rofile
Safety
Zone
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
ASSISTANT EDITOR
nybody who com-
plains that his
job is too tough
needs to spend a
day in Hedy
Nuriel's shoes.
In a typical
afternoon, she
will meet up
with women who
have been beat-
en by their hus-
bands, children
who have been repeated-
ly abused sexually. Ms.
Nuriel is the new direc-
tor of The Haven, Oak-
Hedy Nuriel
land County's Domestic
Violence Shelter and
Sexual Assault Counsel-
ing Center, where pain is
all in a day's work.
She has been a social
worker for years, but
that doesn't make it any
easier.
"I think I turned to
administrative work
because it just got hard-
er and harder seeing the
abuse day after day," she
says. "It was horrible."
Today, she's a compas-
sionate but no-nonsense
kind of leader. She is
devoted to helping those
who have been abused,
but don't look for her to
have patience for indul-
gent, self-pitying psy-
chologies that seek to
absolve present behavior
because of a difficult
past.
"About 60-80 percent
of the batterers were
abused themselves or
saw their mother being
abused," she says.
"These people may need
help, but that's no ex-
cuse for what
they're doing."
A native De-
troiter, Ms.
Nuriel holds a
master's de-
gree in social
work from the
University of
Michigan. She
spent more
than eight
years in Israel,
where she was
a social work-
er, then left in
1980 for finan-
cial reasons. "I
think inflation
was a mere
300 percent
that year."
Returning to
Detroit, Ms.
Nuriel worked
in a domestic
violence shel-
ter, then served
as director of a
statewide or-
ganization, the
Michigan Co-
alition Against
Domestic Vio-
lence.
She
left
work
Photo by Glenn Triest social
As the new head
of The Haven,
Hedy Nuriel
delivers
straight talk
about domestic
abuse.
temporarily to open a
restaurant in Southfield.
"But it wasn't for me."
When she heard about
the opening at The
Haven, based in Pontiac,
she sent in her applica-
tion. She started work
last November.
Abuse, she says, often
begins with the spoken
word. A man (95 percent
of the victims are women
or children) will use con-
trolling, demanding lan-
guage. Perhaps he'll tell
a woman she can no
longer see her friends.
This can quickly lead to
other kinds of abuse —
financial, emotional and
physical.
Many women do leave
such situations. "They
leave, but then they
come back. They believe
the man will get counsel-
ing or religion, or he'll
stop drinking and then
everything will be all
right," Ms. Nuriel says.
"Then it starts up
again."
Some women don't
leave because they're
convinced the abuse is
the result of their own
behavior. They think,
C)
CC
39