WARWICK — Elvia Sanchez remembers what it was like when she walked into the Garrahy Judicial Complex in Providence for the first time four years ago. All she really wanted to do was turn around.

Instead, she loitered outside the court clerk’s office unsure of what to do. A woman noticed her hesitancy and walked over.

“I was having regrets,” Sanchez said. “Everything was playing out in my mind — all the threats. She looked at me and she could just tell. I looked lost.”

That woman, a court advocate assigned to the Providence courts, gathered the paperwork Sanchez needed to file a restraining order and would be there as Sanchez waged the nearly two-year battle to put the ex-boyfriend who badly beat her and her son behind bars.

“She saw me like an individual this is happening to,” Sanchez said. “She told me, ‘We’re going to get through this.’ It was the first time I’d ever heard those words.”

Court advocates for domestic violence victims, like the one who helped Sanchez, are becoming harder to come by as the court advocacy program through the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence finds itself handicapped by lower financing, even while the number of felony domestic violence cases in Rhode Island increased by 25 percent in 2008. Some studies show that the amount of domestic violence is increasing, either in frequency or severity, in part, because of the weak economy.

“It’s not like we’re turning people out into the street without help or hope, we just don’t have the same resources,” said Deborah DeBare, director of the coalition, which provides support to victims through member agencies throughout the state. Because of a cut in revenue, the agencies in the coalition have cumulatively reduced the number of advocates by some 25 percent — from 16 statewide, to about 12. The coalition advocates provide emotional support for domestic assault victims, helping them navigate the judicial system and deal with the emotional scars from the abusive relationship.

The attorney general’s office has advocates who work with a range of victims as they make their way through the judicial system. But those advocates, who also help victims of domestic violence, deal primarily with victims of felony crimes by alerting them to court dates and encouraging them to stay involved in the judicial process.

Any data linking domestic violence to the economy is anecdotal, said Richard J. Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania and a former professor at the University of Rhode Island. But it’s also likely to be very true, he said. Federal data about economic recessions is released two years after the fact. But, based on previous data, Gelles said violence increases in the months after a recession begins and often deepens because of cuts in intervention programs.

“The first thing that gets cut are prevention programs,” Gelles said. “You do exactly the opposite of what you ought to do. You get rid of cost-effective programs now, and when you’re looking at a severe economic downturn down the road, that’s where the preventative programs would have insulated you from domestic violence.”

In an economic downturn, a victim is likely to have less money available to make lifestyle changes, DeBare said, and there are fewer resources to help the person get out of a troublesome situation.

“All the things we don’t know about on the surface are exacerbated by the economy,” she said.

According to the coalition, there were 208 felony domestic violence cases in the state in 2008, up from 169 in 2007. The coalition would not release the number of domestic violence related misdemeanors, saying that they were an inaccurate indicator of spikes in frequency.

The number of criminal cases assisted by the coalition’s advocates has risen 15 percent during the past three years and the number of restraining orders has grown by 6 percent. In 2007, the latest data available, court advocates assisted victims of domestic violence with a combined total of 7,673 criminal and restraining order cases — an increase of 89 percent from 2006.

The court advocates from the coalition’s member agencies, DeBare said, have been described as a “lifeline” to domestic abuse victims, who find strength and encouragement from the advocates to move forward with restraining orders or to follow a case through to trial.

“Anyone who’s ever gone into court, or watched what’s gone on in a courthouse — it’s an intimidating and scary place,” she said. “It can be very intimidating for a victim of abuse who has been dealing with threats to themselves or their children, who are being told: ‘Don’t you dare go to court.’ The advocate can be the difference between whether she shows up in court or not.”

Melissa Alexander’s heels click against the tiled floors of the Kent County Courthouse as she makes her way down the second-floor hallway to four clients, all wanting to vacate no-contact orders.

She works for the Elizabeth Buffum Chace Center, a member agency of the coalition. Alexander has been busier since the budget cuts. As manager of advocacy services, she spends many of her days in court handling domestic violence cases. She used to have more time to work with police departments in domestic violence training programs and engaging in advocacy to help improve the court process for victims, but she now squeezes in those things if she has the time between clients.

In Kent, another advocate, also from the Chace Center, handles restraining orders while Alexander juggles no-contact orders. Volunteers in the advocates’ office at the courthouse take messages from clients. When she gets a chance, Alexander returns calls and connects with clients for the first time.

“That’s the most important thing we do,” Alexander said, “is give people emotional support.” Ana Giron, director of victim services in the attorney general’s office, pointed out that advocates from that office assist victims of a range of felony crimes in addition to some domestic violence cases.Ordinarily, Giron said, her advocates contact victims as the case winds its way through the judicial system. But because of the strapped resources at the coalition, Giron said her office is fielding more calls from victims earlier in the process than before.

“A lot of victims call needing more services, more of the support in terms of counseling and safety planning and things like that,” Giron said. “Within the past year, I think they are calling us first, rather than calling the agencies that are first responders. Now we’re getting calls from the beginning of the case. We’re getting calls like, ‘Listen, he’s violating the no-contact order.’ ”

The court advocate was by Sanchez’s side nearly every day she went before a judge during her 18-month-long case in Providence in 2005. Sanchez didn’t have the money to leave her abusive relationship, but she didn’t realize that she was in one either. Even after being cut off from her family, forbidden to work and driven into the street with her son in the pouring rain to escape an attack from her abuser, she still denied she was being abused.

It wasn’t until she learned that her then-2-year-old son had lost some mobility in his left arm from being struck by the man and Sanchez miscarried that she agreed to go forward with the case against her abuser. Through the process, Sanchez said, she was worried that everything her abuser threatened her with would come true. No one would believe her. That he would win. Her advocate encouraged her to press forward.

The man pleaded no contest to domestic assault and was sentenced to 10 years, 4 to serve, 6 suspended and 6 on probation. He received the same sentence, to be served concurrently, for the second-degree child abuse of Sanchez’s son. He was denied probation Monday, but Sanchez said he could be released as early as November for good behavior. Though Sanchez thought the sentence should be harsher, she said that in the end, she was glad her advocate encouraged her to see the process through to the end.

“The advocate was the first person to tell me it wasn’t my fault; to say that you’re not the person to blame for this situation and that you are able to leave this situation and lead a successful life outside of this,” Sanchez said. “The only reason I was strong was because of her.”

tbuford@projo.com