Abuse hotlines saw a massive spike in calls after the Rob Porter scandal

In the days since Americans first glimpsed a photo of Colbie Holderness with a black eye, allegedly from her then-husband and former White House aide Rob Porter, more and more people have sought help for domestic abuse. The nation’s biggest domestic violence hotline has watched its daily traffic spike by 33 percent.

“We’re seeing about 150 to 200 more contacts per day,” said Katie Ray-Jones, CEO of the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “We’re hearing a lot that women are reaching out and hearing the stories, and saying, ‘I thought I was alone.’”

Besides Holderness’s story, allegations from Porter’s other ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend also surfaced in recent weeks, embroiling the White House in scandal and forcing Porter’s resignation.

Whenever domestic violence shows up in the national headlines, the Hotline usually gets deluged with calls, online chat messages, and text messages as survivors suddenly understand that they may be in abusive relationships and need to get out. Established in 1994, the 24-hour, confidential resource offers survivors of domestic abuse — and the people who are concerned about them — a chance to talk through their situations and plan for the future with trained staff, and connects them to resources like shelters. The Austin, Texas-based Hotline generally answers up to 1,300 calls and messages on any given weekday.

But the revelation that President Donald Trump’s staff secretary, Rob Porter, had been accused of domestic abuse by three exes has also left the Hotline scrambling to answer its surging calls and messages. The nonprofit organization just doesn’t have the financial resources to hire and train more staffers, Ray-Jones said. Its approximately 140 specialists go through 60 hours of training in order to help people over the Hotline.

“We end up in a situation where people are experiencing longer wait times, longer hold times to be able to connect with either a digital chat or a text message,” Ray-Jones explained. “Our answer rate decreases. We just don’t have the staff resources to be able to answer all the volume coming in.”

Last year, more than 95,000 contacts had to go unanswered, a situation she called “heartbreaking.” And Ray-Jones doesn’t think the demand for the Hotline’s services will drop off anytime soon: Whenever domestic violence gets national attention, she said, more people reach out to the Hotline — and its traffic never quite falls back to its previous levels.

“It becomes the new normal for us,” she said.

The Hotline also isn’t the only domestic violence organization feeling the effect of the Porter allegations. While several smaller, regional hotlines told VICE News they hadn’t seen a spike, the New York-based Safe Horizon saw a 16 percent increase in its call volume last week, compared to the same time period in February 2017.

“Survivors are always scanning the environment to figure out if it’s safe to seek assistance or not, and I think we’ve seen with the MeToo movement, that when many survivors speak out, it does empower others,” Liz Roberts said. However, she pointed out that the hotline’s increased call volume might be traced partly to New York City’s new domestic abuse awareness campaign, which happened to launch the same week the allegations against Porter became public.

Still, both Ray-Jones and Roberts worry that domestic violence just isn’t as much of a priority for the Trump administration. They’ve failed to name a White House adviser for the DOJ’s Office of Violence Against women, a position created by the Obama administration to keep the White House informed about sexual assault and domestic violence issues. In his 2018 budget analysis, Trump also weighed slashing the budget for federal programs that help sexual assault and domestic violence survivors.

Plus, top White House officials reportedly knew that Porter’s ex-wives had accused him of abuse, yet kept him employed in the key post anyway. Even after the scandal broke, President Trump told reporters of Porter, “We hope he has a wonderful career, and hopefully he will have a great career ahead of him.”

“As you probably know, he says he’s innocent,” Trump added. Porter has denied all abuse allegations.

In an email, Roberts told VICE News, “When we hear statements defending alleged offenders or discrediting survivors like those we have heard from the White House in the past week‎, this emboldens abusers, and can increase the danger to our clients.”