Alabama’s First Lady Dianne Bentley is generally soft-spoken, but when it comes to the issue of domestic violence, her voice is starting to ring out across the entire country.
It all started when Mrs. Bentley got to know some of the women inmates who were working at the governor’s mansion on a work release program. She found that several of them were incarcerated for finally retaliating against men who had been abusing them for long periods of time.
Those conversations led the First Lady to make domestic violence prevention and a victim support the focus of her efforts while her husband is in office.
According to the Alabama Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ACADV), more than 20,000 cases of domestic violence were reported in 2013, and nationwide one in three women are victims of domestic violence.
Mrs. Bentley has worked closely with ACADV since 2011 — long before the NFL scandals brought he issue to the forefront nationally — personally visiting every one of Alabama’s domestic violence shelters. And this past week she held a fundraising luncheon during which the organization announced plans for a new website with expanded services and resources to better educate its visitors on domestic violence, provide access to support, and highlight opportunities to get more involved with volunteer efforts.
“What we’re hoping to do with this new program we’re starting with this foundation is to make all shelters equal,” the First Lady told Yellowhammer in an exclusive interview, which can be watched in full in the video above. “We’re short staffed in some of our shelters. Some of them are wonderful but some of them are really sad. One woman said, ‘If you will just let me in, even if you don’t have room, I will sleep in the attic on a bed of nails if I just know I can be safe and my children are safe.’ Or the women who came on Christmas eve morning with her eight children and said, ‘Just put a blanket on the floor and I’ll lay there as long as we’re safe.’”
In addition to raising money and awareness, Mrs. Bentley has also been a vocal advocate for Verizon’s HopeLine® program.
After discovering that inmates in Alabama prisons were smuggling illegal cell phones into the facilities and having them confiscated at an unusually high rate, Mrs. Bentley and the Alabama Department of Corrections partnered up to donate the confiscated phones to victims of domestic violence.
Alabamians across the state also continue to participate in the HopeLine program. More than 12,000 phones have been donated since this program started in 2012.
That’s a big deal for women whose abusers keep constant tabs on their communications, because they’re able to hide the HopeLine phone and use it to get help.
The First Lady also addressed the Ray Rice video during the interview.
“I like to look at it this way,” she said, “there’s a favorite verse of mine in the Bible, ‘Man meant it for evil and God used it for good.’ And while this has drawn national attention to domestic violence, it put a face on it. This is a hidden issue… The good side of it was that if you saw that video, and you saw that poor woman knocked completely out and then drug out of the elevator — and he did not even know if she was alive — I think that made people sit up and say this is a serious issue.”
For a more in-depth look at First Lady Dianne Bentley’s nation-leading domestic violence initiatives, check out Yellowhammer’s interview with her in the video above.
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