Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE – Stories were shared, tears were shed and candles were lit last Wednesday at the Battered Women’s Project’s annual Domestic Violence Awareness Walk in Presque Isle.
Staff photo/Scott Mitchell Johnson
OFFICER LARRY FICKETT, left, and Sgt. Joey Seeley of the Presque Isle Police Department, lit candles in memory of the Aroostook County victims of domestic violence over the years, as well as Maine victims in 2007 at last Wednesday’s Battered Women’s Project’s annual Domestic Violence Awareness Walk in Presque Isle. About 60 people attended the event.
“We’ve been doing domestic violence walks for 28 years,” said Donna Baietti, executive director of the Battered Women’s Project. “The first ones were in the Presque Isle-Caribou area. Now we do walks each October in Presque Isle, Houlton and Madawaska.
“The point of doing the awareness walks is more than just educating the public. It’s about the public being able to support the victims and survivors of domestic violence by showing up and sharing with them as they celebrate their own courage and survival,” she said. “It’s a way for community leaders to touch the lives of people who they run into all the time and might not know their situation. It’s a time for people to tell their secrets in a safe place, and a time to reaffirm, as a community, that there’s no room for domestic violence in our northern Maine towns.”
About 60 people attended the vigil including Lori, a survivor of domestic violence, who told her powerful story which was met by tears and applause.
“Mine is not a story of cuts and bruises or anything like that,” she said, “though toward the end of our marriage, he [my ex-husband] did become physical in his acts of abuse toward me. After the birth of our children, he became the almighty and the powerful. It progressively became clear that in my marriage, the only opinion that was valued and held any significance was his. I felt like God had given me this great mind, yet I was being coerced not to think.
“When I did give an opinion on some matters, I was told, ‘You don’t mean that. What you really mean to say is …’ Then I was told, ‘You don’t get it.’ If I wouldn’t give into him, I would get the look. The look of displeasure and disappointment,” Lori said. “This would be coupled with a lack of affection and the silent treatment.”
Lori said her then-husband viewed her job as a wife and mother and nothing else.
“My job was to fit into his definition of what he wanted me to be as his wife and the mother of two children,” she said. “I tried to fit, but he became more and more difficult to please. There was no pleasing him.”
Another way Lori’s ex-husband controlled her was by furthering his own education.
“He obtained his master’s degree increasing his feeling of superiority,” she said. “More education would potentially mean more money coming in for his job. For him, more education and more money, which he controlled, meant more power and control over me.
“When I wanted to pursue areas of education that would complement my nursing degree, it was met with great disregard. I was belittled, as were my ideas,” said Lori. “I was told, ‘You are a mother now. You need to start acting like it.’ If I went to the gym in the evening after he came home from work, I was reminded that I needed to be home in time to get the kids ready for bed. The task of parenting was beneath him.”
After suggesting marriage counseling, Lori was told, “You get yourself fixed first, then we’ll worry about us.”
For another two years, Lori tried to make her marriage work, but eventually realized that divorcing her husband would be best for she and her children.
“That’s when things escalated. He exerted greater attempts to control me. He increased his tactics of intimidation and terrorizing … evidenced by certain looks or threatening and vulgar gestures. He would argue with me, and back me into a corner so I couldn’t move. He became more physical with his abuse, but never leaving marks.”
In hoping to dispel the myth that by leaving an abusive relationship that the abuse stops and everything will be OK, Lori said it has been two years since her divorce was final and she still “continues to be abused by him physically, psychologically and emotionally.”
“He continues to punish me for leaving by using our kids as pawns, and by doing so, abusing our children,” said Lori. “I am one of the luckier women. With my education, I have a marketable degree, and I was able to get out and start over with little financial difficulty while so many others are not so fortunate.
“I do, however, continue to struggle with the abuse of power and control of my ex-husband when it comes to our children,” she said. “I continue to struggle with the court system that is less than effective when it comes to domestic violence and family matters. Through this all, no one survives abuse of any kind without a support system. I don’t know where I would be without my faith in God, my awesome family, my friends, and the Battered Women’s Project. I know my story pales in comparison to someone else’s, however, we all have a story. My hope today is to touch just one person’s life or to open just one person’s mind in regard to domestic violence.”
Also speaking at the awareness program was Carrie Linthicum, Aroostook County’s assistant district attorney.
“We are here to mourn the losses, celebrate the successes, and provide hope for the future,” said Linthicum. “We provide hope because we have learned that each of us, individually, can be a catalyst for change when it comes to lowering the rates of domestic violence.
“We can do that by just being the support for a person who needs a willing ear, we can lend a kind word, or we can be a safe place to be. More important than that, each of us, working together as a community, we’ve learned that we can be a powerful force to bring about change,” she said. “When we work together, we can not only provide a safety net for people who have been victims of domestic violence, we can provide a safety net for people who have been perpetrators of domestic violence. We can teach them and help them learn that what they’re doing can change and provide a better place for all of them.”
Reminding those in attendance that by working together they can “construct an effective barrier to prevent domestic violence from happening at all,” Linthicum said it’s important to “celebrate what we can do, what we have been doing, and let’s continue to do it.”
In addition to a number of readings, and a song by Julie Shaw, volunteers read the names of Aroostook County victims of domestic violence over the years as Officer Larry Fickett and Sgt. Joey Seeley of the Presque Isle Police Department lit candles in memory of the victims. Names read included Elizabeth Johnston and Eleanor Burns of Presque Isle, Audrey Laferrier of Van Buren, Betty Curliss of Houlton, Jennifer Smith of Monticello, Connie Humphrey of Oxbow, Tina Cousins, Cortina Cousins and Cody Cousins, all of Caribou; Leonard Daigle of Saint Agatha, Christian Gray and Vicky Morgan of Patten, Michael McDonald of Masardis, and Steven Vance Ketzel of Fort Kent.
Other victims killed this year include Roland Poirier of Lewiston, Charles Nickerson of Searsport, John Okie of Newcastle, Rhonda Wakefield Reynolds of Fairfield, Donald McKay of Standish, Emmy-Leigh Cole and Margaret Peters of Auburn, Nicole Oliver of Wells, and Anthony Tucker of Palmyra.
Baietti said she was pleased with the turnout at this year’s Presque Isle vigil.
“Every year it grows,” she said, “and we don’t seem to lose people, which is really great. A lot of the people who attended last year attended again this year. We had good county representation. Going through downtown at noon hour … stopping traffic and going past the different merchants … makes people look. That visibility is key.”
For more information about the Battered Women’s Project, call 764-2977 or the 24-hour hotline at 1-800-439-2323.
Staff photo/Scott Mitchell Johnson
CARRIE LINTHICUM, Aroostook County’s assistant district attorney, was one of the many speakers who attended the Oct. 31 Battered Women’s Project’s annual Domestic Violence Awareness Walk in Presque Isle. Linthicum reminded the 60 people who attended the vigil that by working together they can “construct an effective barrier to prevent domestic violence from happening at all.”
Staff photo/Scott Mitchell Johnson
ABOUT 60 PEOPLE attended the Battered Women’s Project’s annual Domestic Violence Awareness Walk in the Star City Oct. 31. The organization has been holding walks in the Presque Isle-Caribou area for 28 years. The walk is meant to not only draw attention to the issue, but to allow participants the opportunity to support the victims and survivors of domestic violence.
