#Salon workers to get domestic violence training: new law

The salon is at the heart of many communities, so it only makes sense that it should also be a lifeline.

Starting Saturday, beauty professionals in Tennessee will be officially on the lookout for signs that their clients may be victims of domestic abuse.

As part of a new law passed this summer, hairstylists and barbers will now be required to undergo free training in how to identify sufferers of domestic violence, and where to send them for help.

Experts say the community salon chair is a place where many are inclined to open up about their personal lives, and that hair specialists “have a unique position to help identify domestic violence and assist victims,” according to the state’s cosmetology board director.

“We’re like a therapist for our clients,” Chaka Jackson, a 20-year veteran of the beauty industry, told News4 WSMV Nashville. “So, this would help us recognize signs. As far as physical or what a person may say and with that, it’ll help us guide that person as to what’s the next proper steps for that person to take who is in that type of situation.”

Those signs vary, but can include many apparent to a hair dresser, such as bruising and sudden or unusual hair loss.

Stylist and small-business owner Betsy Briggs Cathcart told the Pulitzer Center earlier this year that she’d recently seen a case of thinning hair that didn’t look like alopecia. It was something much worse.

“What I realized through the training is that I think her husband was pulling her hair from the back, pulling it out from the abuse,” she said.

The law goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2022, following a successful initiative first launched in 2017 by veteran Nashville stylist — and survivor of abuse — Susanne Post. She worked with the YWCA Nashville & Middle Tennessee, which runs the region’s largest women’s emergency shelter and has been engaged in anti-domestic violence education for more than four decades.

Legislation to require the course came to a head thanks to state lawmakers, commerce agency officials and the state Board of Cosmetology and Barber Examiners.

“Tennessee’s beauty professionals are caring, compassionate individuals who are committed to ensuring the health and safety of all their customers, but may not know how to respond when confronted with domestic violence,” said board executive director Roxana Gumucio in a statement made on July 27, when the bill was passed.

Gumucio added, “Most domestic violence victims will not report abuse to law enforcement, but they will tell someone with whom they have a long-standing relationship, such as a cosmetologist or barber.”

Cathcart’s training also began years before the legislation was introduced. She sought help from Shear Haven when she “learned that [stylists] are one of the people that the abusers will let the victim still come to,” she said.

Post urged her colleagues to be vigilant this way, not only about physical injury, but the ways in which abusers wield power psychologically.

“It might be that their partner comes with them to every appointment,” she said. “Or is always waiting in the car. Or maybe someone is very uncomfortable about making a change because they’re afraid of what their partner might think.”

The anti-domestic violence policy will see that all 50,000 of the state’s licensed beauty professionals will have the resources and wherewithal to assist victims. The free training is currently being offered through Barbicide, an international disinfectant maker ubiquitous in salons and barbershops — and entails a 20-minute video presentation on the dynamics of intimate partner abuse, followed by a short quiz. Successful completion is awarded with a certificate.

The bill had been stalled since last year over finances as lawmakers wanted the training to be free and virtual — and Post wouldn’t figure out how to do that until the pandemic forced education online: “We hadn’t embraced Zoom yet!”