“I believe that knife was meant for me.”

The tiny pink and blue chairs are empty now. The children are in school until about 2 p.m. But it’s not hard to imagine the brightly painted rooms brimming with life. Posters line the wall, posters the children have created themselves, warning of the danger of the domestic violence they have both witnessed and experienced. One, composed of letters glued together to form the steps to take if violence occurs, warns boldly: CALL 911, GO TO A NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE, TALK TO A TRUSTED ADULT. DON’T GET TRAPPED.

The activities symbolize the fact that a child of any age can be touched by domestic violence. There is a foosball table, and one room away, a demure area with mobiles and a changing table. On the floor lies a tiger-shaped rug, complete with a stuffed head. One arm of the tiger is, incidentally, covering its eyes.

The whole area is calming — a haven that exists in juxtaposition to its purpose. The shelter has a program for the kids where they can receive points in various activities and later exchange them for toys and other goodies – in large part donated by the Rotary Club of Hialeah-Miami Springs – kept in a steel office cabinet in the playroom. The toy cabinet is relatively bare right now, indicating there have been a lot of good kids. But, sadly, it is also symbolic of the lack of funds. “We need to restock,” Oscie Fryer said, beaming.

Fryer is a Social Services Supervisor for Miami-Dade County’s Advocates for Victims Program. She is stationed at a shelter called Safe Space North. The address of the domestic violence shelter cannot be released to protect the safety of the women who seek refuge here. “Their abusers could find them and try to harm them again,” she explains.

One woman at Safe Space North cannot reveal her identity for that exact reason. She has been at the shelter for two weeks, with her two small children. “My ex-boyfriend was a drug addict,” she says. “He was supposed to be watching my kids while I was at work but he left them locked in the house. He abused me emotionally and financially. I threw him out but he broke in. He broke all of the windows and the doors. My neighbor defended me and he stabbed [my neighbor] in the face. I believe that knife was meant for me.”

She says the way the residents at the shelter compare their stories of abuse, it’s almost like a “competition about whose story is worse and they tell me [about my experience], ‘Oh, that’s nothing.’”

With her attacker now incarcerated, she is trying to piece the future together. With all of the windows and doors broken on her ground-floor apartment, her home was left uninhabitable. She isn’t sure if she will stay in the city or relocate to somewhere new. “I’m getting better,” she says with optimism. “I feel safe here.”

For about 10 hours each week, two tutors come here from Miami-Dade County Schools, and the shelter provides counseling by social workers for the children. It’s not as often that the shelter sees kids who have been physically abused, but emotionally. “They see what is happening, and even if not they see the results,” Fryer said. She motioned to her face, alluding to the physical scars left behind by physical abuse.

Another poster artfully crafted with crayon stick figures holding hands reads: “Abuse hurts.”

“One lady left about two weeks ago, she had six kids. One lady [here] now has five,” Fryer said.

A poster on the wall reads: “Abuse is not OK.”

Continued