*AUDIENCE WARNING* This episode contains descriptions of coercive control, sexual abuse, and sexual coercion. Please listen with caution.

On a very special episode of Root For Each Other, we're welcoming a survivor who is using her voice as a beacon of hope to others. Join us as she shares her story of resilience and strength and as we discuss the realities of living in and separating from a coercive controlling relationship.

Branches Domestic Violence Shelter has been providing services to victims of domestic violence in the Appalachian communities of Cabell, Lincoln, Mason, Putnam, and Wayne counties in West Virginia.

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For survivors of domestic violence, safety and employment are often deeply connected. Maintaining a job can provide stability, independence, and the resources needed to move toward safety, but navigating the workplace while experiencing abuse can also present significant challenges.

In this episode of Root for Each Other, we explore what it means to Employ & Empower survivors through stronger workplace protections, better-informed advocates, and more prepared employers.

Sara is joined by Samuel “Raymie” White, Legal Services Director with the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and Bella Book, Program Manager and Program Attorney with Futures Without Violence's Workplace & Economic Opportunity team.

Bella leads the Advancing Safety Through Employment Rights Advocacy Project, a national effort focused on increasing awareness of employment protections available to survivors and providing advocates, attorneys, and survivors with practical tools and resources. The project brings together participants from across the country to share knowledge, explore state-specific protections, and develop resources that can be adapted for local communities.

West Virginia was represented in this national learning community by a four-person team which included representation from the WVCADV, Legal Aid of WV and Branches Domestic Violence Shelter. Together, they explored the legal protections available to survivors, the challenges survivors encounter in maintaining employment, and ways advocates can help survivors better understand and navigate their rights in the workplace.

Learn more about Building Trauma Responsive (BTR) Communities

Learn more about Futures Without Violence

Learn more about the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence

We are so privileged to have had the opportunity to speak with author and scholar Kate Price after her reading at Booktenders in Barboursville earlier this month. Join us as we discuss the dynamics of gender-based violence in Appalachia and explore some of the ways resilience blooms in unlikely places.

Kate Price is an associate research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women, a research institute at Wellesley College. She is also an advisor for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Child Sex Trafficking Expert Working Group and Global Platform for Child Exploitation Policy, and an alumni scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center. An internationally recognized child sex trafficking expert and lecturer, Price has influenced the passage of state-level children’s human rights legislation and United Nations policy. Price is the recipient of a My Life, My Choice Beacon of Light Award, a Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize medal, a Mariam K. Chamberlain Dissertation Award from the International Centers for Research on Women, and an American Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship. She has worked extensively with trauma pioneers Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Body Keeps the Score, in which Price is featured, and Dr. Judith Herman. Price received her MA in gender/cultural studies from Simmons College and earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Massachusetts Boston. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.

Branches Domestic Violence Shelter has been providing services to victims of domestic violence in the Appalachian communities of Cabell, Lincoln, Mason, Putnam, and Wayne counties in West Virginia.

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