Melanie knows Becky’s horrific story well, although you’d never know it by meeting her now. A third-generation abuse victim and in a third abusive relationship of her own, she’d had enough of her lifetime of making bad choices in partners. After an emergency stay in a YWCA shelter in Hawaii, she fled to San Diego with her three children.

At Casa de Paz, the local YWCA shelter, she knew she was safe at last. “All I wanted to do was lie down and cry,” she recalls.

But once she entered the YWCA-run Becky’s House program, lying down and crying was not an option, says Isabel, the Becky’s House program manager. Residents are required to have restraining orders against their violent partners, and an income — 30 per cent of which goes toward rent. They also begin an intensive counseling program designed to help them plan new lives, including education and work.

“I worked very hard to get here, but I had no idea there were so many opportunities for me,” Melanie says. “I knew I wanted to go to school so I got a GED.” Then, drawing on her long-standing interest in nursing, she enrolled in a vocational nursing program and joined the Navy Reserve.

The extra income was nice, she acknowledges, but being suddenly called to service aboard the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier last year threw a wrench in her carefully laid plans. Her 15-hour workdays aboard ship gave her medical experiences she would never have on land — including wound care and administering medications — and a glowing recommendation from her superior officer.

Articulate, with a glowing smile, Melanie anticipates taking the state exam for vocational nursing this month. Although she studies rigorously, her most pressing worry is finding affordable housing when she leaves Becky’s House in July. She has custody of her oldest and youngest children, 14 and 4, but was forced to relinquish her 9-year-old daughter to the child’s father after the youngster witnessed Melanie’s third husband hitting her.

Still, the woman described as “a poster child for Becky’s House” by the YWCA’s Judy Case DiPasquale believes her future is bright.

“I’m so happy I want to jump,” Melanie says now. “I’m free to make choices about what I really want to do.”

— Joanne Gribble