Trish Dyer can recall only too well the days before the Centre Against Abuse was founded.
“In Bermuda, people got away with so much,” said Mrs Dyer, who helped form the charity back in 1979.
“Women were going to the hospital beaten and nothing was being done. They were sending women back into the situation to be killed or half-killed before anything could be done, and that wasn’t acceptable.”
Mrs Dyer was speaking as the Centre Against Abuse celebrates its 45th anniversary and reflects on the thousands of women, men and children who have benefited from its crisis support services.
Today, the CAA provides a 24/7 helpline, counselling, court advocacy and safe housing assistance for victims of abuse when they have nowhere else to turn.
Yet half a century ago, abused women would frequently find themselves in the uncomfortable situation of being interviewed by male police officers. Their case would often fail to get off the ground.
“As a woman, it’s very difficult to talk to a man when you’ve been constantly beaten by a man,” Mrs Dyer said.
Breaking point was reached with the horrifying rape and murder of 11-year-old Connie Furtado in Warwick, one of Bermuda’s most infamous crimes, in February 1978.
Connie had been on her way home from Paget Primary School when she was sexually assaulted and strangled with her school tie by Chesterfield Johnson. Her body was found near the Ord Road bus stop.
“I had a daughter that age,” Mrs Dyer said. “As a mother, I thought that we needed to be more instrumental in getting help for people and to show these girls how to get help. My daughter was involved with me. For me, that was a motivation, as a mother of a child that age.”
Mrs Dyer, an all-rounder who took on various roles including secretary and later became a board member, was among a group that took part in a walk to raise awareness.
“There were a few things going on at the time which indicated that people were just sick and tired of this type of thing going on along with women being abused, and that came to the forefront,” she said.
“Women were feeling insecure and they had nowhere to go to get help. All the physical abuse came to light that women and children were basically dealing with silently.”
The seeds of collective action had already been sown, when the Business and Professional Women’s Association of Bermuda had organised a seminar on rape at the Bermudiana Hotel in early 1976.
This was followed up in June 1977 when two counsellors from Ontario, Canada, led a five-day workshop where volunteers were taught how to provide telephone and person-to-person counselling for abuse victims.
There was a growing sense that it was time to step things up further.
“A group of us decided we wanted to do something but not necessarily just about the rape crisis. We wanted it to involve all sorts of abuse,” Mrs Dyer said.
“That’s basically how we got started. Half a dozen or so of us got together and talked about what we could do and how we could make a difference.
“We were all volunteers, but we did a lot to raise awareness and fundraising. We needed a safe house for these women to go to, and we needed support for them. We needed to get them counselling to break the cycle.
“So we attracted a lot of doctors and all sorts of people in the helping professions who were willing to come on board.”
The fledgling group had no elected officers except a treasurer and corresponding secretary but were uplifted by support from the Business and Professional Women’s Association, led by Audrey Brackstone and Annabella Gaye Fraser.
According to Mrs Dyer, the word was spread “just through talking to people”.
“We had flyers, we held a fashion show and a dance at the Sonesta Beach that attracted a lot of people,” she said.
“People became aware of what was needed. We had a real cross-section of the community that wanted to get together to make this happen.”
By October 1979, the first of the goals was realised when a safe house for women opened on the corner of Victoria and King Streets, Hamilton.
In its first six months, 11 women and 15 children took refuge at the Physical Abuse Centre, as it was originally called, but many more had to be turned away because it only had capacity for six women.
A hotline was set up that same month, when the Salvation Army agreed to transfer calls from any physically abused people to the Physical Abuse Centre’s on-call counsellor. Twenty trained counsellors worked on the hotline and helped 52 women within the first six months.
Society was slowly evolving and attitudes were beginning to change.
“I think we became more aware of what is acceptable and what’s not,” said Mrs Dyer.
Women were urged to call the helpline whenever they felt threatened.
“A lot of women, no matter what their situation was at 4 in the morning, were encouraged to call us, and we would go out and meet them,” Mrs Dyer said.
“I don’t know if we’d do it today because it was unsafe! But we would go out and meet them and tend to their needs. If they needed to go to the hospital, we would go with them. We did eventually have a safe house that we could take them to.
“For the longest while, people didn’t know where the safe house was, so it was quite effective. We housed a lot of women and children and a lot was donated in the way of food and clothing and furnishings. We were encouraged by the results of our efforts to help women.”
In 1982, the agency was relocated to a Salvation Army-owned property in Warwick, which allowed for an office as well as accommodation for seven women and two children. Dr Mary Busby became the first executive director and provided in-house counselling for those in need.
The safe house later moved to a larger facility at Mount Faith in Smith’s, and by 1984 it had handled 160 cases. The organisation adopted a more structured format with a constitution, enabling it to apply for grants from the Ministry of Health and Social Services and created a board of directors, initially headed up by chairman Choy Aming.
In May 2010, the group changed its name to the Centre Against Abuse to better reflect its purpose within the community, and five years later it linked up with the Sexual Assault Response Team to provide help for sexual assault survivors.
In 2016, another milestone was reached when the charity became accredited under the Bermuda National Standards Committee.
Now under executive director Laurie Shiell, the charity’s mission is to provide services to adult victims of intimate partner abuse and sexual assault and offer awareness to the community, as well as its hotline, other services for victims and numerous community programmes.
The Centre Against Abuse can be contacted through its 24-hour hotline 297-8278, [email protected] or Facebook and Twitter links.
