Client Portrait

In celebration of WIN’s 25th anniversary and as a way to familiarize our new e-readers with the WIN Family, we could think of no better choice than to feature former client Rosanne Valeri in our first client profile.

In 1983, Rosanne fled an abusive relationship, taking her young daughter. They were one of the first families to enter a WIN shelter and their lives changed dramatically as a result.

At the age of three, Rosanne was adopted from an Italian orphanage and brought to New York City. Rosanne remembers her childhood as being fairly normal. Her early memories are of growing up in the city, going to Catholic school, playing with her friends and being very close to her adopted mother. Sadly, when Rosanne was just sixteen her mother became ill and Rosanne left school to care for her. After her mother’s death, Rosanne was left alone with minimal family support.

For a time, Rosanne lived with her best friend’s family and was beginning to feel some sense of security when tragically, her friend died in a car accident. It wasn’t long before she was asked to leave. Rosanne worked hard in many types of jobs but with no high school diploma, few resources, and no one to depend on, she quickly started a relationship with a man and gave birth to her daughter. The relationship was far from ideal and became more abusive and violent as time went on.

Rosanne explained, “He started to hang around the wrong people, started to sell drugs and do drugs, never kept a job, always had schemes and dreams. The crazier his life got, the angrier he became and took it out on me.” For a number of years, Rosanne was beaten and raped daily and though she lived in fear, she believed, as so many battered women do, that it might get better and that she couldn’t survive on her own.

After an especially violent altercation, Rosanne’s husband left with the rent money and Rosanne soon learned that she and her daughter had been evicted and their belongings were being held by the landlord. “My three year old and I had nothing but the clothes on our backs. They said, ‘Give us the rent and we’ll give you your stuff back.’ I was beyond terrified. I felt total despair, total emptiness.” Rosanne remembers that it was raining and sleeting. In her worst moment, a man who operated a local newsstand took Rosanne and her daughter to a diner, bought them a meal and took them to a shelter he had heard of at St. Mary’s Church on 39th St. That shelter, Mission House, was operated by Women In Need.

The room assigned to Rosanne and her daughter was bright and clean, and Rosanne began to feel a sense of freedom she had not experienced in a long time. She was soon offered a job as a Residential Coordinator at Mission House, and eventually qualified for public housing assistance. She rented her own apartment and has been on her own ever since.

Rosanne firmly believes that Women In Need saved her life and helped her to create a stable and loving home for her daughter. Rosanne now says, “Twenty-four years! My daughter doesn’t remember much about being in the shelter, and she is grown into a wonderful young woman and is currently starting a graduate program in psychology. I have a lot to be thankful for – and Women In Need is at the top of the list.”

Rosanne with her daughter in 1983

Rosanne (right) and her daughter in 2008 at our dinner gala.