One in every three women is beaten, forced into sex or abused in their lifetime; one out of every six is a survivor of rape or attempted rape; and one in 12 will be stalked within one’s lifetime, according to Ellen Newman, law enforcement advocate at
Women Helping Women.
“Domestic violence is an everyday issue, and it happens to everybody. It can happen to the poorest person on the block; it can happen to a millionaire—it knows no gender or race or class or any sort of stereotype,” Newman says. “It’s definitely something we deal with on an everyday basis here at Women Helping Women, but it’s a big problem in our community every single day.”
To raise awareness within the community, the nonprofit, in conjunction with the
YWCA of Greater Cincinnati and the
Cincinnati Police Department will host its first-ever
Purple Light Walk October 11 in recognition of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
“Even if just one person sees the purple lights and asks why we’re walking and we can explain to them, that’ll be a success in my mind,” Newman says of the organization whose mission is to empower survivors by providing advocacy, support and safety while prompting the community as a whole to create social change.
Newman sasy that very few women are aware that services are out there for them, so it’s important to get the word out.
“We are a non-shelter agency. In the state of Ohio, 92 percent of domestic violence survivors seeking services will not go to a shelter, which speaks to the need of crisis intervention services as opposed to shelter services,” Newman says. “And on an everyday basis, I talk with survivors who don’t know there’s services or help out there. I’ve been to court with people on multiple occasions who’ve told me that if they didn’t have an advocate there, they wouldn’t have known what to do, what questions to ask or had any idea what was even going on.”