My wife escaped her ex by seeking shelter at a battered women's place. I owe her life to them.
There my wife met women of a completely different background. My wife is white, at the time already well educated, and very type A [0]. Her only "disadvantage" was that she was a recent immigrant to the US, with all the difficulties of being a recent immigrant. So the shelter is the only place in the past decade where she met people you never meet in the US; the others. She has very powerful memories of the people she met there.
They have one fundamental rule: you don't tell any men where it's located. Although I'm filled with curiosity (partially lack of discipline, partially to send them a cheque), I've never asked her where this place is; I don't want to put her in that position. Not to the place to which I owe her life.
[0] It's funny. She's very type-A, very much in charge, yet it took her manager, a black man, to force her to seek help. He told her either to go stay at a shelter or not come to work the next day.