Centre Safe 24-Hour Hotline: 814-234-5050
Jennifer Pencek wanted to be a journalist from the time she joined her school’s newspaper club in fifth grade. But while she made that dream a reality after college, she never felt like she’d fully found her calling.
“I love writing. I still do freelance writing,” she says, noting that being a reporter helped her “develop a very thick skin.”
“I just think once I was in it, I just didn’t quite have that feeling like, ‘OK, this is it, I’m home.’”
Pencek transitioned out of daily journalism and into a marketing position at Penn State’s Center for the Performing Arts. From there, she spent seven years as the programming coordinator at the university’s Gender Equity Center.
“That’s what I was trying to find,” she says.
“The way I got from journalism to that area is really just volunteer work in college [at the University of Connecticut]. And I just never thought that could be what I’m meant to do. I thought, ‘Well, I chose journalism and you can’t deviate off course.’ But the biggest lesson I’ve learned is you can absolutely deviate. It doesn’t mean you’re even going off course; it just means you’re getting on the course that you’re supposed to be on.”
That course for Pencek most recently included two years as director of the Office for the Prevention of Interpersonal Violence at Juniata College. The journey now has led her to Centre Safe; she became the organization’s executive director in November, succeeding Anne Ard, who retired after twenty-five years.
Founded in 1975 as the Centre County Women’s Resource Center, the organization changed its name to Centre Safe in 2018 to better reflect its work with all survivors of stalking, and domestic and sexual violence. The nonprofit has an administrative office and shelter in State College and two sites in Bellefonte: a counseling and legal advocacy office, and the Child Access Center for monitored custody exchanges and supervised visitations.
Getting and keeping her “amazing” team fully staffed (twenty to thirty people) in today’s changing work climate is one of her first challenges, Pencek says.
Volunteers also play a key role, including with the organization’s twenty-four-hour hotline (a training class is offered).
A United Way of Centre County partner agency, Centre Safe is funded by more than thirty grants along with private donations and core fundraisers.
Pencek says the course she navigated to Centre Safe has helped prepare her for this new role.
“I really do think my journalism background, marketing, having a tough skin … all of those skill sets have definitely helped me here now.”
Here is more from our conversation:
Centre Safe provided domestic violence and sexual assault services to about 1,100 people in fiscal year 2020-21. Are domestic violence and sexual assault still underreported?
Pencek: They’re still vastly underreported crimes for a lot of reasons. We do find that sometimes people will come to a resource like Centre Safe, but they don’t necessarily want to report, whether it’s to police, whether it’s to their college or university. Sometimes they just want information on resources or they want to step into counseling.
We follow more of an empowerment model; we try to really let a victim or survivor make decisions that they feel are right for themselves. So, others might say, “If this were to happen to me I would do X, Y, and Z.” But we never know what we would do unless we’re in that situation.
This is a geographically large county with a lot of rural areas. What challenges does that present in reaching people?
Pencek: We’re trying to be very intentional, especially with our rural outreach, to just get the word out there more, whether it’s through billboards that are now going to be across Centre County that will advertise our services, to doing some different kinds of outreach initiatives [including radio, TV, and print].
We’re really just trying to build relationships. As long as it’s in Centre County, we’re there. All people have to do is call and ask me. It could be sending materials, or we can do a school activity for you, or community events. We’re really trying especially to get our hotline out there in the rural communities.
When you’re in a rural community, it’s not that there’s more barriers, but there’s different barriers. Is there access to transportation? They may be worried that “I don’t have a car” or “my abuser has access to all my cash, my credit cards, my car keys.” We can assist people with transportation and all of those needs.
What do you do in schools?
Pencek: All schools have to do is call us or email us and say, “I’d like you to come in and talk with our students about consent or talk about even just healthy relationships.” Even for little kids, we can do programs with puppets, so it’s very age-appropriate. But it’s starting at a young age to teach about boundaries, and everyone has a right to those boundaries.
Even if school districts or other entities are working on policies, we can also consult with people and let them know if they’re heading in the right direction, or provide policy support.
Is there a typical picture of what you see here in terms of domestic violence?
Pencek: There seems to be no typical case or no typical day. But with all domestic violence, dating violence, any kind of abuse, there tends to be a pattern. And there tends to be something called the power and control wheel. If you think of any relationship, it starts in the honeymoon phase. For the most part, you don’t start dating someone who’s just a big jerk, right? There’s something that draws you to that person.
But then in situations where it’s getting kind of toxic and abusive, you’ll notice it goes from the honeymoon phase to some sort of tension building. Maybe that’s where the comments are like, “Are you really going to wear that?” or little bits of control that just kind of nip at you, maybe pressure to share passwords. And then it tends to go into some sort of climactic event. It could be the first time it gets physical, or there’s more threats; something happens. That’s the point where some people who aren’t involved think, “Well, I would leave right then and there.”
But before you know it, you’re back in the honeymoon phase where [the abuser] says “I’m sorry. You made me do this. I only do this because I love you. I grew up in a bad way, so it’s not my fault. Give me a chance, give me a chance, give me a chance.” And when you’re the victim, you’re almost stuck in this cyclone. You’re spinning, spinning, spinning, and you’re just so confused. And you don’t know what to do. And what happens is they fall in the trap set by the abuser, the brainwashing that an abuser will use. And it’s not always so quick. It can be very subtle and over time.
People have a very big misperception that only a certain population of people are impacted by this, that it must just be people with low self-esteem, or it must just be people who are low-income. But with domestic violence, with all these issues, we say it time and time again: it impacts everyone. We work with clients who financially are really well off and clients who don’t have a lot of financial resources; clients who have every degree under the sun, clients who didn’t graduate high school. It really runs the gamut. There’s not one classic kind of victim, but there is kind of a constant feeling of shame because no one wants to be in this situation.
When should somebody reach out to you?
Pencek: I think it’s honestly whenever they feel ready. And it doesn’t mean that it’s not scary, or it’s not nerve-wracking, or you’re doubting is this the right choice to make. And because we follow an empowerment model, we’re not trying to force decisions on anyone or saying, “You have to go get this protection order, you have to come stay in the shelter, you have to go into counseling.” It is really helping them navigate an incredibly scary, difficult situation.
Sometimes we might get calls from someone who’s like, “I think my daughter or my son is in this situation, what can I do?” We can’t provide services for a victim through a third party. But we can provide support for their loved ones, whether it might be counseling, or just providing some resources that might be helpful for them. Or, here’s how you can navigate difficult conversations.
Sometimes people try tough love, and tough love, frankly, doesn’t really work. That’s going to isolate the person even more. So, if you say, “If you stay with this person, I’m cutting it off with you,” that might feel like you’re setting a boundary. But sometimes what that does is, it feeds right into what the abuser wants because they think, “Now they’re not going to be able to run to their parents, or to that friend.” So, we try to help people have healthy conversations but let them know we have to work with the person directly.
The first step is just to pick up the phone and call the confidential hotline. There’s always a trained advocate. It’s staffed 24/7 with really fantastic volunteers. T&GMark Brackenbury is a former editor of Town&Gown.
