Author: Financial education breaks cycle of abuse

By Denise M. Champagne
Posted: 5:44 pm Tue, October 19, 2010

 

Teaching girls to be financially self-sufficient will help them to avoid being victims of domestic violence later in life.

Teaching women to be financially self-sufficient is the key to getting out of an abusive relationship and moving forward.

Those are the key points in a program to be presented Thursday by Nancy Salamone — a domestic violence survivor and author — at the University of Rochester Medical Center, part of the two-day conference “Bridging Research to Practice,” in conjunction with National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Salamone will discuss her book, “Victory Over Violence: Nancy’s Story and the Business of Me,” as well as a program she created to help battered women end the cycle of violence.

“Nancy’s work is innovative and financial self-efficacy is imperative for survivors,” said Catherine Cerulli, an associate professor, URMC Department of Psychiatry, and director of its Laboratory of Interpersonal Violence and Victimization. “The whole goal of the conference is to bridge research to practice and have evidence-based medicine reach the hands of practitioners.”

 

Her story

Salamone was 19 years old when she married her “tall, dark and handsome” boyfriend whom she met when she was 15.

“He was moody, but being a naïve teenager, moody meant mysterious,” Salamone said during a recent telephone interview. “Always, I thought I could make him happy.”

Instead, he made her very unhappy and it wasn’t until after she left him almost 20 years later that she learned about domestic violence and how she had been a victim of physical, mental and economic abuse.

“Economic abuse is a very real form of abuse,” Salamone said. “The abuser controls the finances as a means of control over the victim.”

She hired an attorney and started seeing a therapist whom she said helped her understand the type of relationship she was in and helped her navigate her way out.

Even though she was a marketing executive for a Wall Street firm, earning more than her husband, Salamone was not allowed to manage the household finances. She would turn her entire paycheck over to her husband, who would give her a $60 allowance.

“He told me how much money I could have and made me account for how much I spent,” she said. “I could never go shopping unless I had his permission and told him what I was going to purchase before I bought it.”

Until the divorce payoff two years later, Salamone said her ex-husband stalked her, threatened her at work and threatened to kill her and members of her family. Salamone rented an apartment and signed up for utilities and other accounts under a different name.

“It was years later when I felt comfortable enough to consider this person out of my life,” she said. “It took years of therapy.”

 

‘The Business of Me’

In the process of learning how to survive on her own, Salamone developed The Business of Me program, which she presented at shelters and educational facilities. The program is now her full-time occupation. She has expanded and trains others so that it may be presented nationally.

Salamone said the program focuses on the future, helping women to develop goals along with the means to accomplish them.

“What shocks me the most to this day is the number of women who are affected,” she said. “Since my book has been published [this summer], women have come to me and said, ‘You know, Nancy, your story could be my story. But, what’s even more telling is that domestic violence is an equal-opportunity social disease.”

Salamone said it affects all women regardless of their economic status, race, political party, religion.

“I don’t know why people abuse,” she said. “What I do know is the only person who can change it is yourself — the victim. That is what ‘The Business of Me’ concentrates on. I have seen it. Women change their behavior. They go from being victim, to survivor to thriver.”

 

Other presenters

The conferenceis set for 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Thursday speakers will include Amy Bonomi, associate professor, Ohio State University, who will share research on the prevalence, healthcare issues and costs of domestic violence; Amy Barasch, an attorney from the state Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence; and Michele McKeon, CEO of the New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Friday will feature a series of workshops.

The conference is dedicated to Susan Hurwitz, a URMC associate professor of psychiatry who brought researchers and practitioners together to make a difference in the field of domestic violence. She died suddenly in September 2009. A family therapy scholarship is being established in her name.