Agape Garcia: Domestic Violence Follows People to Work

Every employee assistance program Agape Garcia has come across has something for alcohol problems, gambling, and pornography addiction. She has yet to find one with resources for the employee walking into work from a violent home. That gap is what she is trying to close, and California's SB 553 is the lever she is using.

Agape Garcia is the founder of Confronting Domestic Violence, a nonprofit built around getting real resources to people in real time, including relocation assistance when a family has a safe place to go and no way of getting there. Her background is unusual for this field: alongside advocacy she has worked in human resources and as a corporate security consultant specializing in access control, and she has volunteered for over a decade as a pro bono advisor to California legislators, identifying loopholes and reporting them to the people who write the fixes. Her own story is a double attempted homicide about twenty years ago while eight months pregnant and far from home, and then, years later, a car accident she was not expected to survive. The organization was decided on from an ICU bed.

She and Lisa start with why resources are so hard to find when your emotions are running ahead of your logic, and she describes the more than eight hundred calls it took her, most of them producing another number, some of them disconnected. Her shortcut now: find a domestic violence advocate, and if your local resource center cannot point you to one, ask the attorney general's office. They cover the difference between financial abuse and economic abuse, and why minimizing shows up in almost every group room, including from people describing extraordinary things.

The second half is the workplace. Agape explains what SB 553 requires, that it goes beyond a written policy into drills, communication plans, and knowing how to respond before emergency services arrive, and that Cal/OSHA enforces it. She describes the two industries she says are exempt because they already have their own standards, why an inspector showing up for any other reason will still ask for the plan, and what she tells employers about using the training they already have rather than starting over. For anyone listening who is not in HR, she gives the sentence to say to your own HR rep, and the two ways to reach her organization directly, one of which is a confidential form and the other a searchable directory by zip code.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why finding resources, not deciding to leave, is often where people get stuck
• The difference between financial abuse and economic abuse, and how each one works
• How to find a domestic violence advocate when the local search comes up empty
• Why minimizing is nearly universal, and how status adds shame instead of protection
• What SB 553 requires of California employers, and who enforces it
• Why work is often the safest place a target has, and what that means for employers
• How to ask your own HR department whether a plan exists
• Two ways to get help directly, including a directory searchable by zip code

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Why finding resources is where people get stuck
3:00 Financial abuse and economic abuse are not the same thing
5:00 Her own story, and the calls it took to find help
7:00 Finding a domestic violence advocate, and who to ask
8:00 Mine isn't that bad: minimizing in a group room
13:00 Shame, status, and why targets are chosen for their strengths
17:00 Work as the safe place, and what COVID took away
19:00 How abuse spills into the workplace
21:00 SB 553: what California employers now have to have
31:00 Asking your own employer, and how to get help directly

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Confronting Domestic Violence: https://confrontingdomesticviolence.org/
🔗 Confronting Domestic Violence professional services and SB 553 training: https://confrontingdomesticviolence.org/professional-services/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.