How the Workplace Can Be a Safe Haven for Domestic Abuse Survivors

Sonya Passi knows exactly how challenging it is to navigate the workplace as a domestic violence survivor. A number of years ago, she was leaving an abusive relationship — and in order to meet with a crisis counselor, and move out of her apartment safely, she needed to take a lot of time off of work. But as an investment banker, she didn’t feel comfortable being honest with her employer. At work, she felt pressure to leave her personal life at the door and be an upbeat, positive presence. Acknowledging the violence she was experiencing at home didn’t mesh with the professional image she was trying to uphold. 

As dealing with her abuser demanded more and more time, she turned to a no-fail excuse: dental work. “The day that I physically left the abusive situation, that was my excuse. At this point I’d now had four dentist appointments in the span of about three weeks, but I said I had a dentist appointment in the middle of the day and packed up my life and left,” she recalls. 

These days, Passi’s life looks much different than it did back then. But the memory of having to navigate the demands of her workplace while she was escaping abuse hasn’t left her. As the founder of FreeFrom, an organization that works to end gender-based violence by building safety and economic freedom for survivors, Passi has consciously worked to build a survivor-friendly workplace, one where, among other generous benefits, employees are guaranteed paid and protected gender-based violence leave — no questions asked.

And now, she’s trying to bring those reforms to workplaces around the country. Earlier this month, FreeFrom released the Survivors at Work report, an analysis of data from over 2,400 survivors that paints a bleak picture of what it means to be a survivor in the workplace. 

For survivors, reading through FreeFrom’s findings can be incredibly validating. In colorful graphs, the report outlines the ways that enduring abuse can make it harder for a survivor to find a job — or, once a job has been obtained, to keep it. Did an abuser ever make you late to work? 62.6 percent of survey respondents know what that’s like. Were you prevented from getting necessary professional training because of abuse? More than half of survivors surveyed had that experience as well. And notably, nearly 85 percent of respondents reported that they’d had difficulty focusing on work due to their experience of abuse.

Much of what’s in the report is familiar to Anesce Dremen, a 30-year-old survivor currently based in Las Vegas. During her most recent abusive relationship, Dremen was repeatedly subjected to sabotage from her abuser, who caused her to lose two separate jobs, and interfered with interviews for others. “He would force me to lose sleep before the day of an interview, or he would sabotage the internet during online interviews; he would pick fights.” He’d also belittle her entire career, demeaning her education and work in a way that made it hard to feel good about being at the office, or be productive while doing her work.

After leaving the relationship, Dremen experienced temporary homelessness — a common issue for survivors who need to flee a home they share with their abuser and don’t have a new apartment already lined up. Although Dremen was able to couch-surf and stay with friends, many other survivors don’t have that option. And since space at domestic violence shelters can be hard to come by, many survivors wind up in homeless shelters or on the streets, neither of which provide environments that are conducive to being productive at the office.

Perhaps more surprising, even for people who have experienced abuse, is the sheer amount of time that survivors lose to addressing the harm caused by their abusers. FreeFrom found that, on average, survivors use 12 vacation days and 11 sick days to deal with the consequences of abuse. Not only does that mean that survivors often aren’t getting time to rest and recuperate; in many cases, employers don’t even grant their workers that much paid time off to begin with.

If reading through the stats leaves you feeling a bit despondent on behalf of survivors, that’s understandable. But thankfully, FreeFrom has done more than just assemble a polished litany of woes. As part of the Survivors at Work package, the organization has also released a collection of data-driven insights for employers, with extensive recommendations on policies that can make a workplace significantly more survivor-friendly.

At the top of the list? No strings attached, flexible emergency grants that can be used to pay for abuse-related expenses — including but not limited to litigation expenses, therapy, medical costs, and fees associated with relocation — and the very same paid and protected leave that Passi offers her workers at FreeFrom.

What would it mean for a survivor to have access to these benefits? For survivors at risk of homelessness, an emergency grant could keep them in a safe and stable place. For those being dragged into court by a vindictive abuser manipulating the litigation system, paid and protected leave could mean the ability to fend off abusive litigation without having to worry about losing income or risking one’s job. Fundamentally, FreeFrom’s suggested benefits all provided survivors with an additional cushion of support, a potentially life-saving measure for someone enduring abuse.

And yet, even FreeFrom’s extensive list of suggestions is merely a starting point for many survivors. Marissa Baron, 33, was forced to move to a new state to access both safety and a domestic violence support center that did not require her to involve the police. When her employer found out that she had left the state, her position with the company was terminated, despite the fact that she’d been successfully doing her job remotely. “They told me I had to move back or lose my job,” she recalls. Dremen, whose experience of abuse led to a confidential legal name change, has struggled with employers requesting access to her former name, which can feel like a violation of privacy.

And even in cases where good policies are already on the books, there needs to be a robust effort to make workers aware of them — and, crucially, to make clear that no one will be punished or shamed for taking advantage of them. As Barron reminded me during our interview, domestic violence is a subject that’s incredibly taboo, and requires tremendous vulnerability to be open about. “During a [domestic violence] crisis, you don’t get the same reactions as someone saying, ‘I’m in the hospital.’ You don’t. You don’t get the same empathy, you get wildly different reactions from people, and you have to mitigate their reactions.” Anxiety about opening up to a boss can easily prevent someone from taking advantage of employer-provided resources — something employers themselves must be mindful of and work to combat.

Ultimately, the most important insight from FreeFrom’s report is one of the simplest. A full 1 in 2 cisgender women and trans people are subjected to intimate partner violence. As a result, the organization reminds us, “every workplace is employing survivors.” The moment we start from that basis, and recognize survivors, not as some faceless statistic, but as our coworkers and colleagues who deserve support, the question of survivor-focused benefits becomes straightforward. More than anything else, a survivor-supportive is simply a workplace that recognizes that workers are people who deserve support and care throughout all the complex challenges that they will face in their lives.