Oct. 29 UCF event also a part of the outreach
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Next week, join members of the community who are united against violence against women and children, for an annual event held by Help Now of Osceola County, the county’s advocacy group for victims and survivors.
The 15th Annual Domestic Violence Rally, Awareness Walk and Candlelight Vigil will be held Thursday, Oct. 24. The rally will begin at 6 p.m. and at the Osceola County Courthouse in Downtown Kissimmee. Messages will be read by domestic violence survivors and from law enforcement and community advocates urging bringing an end to violence against women and children.
Following the Courthouse rally, the Awareness Walk takes place through the streets of Kissimmee and will end with a candlelight vigil at the Kissimmee Police Department. Help Now, joined by the community, will honor the lives lost due to domestic violence and help shine a light of hope for the community’s current survivors. Wearing purple— the color of memorial for those trying to end their saga of abuse, and those who didn’t and serve as a memory and cautionary story—will be the order of the day.
This year, the remembrance includes the free inaugural Domestic Violence Community Vigil at the UCF Reflecting Pond on Tuesday, Oct. 29 from 5-7 p.m. Last year, all three of the area’s largely law enforcement agencies —Kissimmee Police Department, St. Cloud Police Department and Osceola County Sheriff’s Office — participated, came together with survivors and their advocates to not only remember the ones who’ve lost their lives to domestic violence, but to serve a call to action for those who suffer in violent relationships.
Hope Now’s stats show 1 in 4 women, and 1 in 9 men, has or will experience mental, physical or sexual abuse in a relationship. Help Now has included faith-based groups into its advocacy circle. For generations, church officials have stressed couples staying together as a tenet of their teachings —something Help Now Executive Director Tammy Douglass says may not be the safest approach in an abusive relationship.
“Sometimes staying together is not always to best option,” she said.
Local government proclamations were given last week by the Osceola County Commission, the City of Kissimmee, and City of St. Cloud.
According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “Domestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/ or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intimate partner against another. It includes physical violence, sexual violence, threats, economic, and emotional/ psychological abuse. The frequency and severity of domestic violence varies dramatically.”
It affects those in the direct line of the relationship, and it affects children as well—as many as 15.5 million children and teens are affected by abuse each year, and many instances go unreported. That can create a cycle of abuse when those children become adults, making teaching how to escape and break patterns and rise above those toxic situations critical.
