A Survivor Fights Domestic Violence in Harlem

“The system abandoned me until Stephanie rescued me,” a former victim said.

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By Evelyn Nam

“My pain from the past is helping other women gain today,” said Stephanie McGraw, founder and CEO of W.A.R.M., a Harlem non-profit that helps hundreds of battered women each year.

Short for We All Really Matter, the name came to McGraw in an almost supernatural way. “I was in a fetal position in an apartment in Bronx,” after escaping from an abusive partner, McGraw recalled. “I remember hearing ‘warm, warm.’” As she pondered the word and its meaning, “it just simply came, naturally. We All Really Matter.”

McGraw, 58, grew up in a household where trauma felt normal. “We didn’t know how to ask for help,” she said. After spending six months in a shelter, she married, which “was the worst thing and the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Finally leaving that relationship, she realized that the legal and criminal justice system is ineffective for victims with urgent needs. With W.A.R.M., “we’re cutting through the bureaucracy. Through the bullshit. Victims don’t have time to wait in line for two hours on the phone,” she said. “These women need help now.”

“I know how serious this is. I’ve lived it,” she said.

W.A.R.M. works with eight local precincts, often entering homes with officers as they receive calls. “We get in, we pack up, we help bring them out,” McGraw said. Most of the organization’s referrals come from the NYPD.

As a Black woman, McGraw understands the grievances against the police but believes that “we have to reimagine the way we work with the police. Refusing to work with them is only going to leave the victims out to dry.”

McGraw at the W.A.R.M. office

W.A.R.M. also provides counseling, classes, workshops, retreats and marches to help women, mostly Black and Latina, “feel, heal, and deal.” Workshops draw 20 to 30 participants. It will host a financial health workshop with Chase Bank on Oct. 27th at the W.A.R.M. office on East 126th Street. “It’s all about reclaiming your power, because domestic violence is all about power and control,” McGraw explained.

W.A.R.M. has also created a virtual court that has helped survivors who needed protective orders and other legal support during the pandemic.

Funded primarily by the New York State Office of Victim Services, it also receives grants from the City Council, the Robin Hood Foundation, the Women’s Foundation, and other companies and philanthropists. Its budget for this year was $282,000; McGraw estimates that next year’s will be $300,000.

That allows McGraw to employ five staffers, including herself, their salaries paid primarily by the state Office of Victim Services. “We need more funding.” McGraw said, sitting in W.A.R.M.’s office in a corner of the WeWork space they’ve christened Serenity Corner. “We need a whole building.”

The office is packed with documents. “It takes a lot to run this,” she said.

Meggie Griffin, 24, a peer navigator at W.A.R.M., agreed that it needs more resources, especially now. “The organization is definitely in rapid expansion,” she said. “We are getting a lot more clients and we need more resources.”

Domestic violence in New York City has decreased from 4,212 reported victims in 2019 to 3,359 in 2020, according to the State Office of Victim Services. The Office is yet to publish its data for 2021.

Holly, 38, a survivor using a nickname to protect her identity, calls herself “living testimony” to W.A.R.M.’s work. “The system abandoned me until Stephanie rescued me,” Holly said.

She left an abusive relationship in June, in the midst of the pandemic. “A year ago today, I was expecting, during the pandemic. NYPD didn’t want to get involved. Shelters didn’t want to take me in,” because she was considered a single person, even though she was pregnant.

Holly took advantage of W.A.R.M.’s weekly workshops. “They reminded me of who I was.” After a year of recovery, Holly now has a job in real estate.

For abused women, things get lonely quickly, Holly said. “People tend to turn their backs on women in domestic violence. They just go, ‘Oh wow, sorry.’ They don’t care.”

Kelly, another survivor leaving an abusive relationship, said that the organization’s staff “met every one of my needs.”

“She’s giving these women a path forward that they didn’t have before,” said James Watson, trauma response practitioner at the Exodus Center for Trauma Innovation in East Harlem. Watson has worked with W.A.R.M. since 2020.

McGraw “sends victims and survivors who exceed her training to us. We collaborate services,” said Watson. “I’ve never seen the same level of sacrifice she’s made for women who are domestic violence victims.”

Sometime next month, McGraw will host a new workshop to educate men, particularly male staff members, at the Exodus Center, said Watson, who has worried that female survivors feel uncomfortable opening up to male practitioners at the center.

Watson suggested hosting the workshop, a first but–he is confident–not the last. He added, “She’s doing an amazing job. She’s going to take off. She’s very visible in the community.”

For now, McGraw has been organizing her annual event, Love on the Block, to take place tomorrow, when W.A.R.M. will distribute food, clothing and “love” to women in the neighborhood. She expects to draw 700 people to 115th Street between Second and Third Avenue. “We’re ready,” she said.

McGraw wants domestic violence acknowledged as a systemic problem worth attention. “Domestic violence doesn’t get the air time like breast cancers,” she said. “They advertise all of the walks around breast cancer. I would love to, next year, do something with major companies to draw attention to the issue.”

She’s heard people say, “You didn’t choose breast cancer. Breast cancer chose you.”  But she has found that “domestic violence is more shameful. They say, ‘Women should know better.’”

(Featured photo of Stephanie McGraw accepting donations of tampons and pads by Evelyn Nam)

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