Raising domestic violence awareness through InVEST

Reporter Nicole Gabe

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. More than 1,600 domestic violence reports were made in Collier County alone in 2022, and those were the incidents that were reported.

The Shelter for Abused Women and Children offers several resources to help victims.

The moment Jacquie Lopez picks up the phone, the game begins. She’s part of the Shelter for Abused Women and Children’s Intimate Violence enhanced service team, also known as an INVEST advocate.

“We get all of Collier County’s domestic police reports daily,” said Lopez.

Lopez reads 20 to 25 reports each of those days, scanning for specific words and looking for domestic violence victims, women or men. Then, she will contact the victim through the INVEST text app or by calling through a safe line.

“If they say, ‘No, I’m not safe,’ or ‘Yes, I am,’ and their abuser is next to them, I have to be very careful about what I’m about to say next,” said Lopez.

Lopez credits her background in law enforcement for staying calm and identifying warning signs.

“It’s really helpful that, with my background in law enforcement, I’m able to read in between them, so they use certain verbiage that is like ‘help me’ without saying help me,” said Lopez. “I make sure that I paced myself, I ensure their safety is priority.”

Before the shelter, Lopez was a police officer at a local Southwest Florida agency, but she explained how the INVEST program gives her a bigger purpose.

“I would leave cases that night, go home, and not know what was happening once that door closed, and so I needed to do more. I no longer have to write the reports. I get to read them,” said Lopez.

Linda Oberhaus, the president and CEO of The Shelter, calls it a life-saving program.

“We know, for example, if a woman is strangled, if she’s battered while pregnant, if she’s threatened with a weapon, if he says he’s gonna kill her. In many cases, these are the women that are being killed in these relationships, and so when we see those things identified in a police report, that’s when we make immediate contact with the victim,” said Oberhaus.

Oberhaus said the goal is to educate victims on resources and get them out of a dangerous situation.

“It’s really the shelter that’s going to, you know, has the ability to save their life,” said Oberhaus.

And Lopez does just that. Over the past six months, she said she’s helped seven people leave abusive situations, one she said didn’t even know about the shelter until the call.

“The fact that they were able to get help from us made it so much more for them to realize that there’s organizations in the community that are able to help them and want to help them,” said Oberhaus.

It’s a job Lopez calls rewarding and necessary.

“I’m able to help them in a way that they’ve never thought help was even available,” said Lopez.