MADISON – There’s a sense of expectation in the air for Beth Crowe, even though, for now, her office is in a quiet, recently renovated Victorian home. Most of the time, she is working there by herself – except when all the volunteers show up to put shelf paper in the kitchen, or put away dishes, or drop off furniture, toys or handmade curtains.

But by early January, Crowe, who is director of the Somerset Shelter, hopes to fling the doors open and provide safety and sanctuary for women and children who are fleeing domestic violence.

The first shelter already is filling with beds and appliances and furniture, even art on the walls. Everything, right down to the box of toys in the playroom – and including the home itself – has been donated. It looks like a normal household, except for the panic buttons and the security system.

This is the first shelter in Somerset County, which has a serious domestic violence problem, Crowe said this week. Somerset County is the eighth-ranked county in population, she said, yet has a domestic violence incident rate 9.3 percent higher than the rest of the state.

“That’s a terrifying figure,” Crowe said.

The location of the shelter is confidential for safety reasons. With its four bedrooms, the shelter can sleep 15 people, women and children only. Men with domestic violence issues would be housed in a motel. Clients can stay a maximum of 40 days at the shelter

Dana Hamilton, the community resource officer for the Somerset County Sheriff’s Department who serves on the County’s Domestic Violence Task Force, said this week that of 11 assaults that her department covered in August, eight were domestic assaults. “And that doesn’t count assaults that the state police and the four police departments handled,” Hamilton said.

“The county’s population is depressed, poor and isolated,” she added. “It has everything going against it.”

Abused women are many times unaware of the assistance out there, explained Crowe. When the Family Violence Project in Skowhegan obtained a grant in 2003 for community outreach education, the number of calls for help increased by 45 percent.

“Just because they knew there was someone to call, they sought help,” Crowe said.

Area people are just now coming to grips with the depth of the problem, she said.

“People don’t want to acknowledge that this is in their town, that abuse is happening next door,” she said. “In some families, abuse is generational, and there is the attitude ‘Well, that’s just the way it is.'”

Crowe said that “a staggering 47 percent of female-headed families with children under 18 are living in poverty. It is no wonder that battered women think twice about leaving their abusers and trying to support themselves and their children.”

Other statistics for Somerset County are just as frightening. In 2004, up to September, the Skowhegan office of the Family Violence Project received 2,607 calls for help. Between 1990 and 2003, 70 Maine women were killed as a result of domestic violence – five in Somerset County in the past nine years.

Crowe’s salary and the day-to-day operational costs of the nine-room facility will come out of a $142,600 federal grant from the Violence Against Women Act provided to the Family Violence Project of Somerset County.

Looking around the bright, airy home, Crowe said, “We will make a difference here. People will come to be safe and start in a new direction. We can offer them hope.”

The shelter continues to seek donations of cash and items. Some of the needs are children’s videos, coloring books and crayons, toys, games, telephone calling cards, grocery store gift cards, twin sheets and pillow cases, disposable diapers and wipes, towels, pillows and alarm clocks. Groups can also sponsor cable television for one month at $40.

To contact Crowe about a donation, call 696-8500. For help, call the Family Violence Project hot line at 623-3569 or toll free, (877) 890-7788.