Staying Safe
UPDATED November 7, 2007
These pages provide tips to help keep you as safe as possible. Following these suggestions can't guarantee your safety, but could help make you safer. The website www.leavingabuse.com also has a lot of good information on how to safety plan, including a "how to" guide for escaping abusive relationships.
General Guidelines for Leaving an Abusive Relationship
If you're in an emergency and need to get out right away, don't worry about gathering these things. While they're helpful to have, getting out safely should come first.
As you are leaving
General Guidelines for Leaving an Abusive Relationship
- Make a plan for how you are going to leave and where you're going to go. Make a plan for leaving if you have time to prepare. Make another plan for leaving if you have to leave in a hurry.
- Getting a protective order can be an important part of a safety plan. If you get a protective order, though, you should still take other safety planning steps to keep yourself and your children safe. A legal protective order is not always enough to keep you safe. Please go to your state's pages in the Know the Laws tab above for a protective order guide.
- A worker at a domestic violence organization can help you make a plan to leave as safely as you can. Also, Leaving Abuse Safely (www.leavingabuse.com) can help you think of ways to leave safely.
- If you're going to leave secretly, plan ahead and cover your tracks. A domestic violence worker and Leaving Abuse Safely (www.leavingabuse.com) can help you come up with plan.
- You can ask the police to escort you out of the house as you're leaving. You can also ask them to be "on call" while you're leaving.
- Put aside as much emergency money as you can.
- Hide an extra set of car keys in a place you can get to easily.
- Get a bag together with:
- spare car keys;
- your driver's license;
- a list of your credit cards so that you can track any activity on them;
- money;
- phone numbers for friends, relatives, doctors, schools, taxi services, and your local domestic violence organization;
- a change of clothing for you and your children;
- medication that you or your children usually take;
- copies of your children's birth certificates, social security cards, school records and immunizations;
- copies of legal documents for you and your abuser. This may include social security cards, passports, greencards, medical records, insurance information, birth certificates, marriage license, wills, and welfare identification information;
- copies of financial documents for you and your abuser. This may include pay stubs, bank account information, a list of credit cards you hold by yourself or together with your abuser;
- the evidence you've been collecting to show that you've been abused; and
- a few things you want to keep, like photographs, jewelry or other personal items.
If you're in an emergency and need to get out right away, don't worry about gathering these things. While they're helpful to have, getting out safely should come first.
As you are leaving
- As you're leaving, grab the bag you hid, your driver's license, any checkbooks, and credit cards if you can. If there's time, take the originals of documents you might need - like birth certificates, social security cards, legal documents and financial documents.
- If you're in an emergency and need to get out right away, don't worry about gathering these things. While they're helpful to have, getting out safely should come first.
- Create a false trail. Call motels, real estate agencies, and schools in a town at least six hours away from where you plan to go. Ask them questions that will need to be answered by them calling you back. Give them your old phone number.
- Leave when your abuser will least expect it. This will give you more time to get away before your abuser realizes you are gone.