MENTOR, Ohio — In Lake County, there’s a place where pregnant women in crisis have turned to for help for the last 21 years. Now the group maternity home is working to evolve to meet the needs of these mothers in crisis.
News 5 Anchor Courtney Gousman spoke with one mother staying at the center. She’s a domestic violence survivor, who News 5 will only identify as Nikki.
We want to warn you, Nikki's story may be difficult for some readers.
Nikki sat down with Gousman and described the abuse she used to endure at the hands of her ex, including beating and strangling.
“I wouldn’t even go to work,” she said. “I would call off, you know, just to get my face together if it was swollen, busted lip or black eyes.”
Nikki said she’d been hospitalized four times after being beaten by her ex. It was during one of those hospital visits she learned she was pregnant. But the news, Nikki said, didn’t stop the beatings. At her last hospital visit in November 2022, she decided it was time to leave.
“The baby wasn’t moving at all. I was pushed into the corner of, like, end tables. On my back, my stomach. He kicked me in the stomach. I was just like, I’m going to die here.”
Nikki packed what she could fit inside her car so she could leave her apartment, family, and the city she called home. For months she bounced around the state, living in shelters and hotels. Eventually, she landed in Northeast Ohio after being referred to Hannah’s Home, a group home for pregnant women in crisis.
“When I got here it was like open arms and I was welcomed,” she said. Vicki Krnac is the Executive Director of Hannah’s Home. She told News 5 the center provides housing, food, utilities, and transportation, in addition to in-house daycare and all the necessities to care for a newborn.
“We want to have full-term, healthy babies being born and when she’s in crisis, even just a housing crisis, it makes her statistically become at risk for having a healthy, full-term, thriving baby,” Krnac said. The communal home has women sharing bathrooms, the kitchen, and a living area.
“We help each other with the babies,” Nikki said. “Cooking dinner, help you with your laundry.”
The home also helps these mothers find jobs and navigate their finances. Krnac said most women stay about 15 months, enough time to get them through their maternity leave. Over the years, it’s become evident that these new moms need more time.
“We saw the need for additional, longer-term care,” she said. “Affordable housing takes several years to obtain. So there was a gap between where our services kind of ended, maybe a year after baby was born. That’s why board members signed off on the construction of four private apartments for moms who need an extended stay. Nikki will be among the first to benefit from the new addition, which offers more privacy for families. Now a mom to a three-month-old baby girl, Nikki said she’s grateful for the extra time that comes with the new apartment.
“At least I can be stable. I can be financially stable, work on things that I need to work on,” she said.
Nikki told Gousman she’s now in school with dreams of opening her own group home to help women in crisis. Her abuser is serving time in prison. Hannah’s Home is holding a ribbon cutting for its new addition Thursday.
