by Susan Campbell (Courant Column)
And another thing about paid sick days …
She’d spent more than a year planning her escape from her abusive boyfriend.
While Paula Broderick planned, her boyfriend progressed from beating her to threatening to hurt her then-14-year-old daughter — all this while he stalked both of them.
She arranged to move her daughter out of state and out of harm’s way. That accomplished, Broderick began packing a bag.
She thought she was being discreet, but her abuser saw the bag, and realized there was a taxi outside waiting for her. The boyfriend locked the bedroom door, threw Broderick against the wall. He punched and choked her. He threatened to burn her with cigarettes. He made her strip. He raped her.
Before all this, Broderick had tried to call the police. He’d ripped the phone from the wall and threatened to strangle her and her daughter. She’d even gone to the police to tell them she feared for her life. They dismissed her. This was 1987. The so-called Tracey Thurman Law, which changed the way we view domestic violence in Connecticut, was still new.
When the boyfriend finally left the apartment, came back and left two more times, she quickly dressed and called a crisis hotline at the then-Prudence Crandall Center for Women. A soft-voiced counselor told her to get out and the counselor would take her to a safe house.
Broderick finished the packing she’d started three days earlier, and ran out. Standing on the street corner waiting for a bus, she also waited — fearfully — for her boyfriend to come home, and punish her more.
He never showed, but the bus did. The counselor met her, and got her settled into a safe house. As it turns out, the boyfriend had a previous violation for abusing another girlfriend. Broderick took out a restraining order, and he, fearful of the law, left her alone.
Recovering from a rape with a ruptured eardrum and bruises ringing her neck, she called her clerical job to take time off. A sick day meant no pay, but she had healing to do. She called every day until the following week, when her boss said she’d been replaced. At a time when Broderick was broke. She needed money to start a new life, but she was able to collect unemployment until she found another job, and saved to move somewhere where she’d be safe, and away from her abuser.
State legislators are debating a host of domestic violence bills this session, but there’s another bill that could have a far-reaching impact on victims of domestic violence.
When victims miss work to recover or seek protection from domestic violence, they often lose pay. At a time when victims are particularly vulnerable, they lack paid sick days.
A bill before Connecticut legislators would give up to five accrued paid sick days to workers at companies with more than 50 employees. The days could be used to recover from an illness, care for a sick child or seek services related to domestic violence.
Although some opponents say paid sick days are ideal — roughly 44 percent of the state’s workers in the private sector don’t have them — they worry that the Great Recession is not the right time to offer them.
The lack of paid sick days most acutely affects women, who are often a family’s primary caregiver. And more women than men are victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. When would be the right time? For how long should workers without paid sick days — often the lowest-paid employees in the workforce — choose between health and meeting their bills?
The long-term effect of offering paid sick days is a more contented workforce and, says Broderick, now the prevention education coordinator for the Sexual Assault Crisis Center for YWCA New Britain, a loyal one. “When you treat people with dignity and respect, they’re going to give you more effort, not less,” she said.
•Courant staff writer and columnist Susan Campbell can be reached at scampbell@courant.com.