Sara Shoener, Research DirectorGoogle her name for more interesting and inspiring facts and information.Dr. Shoener has been advocating for and conducting research on effective approaches to reduce violence against women for over ten years. She has experience conducting focus groups, surveys, needs assessments, program evaluations, and survivor and attorney/advocate interviews related to anti-violence projects.
A Truman Scholar and AAUW American Dissertation Fellow, Sara received her DrPH in Sociomedical Sciences and her MPH in Health Promotion from Columbia University.
Sara is currently the Project Manager for a program funded through the Department of Justice’s Office on Violence against Women called the Consumer Rights for Domestic Violence Survivors Initiative. They provide training and consultation to attorneys and advocates who work on behalf of survivors of domestic violence, particularly to enhance their consumer rights advocacy efforts.
http://empire-ny.aauw.net/2012/12/11/meet-sara-shoener-completing-a-doctorate-in-public-health/
I smell a lot of government grants.
She just graduated THIS MONTH. I guess this was her thesis or something.
I still think it is crazy how many women stay with their abusers. I wonder if men stay with abuse as much, but I don’t think we are allowed to suggest that a woman who stays with her abuser is at a higher risk of abuse, because that would be blaming the woman.
It’s like if a woman never learned how to swim, and then went out in a boat into a lake, and jumped out of the boat, and then drowned, you could never say that the woman probably should not have gone out in the boat or jumped out, because we aren’t allowed to tell a woman what she can and cannot do.
More interestingly though, is that the actual studies show that single motherhood is the greatest factor in abuse — women in married relationships are abused at a far lower rate than single women, and single mothers fair the worst. Apparently, guys who will put up with some other guy’s kid just to hang around a woman are not always the nicest guys, and conversely I imagine women who feel trapped by having a kid and no father are likely to think they need to put up with any guy who will tolerate them.