One hundred and one Florida women died of it in the first six months of 2007.

Domestic violence.

About forty-five of the women fleeing it and sixty-five of their children in central Florida end up in a shelter for safety. One Orlando shelter is building a children’s after-care center, a school and a daycare center.

The first step to safety may be getting to a shelter. (If an abuser discovers their location and comes, he or she faces stiff legal penalties.) Registration can be anonymous.

Domestic violence knows no socioeconomic boundaries. A shelter’s CEO describes how the husband of a board president of a girl’s school, a wealthy woman, and her daughter were murdered by the woman’s husband.

Read more in this Orlando Sentinel article: Sheltering women in crisis.