Fanny Ortiz, a mother of five who lives just east of downtown Los Angeles, spent nearly a decade married to a man who controlled her and frequently threatened her. Then, she said, his abuse escalated. “He would physically hit me in the face, throw me on the wall,” she recalled.
Ortiz, 43, eventually left the marriage, taking her children with her. A few years later, she learned that the East Los Angeles Women’s Center offered domestic violence services at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, near her home. Now she goes to the hospital campus for weekly therapy sessions, which she said have helped stop her suicidal thoughts.
“I was afraid to talk,” Ortiz said. “Now I am more open to talk about things that I was holding in.”
[For more on this story by Anna Gorman, go to https://khn.org/news/treating-...s-a-medical-problem/]
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