A new shelter in Temple will open its doors Monday and provide emergency housing and services for women and their children who want to escape from abusive partners.

Operated by Families in Crisis Inc., the 1,800-square-foot building can house up to 16 people in its four rooms, said executive director Diane Pascoe. The facility is the second of its kind in Bell County. A larger shelter is based in Killeen and can provide safety for 63 people.

The Temple site was created to assist women and, occasionally men, who couldn’t leave jobs or move their children to the Killeen facility, said Paula Conti of Leadership Temple.

“We thought that if we opened a satellite shelter here, those victims might be more inclined to seek services,” she said.

Leadership Temple, a group of civic volunteers organized under the Temple Chamber of Commerce, helped to secure the donated building and raise money for construction costs, Conti said.

“A lot of time someone who seeks shelter may have no other option,” Ms. Armour said. “A lot of times it’s a safety issue because (someone) been chasing them, looking for them and threatening them.”

The shelter is fully stocked and equipped to care for those who might have not had time to pack before seeking safety. A community kitchen, laundry room, toiletries, and clothes will be available, Ms. Pascoe said. A 24-hour staff is available to help women become independent of their abusers, to provide assistance in finding a job and receive legal assistance.

Figures of feeling

When children check into such a shelter, it’s Ms. Pascoe who asks them to draw and color a series of seven scenarios. She said the pictures help children sort through their feelings, which are often bottled up by the time they arrive at the shelter.

“We encourage them not to keep the secret and tell a trusted adult,” she said.

Ms. Pascoe wrote her doctoral dissertation about the use of drawings to help counsel children who were victims or witnesses of domestic violence. She introduced the program, which is designed to measure trauma and help children process their emotions through, to the Killeen shelter last September.

It’s important that children receive counseling even if they haven’t been physically abused, she said.

“Children who witnessed domestic violence do not show differences from those who were hit themselves,” she said.

During her doctoral studies, Ms. Pascoe evaluated drawings made by children worldwide who had experienced family violence. She said she found children use the same symbols for abuse in their drawings across cultures and languages after being taken through the same process.

For example, a sketch of a family member with large arms is often a sign that the child views that person as emotional or aggressive, she said.

Allowing children to express their feelings is an important factor in releasing the trauma that otherwise could haunt them for the rest of their lives, she said. “It’s an alternative to drilling them with questions,” Ms. Pascoe said.

First, children are encouraged to draw whatever they feel. Ms. Pascoe said that allows children to become comfortable with counselors and enter an expressive mode.

Second, children are asked to draw their families, an exercise that often yields intense emotions, Ms Pascoe said.

In one example, a child draws herself, her brother and grandmother in a bubble while her father and mother are drawn outside the bubble with large arms.

“Inside this circle, the girl feels she has to protect her little brother and grandmother,” she said.

Then they are asked to draw a self-portrait - but at a younger age. The idea is to get a comparison of the child’s life before violence occurred in the family or before the child began to be affected by it. These depictions are usually happier, Ms. Pascoe said.

Next, a child is asked to draw a picture that reflects how they see themselves now - an image that can shed light on a number of emotional problems, she said.

The child then is asked to draw an image of a violent incident. Not surprisingly, Ms. Pascoe said, these drawing can sometimes be shocking. For example, one drawing showed a mother running over the child’s father with a car.

Telltale house

The benign nature of the next drawing allows it to be the most telling of all, she said.

A child is asked to draw a simple house and tree, something that any child can draw with little difficulty, she said. If the child has trouble moving on to this drawing, they may well be highly affected by violence in the family, Ms. Pascoe said.

“If a child has post-traumatic stress syndrome, they will have trouble coming up with house and a tree because what was in their mind in the last question will bleed over in the house and the tree,” Ms. Pascoe said.

Some children include aspects of the previous drawing and some, she said, are not able to focus enough to draw the scene at all.

Ms. Pascoe said the final picture has no relationship to the earlier sketches. She said that allows the child to clear the mind of violence.

“A lot of it is letting them - and teaching them - to be children,” she said.

The support structure continues after the children leave the shelter. Families in Crisis works with the children’s schools to monitor their progress.