GC&SU commemorates domestic violence victims

In the United States a woman is physically abused every nine seconds. Community members and Georgia College & State University students spent 5,400 seconds of their time attending the annual Domestic Violence Awareness Candlelight Vigil held Tuesday, Oct. 15.

GC&SU’s Women’s Studies Program and In Our Best Interest group sponsored this year’s vigil, “to bring awareness to domestic violence to students on campus,” said Dr. Sheree Barron, the coordinator of the event.

Johnnie Wilson, director of Successful Avenues for Family Enrichment (SAFE), followed with statistics on domestic violence. For instance, the abuse statistics for Baldwin County in 2001 totaled 1,004 cases. The number of cases for 2002 has already passed that amount, not counting November and December, the two worst months for abuse.

Each year, 2,000 to 4,000 women die, due to domestic violence, with 75 percent of those women being killed after or while they were leaving the relationship.

During the vigil, various students read anonymous stories of battered women from around the county, and Carly Thompson sang a “song of hope,” which included among the lyrics a line which spoke of “standing up for yourself.”

Melissa Thierfelder, the facilitator of the In Our Best Interest group, read a poem which she dedicated to Michelle Braxley, a friend who was killed by her ex-boyfriend. In the poem, the speaker goes through the various stages of abuse, all the while saying “he must be sorry,” because he sent her flowers. She finally received flowers on her gravesite.

Battering is the number one health risk of women age 15 to 44 years old. Four million women are abused yearly, with 3.3 million children witnessing this abuse. New measures of dealing with families suffering with abuse include arresting the abuser rather than removing the victims from the house.

Domestic violence affects many people’s lives. In Baldwin County last year, close to 80 percent of the abuse cases involved children. There have been a total of 47,802 cases of abuse reported, with 20,192 of those cases involving children. Approximately 9,624 of those cases were child abuse cases. “No amount of violence is acceptable,” said Wilson.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 18 2002. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry