It’s a landmark year for Help Now of Osceola County, which has now been serving the community for 40 years.
It’s a service the community’s advocacy group for domestic violence victims and survivors wishes it didn’t have to do — its stats show 1 in 4 women, and 1 in 9 men, has or will experience mental, physical or sexual abuse in a relationship.
But, with that need has come a role filled admirably over the decades. It started in 1981, when a group of trained volunteers began an Osceola County hotline that they answered from their home. In 1983, Help Now incorporated, with an adult counselor and a children’s advocate, and opened its first domestic abuse shelter, the eight-bed WIN (Women in Need) House.
In 2023, Help Now has over 40 employees out of its downtown Kissimmee office, and over the years it purchased a larger home — and then expanded it — to serve more survivors and their children; it now has 52 beds. Outreach offices now allow anyone in a potentially dangerous relationship to receive free counseling and support service. Those experiences usually occur in the shadows, so Help Now, along with law enforcement and others who aim to bring it into the light so it can be prevented and eradicated, are highlighting events during October — Domestic Violence Awareness Month — to just that.
First, today (Oct. 19) is National Domestic Violence Awareness Day, a day to wear purple as a conversation starter and share why ending domestic violence is important to you. Use the hashtag #PurpleThursday in social media.
And, then next week, on Thursday, Oct. 26, Help Now will hold its 14th annual Rally, Awareness Walk and Candlelight Vigil. It will begin at 6 p.m. at the Osceola County Courthouse, a place victims look to get justice, with messages from survivors and community advocates to end the violence against women and children. The Awareness Walk will take place through the streets of Kissimmee and will end with a candlelight vigil at the Kissimmee Police Department to honor those who have lost their lives due to domestic violence, and shine a light of hope for current survivors in the community.
The event started at Toho Square, but its participation has grown to use the space around the courthouse. For the second year in a row, all three of the community’s law enforcement outfits, the Kissimmee and St. Cloud Police Departments and Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, are scheduled to participate.
This year, 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.
Domestic violence can happen to anyone in any community, regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, race or socioeconomic status — and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanied lockdowns and changes in society, domestic violence only became more prominent while staying in the shadows. It makes events like those in the rest of October to raise awareness about domestic violence and know the warning signs of abuse.
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.
