Iraq Veteran Now Fighting Domestic Violence in Iowa’s Hispanic Community

In evangelizing for the fight against domestic abuse in western Iowa’s growing Hispanic community, Patty Ritchie says she sees herself as something of a “Selena of advocacy” — a reference to the late and wildly popular Latina singer whose work crossed over to the white community.

Extending the Selena analogy, Ritchie, a counselor/advocate with the Domestic/Sexual Assault Outreach Center serving Carroll and Crawford counties, says a primary reason she goes to work each day is to prevent women from falling prey to Selena’s fate, death at the hands of violence.

This starts with building respect for western Iowa’s Hispanics from the inside, says Ritchie.

“We don’t need to be the dishwashers,” Ritchie said. “We don’t need to be the secretary getting the coffee. We don’t need to be the maid.”

Joyce DeHaan, executive director of Fort Dodge-based D/SAOC, made it a priority to hire a Latina when the organization started services earlier this year in west-central Iowa.

“We have a growing population of Hispanic persons in our area,” DeHaan said.  “It is only possible to reach out to Spanish-speaking people if we have staff who speak their language and understand their culture.  Domestic violence happens in all cultures.  One in four women experience domestic violence in their life-time.  We believe that the occurrence of domestic violence among Latina women is similar to those statistics.  However, they face additional barriers to getting safe and obtaining services.  Some lack experience in the majority culture, face language barriers, lack financial resources and may be isolated from the majority community.  Therefore, it is essential that we have staff who speak their language and understand their culture.”

DeHaan said it is vital for the center to get a foothold in Denison’s Hispanic community.

“A lot of it in the Latin community is they don’t know who to trust,” Ritchie said. “I like to think I’m the Selena of advocacy.”

Ritchie said her outspoken views, which emerged in an at-times-confrontational interview, are the result of passion for the two causes she sees as her life’s calling: domestic violence and the Latino community.

“It’s hard for me to be an outspoken Latina,” Ritchie said. “But my own perspective is that you need to teach empowerment.”

Ritchie, 34, married with three children and living on a Westside farm, grew up in Mira Loma, Calif., in the outskirts of Riverside. While Ritchie said she came of age in a middle-class area, her school was located in a barrio (Hispanic ghetto).

She stayed proud and focused as a teenager but said she saw many others fall prey to drugs, poverty and despair.

Her husband, Phillip Ritchie, a sergeant in the U.S. Army who grew up in England, told Ritchie he wanted to move to land in Iowa owned by his stepfather, Marvin Gottsch, in large part to raise children in an environment that is far safer than parts of the world the couple have seen.

“My community (Westside) has been very well receiving of my family,” Ritchie said.

After moving to Westside in 2004, Ritchie ran her own translation business, worked for local schools in that area and served as a jailer/interpreter with the Crawford County Sheriff’s Office.

Ritchie’s family is generations deep in the California area, and she grew up with English as the primary language in the home. So she gets a little irritated when people compliment her English.

Her parents, George Florez and Martha Florez DeLong, had strong work ethics. George worked as a vendor and even had a gig digging ditches for a time to raise Patty and her two brothers, Nathan and George Florez Jr.

After high school, Ritchie enlisted in the U.S. Army, where she saw service in both Iraq and Somalia.

In the early days of the war in Iraq, Ritchie  worked with a unit that sought to confiscate weapons from hostiles.

But some of her most challenging moments came in 1993 in Somalia, where the military had to deal with “children using weapons at us,” she said.

At one point, a Somali tossed a grenade near her. It didn’t detonate because the pin wasn’t pulled, she said.

“There’s a reason why I’m still here,” Ritchie said.

With D/SAOC, Ritchie spends much of time doing outreach in the Latin community, primarily Denison. But she also works with white victims (she insists on calling her clients “survivors” and repeatedly scolded a reporter for using the term “victim”).

Ritchie said the Latin community isn’t any more inclined toward domestic abuse than the white world — that violence against women and children cuts across racial and economic lines.

“It’s the same,” she said.

But Latin women often face barriers today that white women don’t when it comes to dealing with abuse.

There is the obvious language issue. Many Latinas don’t know where to go for support — and they are afraid to seek help for fear of unintended reprisals against their residency status.

“Here in the Latin community they want to keep quiet because they’re afraid of being deported,” Ritchie said.

Ritchie said the process of reporting violence against women and children isn’t going to trigger an Immigration and Naturalization Service raid.

There are ways to root out violence in the homes of Hispanic U.S. citizens and legal residents as well for those who are here without the proper papers, she said.

Ritchie can be reached through D/SAOC at (712) 792-6722.