northburg, a woman’s advocate at the shelter. She and her children stayed at the shelter in 1985. She started working at the shelter as relief staff in 1988 and was hired on full time in 1989. Northburg left for a few years to go to college — something Seliski encouraged her to do — and returned to work at the shelter in 2007. “Louise is the type of boss who challenges one to reach beyond what you think you’re capable of,” said Northburg. “She’s an awesome mentor. This place saved my life. If I had stayed with my ex-husband a day longer, he would have killed me and my children.”
(excerpts of this page were from: http://brainerddispatch.com/news/2011-04-15/battered-women%E2%80%99s-greatest-advocate-retire-after-33-years)
Want to learn more?
Educational Services:
The Mid-Minnesota Women's Center offers educational services for commun ity organizations and classrooms as well as small groups in order to further educate people about how best to handle situations in which domestic vioence is suspected, as well as informing people of how to seek help with the resources available in our community.
For more information, contact us at:
218-828-1216
or
Domestic Violence Resources:
Dru's Voice - The official website for Dru Sjodin, complete with her story and further links involving news on Dru's Law as well as further volunteer opportunities.
Love is Respect - A peer advocacy organization that aims to educater young people about relationship abuse to prevent its occurrence.
Chat at www.loveisrespect.org
Text loveis to 22522*
Call 1-866-331-9474
Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women - The Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women (MCBW) is the statewide coalition that links battered women's programs in the state with the common purpose of ending domestic violence.
Business: 651-646-6177
Toll Free (outside the metro): 1-800-289-6177
Crisis Line: 651-646-0994
The American Bar Association Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence - The branch of the ABA which aims to increase access to justice for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking by mobilizing the legal profession.
For help, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline:
1-800-799-SAFE
1-800-787-3224 (TTY)
Contact information:
ABA Commission on Domestic Violence
740 15th Street, NW, 9th Floor
Washington, DC 20005-1022
National Coalition against Domestic Violence - Working with other national organizations on the legal front, the NCADV also works with survivors of domestic violence to help them adjust and heal.
303-839-1852 x109
Minnesota Center against Violence and Abuse - The school of Social Work at the University of Minnesota. Can be contacted at:
MINCAVA - Minnesota Center Against Violence & Abuse
School of Social Work, University of Minnesota
105 Peters Hall
1404 Gortner Avenue
St. Paul, Minnesota 55108-6142
USA tel: 612-624-0721 fax: 612-625-4288
Safe Schools Resources
Office of Safe and Healthy Students - Aims to provide information on safe and supportive schools; health, mental health, environmental health, and physical education; drug and violence prevention; and character and civic education.
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Safe and Healthy Students
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Avenue, SW, Room 3E-245
Washington, DC 20202-6450
Phone: 202-245-7896
Fax: 202-485-0013
E-mail: OESE@ed.gov
Education Minnesota - Advocacy for public education in Minnesota.
41 Sherburne Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55103
Toll-free phone: 800-652-9073
651-227-9541
Fax: 651-292-4802
330 N. Wabash Avenue, Suite 2100
Chicago, IL 60611
Phone: 312-670-6782
Toll-Free: 800-307-4PTA (4782)
Fax: 312-670-6783
or
National PTA
Washington DC Office
1090 Vermont Ave. NW, Suite 1200
Washington, D.C. 20005-4905
Phone: 202-289-6790
Fax: 202-289-6791
Hotline: 888-425-5537
National Education Association -
1201 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036-3290
Phone: 202-833-4000 (Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. ET)
Fax: 202-822-7974
American Federation of Teachers -
American Federation of Teachers
555 New Jersey Avenue, NWWashington, DC 20001
Phone (202) 879-4400
E-mail: online@aft.org (All e-mails should be directed through this e-mail address and will be forwarded appropriately. NOTE: If you are an AFT member, please provide your name, address and the name/number of your AFT local.)
Parenting Resources
National Parenting Education Network - A national umbrella organization that encourages information sharing, professional development and networking opportunities.
Open Your Heart - Support organization designed to aid those who find themselves in situations of hunger and homelessness.
Metro Square Building
121 East Seventh Place - Suite 190
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55101
Phone: 651-224-8011
Fax: 651-229-0727
e-mail: mail@oyh.org
IMPORTANT STATISTICS ABOUT DOMESTIC VIOLENCE:
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More than one in three Americans have witnessed an incident of domestic violence.
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Over 50% of all women will experience violence at least once in an intimate relationship; half of those will experience ongoing violence.
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Up to 50% of all homeless women and children in the United States are fleeing domestic violence.
The Mid-Minnesota Women's Center, Inc. is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, since 1978.
Proiding safety and security from domestic violence and ending domestic violence is our mission. Located in Brainerd, Minnesota, the Mid-Minnesota Women's Center, Inc., has two programs to prevent domestic violence and provide support and shelter to those families affected by domestic violence: a Women's Shelter and the Alex & Brandon Child Safety Center.
For more information, call 218-828-1216 24 hrs/day