A year and a half ago, Ingrid Dominguez sat in her beauty salon grappling with a growing number of domestic violence cases in her normal casework as District Director of the Washington Heights Family Preservation program for the Administration for Children’s Services. She watched as a distressed woman walked into the salon, burst into tears and explained to everyone what had happened to her. All the other women in the room rushed to console the woman, Dominguez remembered. They all wanted to help her, she said, “but they didn’t know how.” A year and a half later, Dominguez, a field instructor to students getting their masters degrees in social work, is leading two new interns through her second Domestic Violence Awareness Training Program, in Beauty Salons of Washington Heights and Inwood.
In the launch ceremony at Josephine’s Spa on October 3, Dominguez announced that their goal was to train stylists in 40 local beauty salons how to identify the many forms of domestic violence and how and where to refer their clients. After the success of the first awareness campaign, which trained 11 beauty salons in lower- and mid-Washington Heights (between West 163rd and West 181st Streets) and a widely reprinted Associated Press article, Dominguez has been approached by national and international organizations interested in working with her to replicate the program in other communities. While the statistics may vary slightly from country to country, according to Dominguez, about one out of every three women worldwide has been beaten, forced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime.
Yeinmy Gomez, a master’s student in social work, was Dominguez’s first trainee at the project’s inception last October. As the only Spanish-speaking intern, it was her job to convince salon owners to allow her to come in to their shops for a series of training sessions.
“The way you present the project to the owners is key,” she said. Some owners were not interested, saying they were too busy or that it would be too hard to coordinate all the schedules of the stylists, and there were those that just said no. Dominguez reminds her interns that it’s these people who need to be pushed even harder because it is likely that their immediate reluctance is because of their own history with domestic violence.
Gomez said that at first she was intimidated to be a young Dominican woman going into the salons of her neighborhood to speak to older women about taboo subjects. “I was never good at public speaking” she said, noting now it’s not a problem after leading seminars and discussions with groups of women in 11 different salons. But she did get her challenges in those early morning meetings with stylists.
Some wondered if it was the fault of the short shorts a victimized woman wore, or whether a woman had somehow provoked her attacker. “A lot of women in our community have a culture that says ‘Oh she deserves it, she was looking for it,’” Gomez said. But just as many owners and beauticians thought the idea fabulous, like Sonia Nieves who owns Sonia Hair Salon on W. 180th Street. She has since counseled one of her repeat clients, helping her become involved with services available in the neighborhood.
“Many people don’t know about the vast number of services in the city that are available to victims of domestic violence,” Dominguez said.
As Gomez fought through the drowning hum of hair blowers and passing pastelitos vendors, she remembered numerous moments that touched her in those training sessions where women recounted their past experiences and consoled each other. Some of the clients she remembers would return to the salon on the day of the next session just to listen.
Angelina Fermin, a stylist a Divas Beauty Salon, on Broadway and west 174th Street, received a diploma at the end of her training last year. Speaking in Spanish, she said the training program was great because the trust people have in their beauticians.
As Fermin spoke, the stylist in the chair next to her, Deyonira Lora, recounted her story. It wasn’t until she left a prior relationship, once things became physical, that she realized she had been verbally abused for so many years. And the verbal abuse was the worst, she said, pointing out that a bruise heals but, gesturing towards he heart, “eso se queda eterno (that will always remain).”
Lora began working at the salon a few months ago and it was the first she had heard of the training program, but she said she would love the chance to help others in a similar situation.
Dominguez pointed out that salons that have already gone through the awareness training program, but have hired new employees like Lora, are welcome to contact her to have trainers come back for a few beauticians.
As she runs a comb through the long black hair of the client in her chair, Lora asks a reporter to stay while she finishes up, offering to answer any further questions he may have. It’s always good to talk about it, she says in Spanish. Getting it out in the open helps to relieve the pain.
