SURVIVOR TURN CHAMPION

Amelia Lancaster a domestic abuse survivor becomes a social worker and volunteer to help those less privileged. 

By Kendall Spencer Eugene, Oregon 

Amelia (Amy) Lancaster sat on her red suede couch a look of thoughtful consideration on her face in Springfield, Oregon. Her living room was an eclectic mix of Japanese art and figurines, Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise and fantasy novels. She was decompressing after a long day volunteer work in Lane County. The organizations and agencies she has volunteered for run the gamut. She interned at Willamalane Park and Recreation District for an after-school program. She interned at Volunteers in Medicine to help low income families and individuals access health-care services. But, she recalls one moment where she realized the value of her work. 

“I remember interning at one pace a few years ago,” she slowly took the time to pick her words carefully. “A man had walked into the front office and picked up one of the forms and sat down to fill it out. He kept staring at it and staring at it until thirty minutes had passed by without anybody from the office coming to help him. I had finished some paperwork and saw him still sitting there staring at that form. I came up to him and asked if he needed help.” She paused for a moment “He said yes and asked why the form was asking for his name.” 

It was only one story, but it speaks volumes about what Lancaster is doing for her community. She also offers those she serves something most volunteers can’t: empathy because she was someone who needed similar assistance, and she is a victim of domestic abuse.  

“I wanted to give back to the community I came from. The least I can do is help, ” Lancaster said about her volunteer work. 

Lancaster was born in Turtle Lake, North Dakota, the youngest six. She was the daughter of Karen and Bernie Jans and born into poverty. Both of her parents had disabilities, and the state believed them to be unfit parents because of their disabilities and poverty. Lancaster was taken away from her parents at the age of fours along with two of her other siblings . She was only returned to her mother’s custody after three years of struggle. She relied heavily on welfare to provide for her family. 

Her early childhood was defined by this trauma compounded by Lancaster’s mother using her as her own personal psychologist. “She told me everything that happened in her life,” Lancaster recalled. But, her mother served a prominent influence on her values. “She had strong Christian values and we attended every church we could,” she said. 

While her mother was an influence on the younger Lancaster, school and her extended family had a overwhelming negative influence on her. Her peers at school constantly bullied her for being poor 

and overweight. Her isolation grew  until she turned 19 years old she left North Dakota. Lancaster fled for the sun-dappled hills of Southern California to elope with her ex-husband. 

Her time in California was a tumultuous. She became pregnant in November of 2001 soon after arriving in the state. Her husband regularly beat her. “By January Long Beach Memorial Medical Center knew me be name because of how many times he had pushed me, hit me, shoved me on my stomach,”  Lancaster said. Yet, she would not leave him. “I loved him and was determined to make it work. I couldn’t fail at this because my family was determined I was nothing but a failure. So, if I failed at this.”  Lancaster’s husband was charged with attempted rape of a minor and put in prison.  

Life was getting back on track for Lancaster in Long Beach, California. The nightmare of a first marriage was coming to an end with her husband now in prison. She had a roof over her head that she could call her own. The threat of violence no longer hung over it. 

“I began realizing that life is good at this time,” Lancaster says of the brief few months of freedom from her abusive husband. 

The phone rang as she stumbled into her house, and she went to answer it. The voice on the other end of the line was her ex-husbands. He was the man who sent her to the hospital so many times the staff knew her on a first-name basis She had lied to herself and said her ex-husband loved her, and she loved him. It didn’t matter how he abused her. Their love was “real.” Those months away had dispelled those lies. She worked up her courage and confronted her abuser. Silence echoed through the line before he responded, “It took you this damn long to figure it out.” 

Lancaster is not the only woman to have told herself lies like that. Lancaster began another relationship soon after but this too had become abusive. Her realization that she was a victim of domestic abuse and her only option was to flee.. 

She only had a few options available to her. She could return to her mother in North Dakota, or she could head up to Oregon and stay with extended family and start afresh once more. She chose to move to Oregon. 

She fled with nothing but a few suitcases full of clothes and her then four-year-old daughter rebuilt her life in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Here she met her current husband Arthur Lancaster. “You could tell she was escaping from something,” recalls Arthur after she had moved into his small two-bedroom apartment. 

Her move to Oregon proved to be the turning point for Amy and where she began to find her true calling in life. She began going to Lane Community College (LCC) where she went through the LCC’s Women in Transition program. “I was going through LCC’s women in transition program, and we were doing presentations. My presentation was on all the resources and services available to help people in need,” Lancaster. She began reaching out in her community to volunteer her time to help those in need. 

Lancaster enrolled in the University of Oregon’s college of education and got into an exclusive program offered for a bachelor's degree in health and human services. Her experience and trauma has given a unique empathy for those she helps while volunteering. Lancaster is now interning at Catholic Community Services for their G Street Oasis Program helping the homeless in Springfield have a safe place off the streets. Her volunteer work is a natural outgrowth of her privilege and experiences as a domestic abuse survivor and growing up in the social welfare system. “I’m in a position of privilege to help other that went through the same experiences as me,” she said.