 As you know, domestic violence affects so many lives and unfortunately, 20 victims every minute in the United States are affected by domestic violence and we're here today to walk against domestic violence to bring awareness in here from advocates, survivors, law enforcement to talk a little bit about it in our community, hear their stories. But I wanted to take a moment of silence for us to think about our friends, family, co-workers, colleagues, even the folks you don't know who have been victims to domestic violence and take a moment of silence if you would to reflect on that and continue to think about how we can work together to end domestic violence. So let's take that moment now. Thank you very much for participating. And today we're blessed to have so many folks here to be part of this and I want to thank each and every one of you who have shown up today. As we continue to battle over 30,000 people affected by domestic violence in our state of South Carolina and we've seen an uptick since COVID and the pandemic came in here in our local community and we want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to know that there are resources, there are signs, there are folks here to support you and help you get through it and we hope that we'll work together as a community to push back, make sure that folks know that there are advocates here, there are survivors, there are support groups, there are services, not only through law enforcement but through agencies, sister care, we're on here to make sure violence calls in person. I have to tell you that you witness it and you're there and you see the dramatic effects of being together as a community awareness but are pushed to end violence but be there to be supportive to let people know that this is not okay, that there are other opportunities for them to get out of this situation. Last year we were here on a very cloudy cold day but there are a lot of people here in support. We heard from Survivor last year about her struggle but what changed in her life and how she turned that bad experience of domestic violence into an incredible career out there being an advocate and an attorney for those folks, it was very powerful. Today we're going to hear another powerful story from Ms. Myers and so excited that she's willing to share her story with all of us today but with that I'd like to invite Ms. Shannon Nix up to speak. She is the Director and Member of Support of Technical Assistance, South Carolina Coalition against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. Shannon. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you all so much for being here. This year the theme for Skid Voss's Domestic Violence Awareness Month campaign is somebody you know. We chose this theme because everyone knows somebody who has been impacted by domestic violence. They could be your friends, family because one in four women and one in seven men will experience domestic violence. Because in 2022 almost 39,000 people impacted by domestic violence including children called a crisis line, assault shelter or receive support services in South Carolina. We also know that domestic violence occurs regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status. This is why it is important to listen to, believe and support victims and survivors and why it is necessary to ask how can I help instead of why don't you just leave it. It is important to understand that domestic violence takes many forms, not just that of physical abuse. Other forms of abuse, emotional, financial and sexual to name a few are common in abusive relationships. And financial abuse in particular makes it exceedingly difficult for victims to just leave. Threats of harm to the victim, their children and their loved ones also make it difficult for them to leave an abusive relationship. The most dangerous time for a victim of domestic violence is when they are planning to leave or have left an abusive relationship with 75% of domestic violence homicides occurring when a victim leaves. Often the abuser kills or attempts to kill their partner with a firearm. It is well documented that if an abuser has access to a firearm, they are five times more likely to kill their female victims. With this knowledge, it is imperative that we view domestic violence victims and survivors as the experts in their lives and that we become aware of the resources that can offer help to them. The domestic violence center that can provide that help in the Midlands is Sistercare. You will hear from their executive director, Leah Weisavik, today. SCEDVASA has a total of 22 member organizations, 13 of which is victims and survivors of domestic violence throughout the state. You may access the websites of these programs as well as of the sexual assault centers in South Carolina from our website, www.scedvasa.org. You can join us in raising awareness of and preventing domestic violence, not just in October, but also throughout the year by offering victims and survivors non-judgmental and empathic support and by supporting those who are doing the work, either through volunteering or donating. Our work and the work of our member organizations depends on your support. Thank you. Before I call Leah up from Sistercare to speak, I do want to take a moment to go ahead and declare domestic violence awareness month today in the city of Columbia. So on behalf of myself, members of city council in our entire city, we officially declare October domestic violence awareness month in the city of Columbia. But let's not just leave it to October, folks. Let's talk about it every day, every month to make sure that we're getting those messages out. And Leah, I'm going to give you this to take to Sistercare and hang on the wall so everybody knows that we're in it together as a community. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Leah Weisevick and I'm the executive director of Sistercare. It is a privilege to lead such an incredible organization that serves so many survivors of domestic violence in their children in our community. Sistercare provides services and advocacy and clinical programming to survivors of domestic violence in Richland County, Lexington, Newberry, Fairfield, and Courchelle County. We serve approximately 4,000 individuals every year. We offer a 24-7 crisis line. So I like to tell survivors they're never alone. We have a crisis clinical director that heads that program. We have two emergency shelters for those fleeing domestic violence and seeking immediate safety and support. We have clinical counseling to include women's counseling, children's counseling, and women and children's counseling together. We have advocacy for those in the rural areas that are experiencing domestic violence because we all know there are additional barriers for those in our rural communities. We have three transitional housing programs as well. We also do a bunch of community awareness and outreach. We'll come to your faith-based organization. We'll come to your school to teach about domestic violence and also to our youth. We have a teen outreach program where we go to schools and we work with Boy Scout groups or other civic organizations that serve youth to prevent that intergenerational cycle of violence and to teach them about healthy relationships. So the work we do is so important, whether it's providing crisis intervention all the way to prevention for future generations. And when I think about what today means, what domestic violence awareness means and why we're walking, this is what came to mind. Today we are walking to support the 42% of South Carolina women who experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime. Today we are walking to support survivors seeking safety in our shelters. Today we are walking to support survivors who are receiving counseling to recover from the trauma they have experienced, whether it was last week or last year. Today we are walking to support survivors from rural areas who have had to face so many additional barriers when trying to escape, like extreme isolation and lack of transportation. Today we are walking to support the children who have witnessed intimate partner violence in their home, a place that is meant to be a safe haven. Today we are walking in memory of those who have lost their lives due to domestic homicide. This includes children and law enforcement officers. Today we are walking because for the past 23 out of 25 years, South Carolina has ranked in the top 10 states in the nation for the rate of women killed by men. And that is not okay. Today we are walking to break the stigma of domestic violence. It is not a private family issue. It is not something anyone should be ashamed of because no one deserves to be abused. Today we are walking to shatter the silence. Abusers thrive in silence. But no more. We're going to normalize talking about intimate partner violence. We're going to talk to our children and our teens about healthy relationships and teach them that love is respect. We are going to prevent intimate partner violence before it even starts. Today we are walking to show our commitment to changing our culture and to stop victim blaming. Why doesn't she leave? Why doesn't she just leave? We're going to change that narrative. Today we are walking to celebrate all the survivors here today and to celebrate their support system who helped them escape the abuse. Their friends, their family, law enforcement, local victim service providers, nonprofits, faith-based organizations. We're celebrating all of you because it takes a community to create change and to end domestic violence. And so with that being said, it is an honor to introduce our speaker today, our survivor speaker, Shalaya. She is a senior studying African-American studying in psychology at the University of South Carolina. She is a sister care volunteer and also a volunteer with the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. She is a member of USC's Saikai Multicultural Outreach Student Team, Mental Health Ambassadors and Freedom Writers Organization. Shalaya's lifelong aspiration is to use her interpersonal and industry skills that will help our community endure, embrace, and empower. She wants to dedicate time, effort, and knowledge to grow and expand her career in marriage and family therapy. And she's also a survivor. I'd like to introduce Shalaya Myers as our speaker today. As a child, domestic violence was never talked about. In fact, it was covered up and seen as a personal issue. No one could talk about the abuse of relationships that was clearly prevalent in our family. There was no awareness that was brought to the intimate partner violence that we seen, that we knew about. And this brushing the apparent topic of domestic violence in my family under the rug led me into an abuse of relationship. Just like any modern 15 year old, my phone was my everything. Social media was a huge factor in my life. I was on the Snapchat, the Instagram, I was on it. But my story begins when I met someone online and we eventually met in person and began dating each other. And months into this relationship, I started to get degrading text messages that degraded my self-esteem, my mental health, and degraded my character. I would get text like, you're nothing without me. Who would be with somebody like you? You disgust me. Look at yourself. That occurred daily. The verbal abuse occurred daily. And it ingrained me with a psychological and emotional trauma that was very hard to fix. I did not leave because I was ashamed to ask for help. And I was terrified of losing my life because of the constant verbal threats. And I did not have an apparent and active representation of what a healthy partner should look like. I did not know I was in a violent relationship. But after two years of enduring this relationship, I finally got out after taking the risk of just blocking him in his leaving, which is a huge risk. I was terrified for weeks. I could not sleep for a while. And I was terrified that he would come to my house and harm me and my family. But my story didn't end when I left. I ended up falling into this pattern of toxic and harmful relationships. I ended up depressed, full of anxiety, and full of terrible memories. Whenever my mom would ask how I was doing it, I always hid and covered it up because I was ashamed. And I was afraid of the reaction because we'd never talk. When I graduate high school, I knew that I had to get help. So when I started my first year of college, I started free therapy that was provided by my university. If I had known about sister care or other nonprofit organizations that help victims, I definitely could have gotten that support from there. It is our job as a community to have conversations about intimate partner violence. Our younger generations know what's going on. They are exposed to the fact of intimate partner violence. So we should make them aware of the resources and the help for situations that they may get in. It is our duty to provide a safe space and disable violent relationships by creating a safe space for our younger generations to talk about intimate partner violence. It allows us to not only empower intimate partner survivors, but it also saves lives. Thank you. Mr. Myers, could you come up? We wanted to present you with a token from the city of Columbia from the 139,237 residents, not only for you sharing your story, but your strength. But obviously you're giving back to your community, listening to all the organizations that you're involved in and the message in trying to change to make our community better. We wanted to present you with this bouquet as a way to say thank you. Good morning, everybody. My name is Travon Fordham. I'm the director for the Office of Violence Prevention. I can't say how excited I am to see all of you out here today and to know that the community partners that are out here, the community organizations that are working lockstep with the city of Columbia and the efforts, but really to hear the story from Shalea as a survivor and to look out and think about all the other survivors that are out there. Please know that there are resources out there. There's help out there. There's a support network that's out there when you're ready to tell your story to when you're ready to claim being a survivor. Domestic violence happens all too often in South Carolina and we've got to work together to put a stop to it. So knowing that we have sister care out here, we've got the South Carolina Coalition against domestic violence and sexual assault and all of these different community organizations, again, it's going to take all of us working together to build that network and that support to stop domestic violence. Awardist T-shirt today intentionally this morning. In front of it says love should not. In the back, stop domestic violence. So again, I just wanted to say a few words to let everybody know for those who are going through, there is help out there. There are resources out there. Please, please, please. If you're in abusive relationship, if you're experienced any type of domestic violence, please contact someone, speak up, be able to claim being a survivor and tell your story. Thank you. Thank you, Trevon. As you know, we created Office of Violence Prevention this past year with support of City Council and Trevon is our director. And part of it started off as we were really talking about focus just on gun violence but the reality is the intersection of gun violence and domestic violence cross-rode each other day in and day out as we heard earlier and we need to make sure that we're working to stop all violent crime in Columbia. With that, I'd like to bring up Anna Browder, the assistant solicitor for the Fifth Circuit Solicitor's Office to say a few words. Thank you. Morning. First off, I want to thank the mayor for doing this year after year and inviting everybody here and everybody to speak to continue to give a voice to the victims and the survivors and what is happening in our community. You heard him say that every one minute there are 20 victims of domestic violence in this nation. If you do the math on that, and I'll go ahead and tell you, I did not do it while he was sitting up here. I used a calculator a couple of weeks ago. That is about 10 million people in the nation per year. And to put that in perspective, at Williams-Brice Stadium, that stadium would be filled up every three days for a year with victims of domestic violence and that is unacceptable here in our community. And that's why we're here today. I'm proud to be speaking on behalf of Solicitor Gibson today. When a case comes into our office, we prosecute the cases, but that is not our only goal is to prosecute offenders. It is also to help the survivors of domestic violence that come through our office. We have victim advocates and everybody who touch this case and see these survivors on a daily basis. And our main goal is to help them because they're coming to us in a moment that is after their most vulnerable and maybe worst day of their lives. And we want to help them understand that a broken body does not mean that you're a broken person and that there are people out there, there are organizations that you see today, there's loved ones in support systems that will help, we want to help build those victims back up to understand that they are worth it. Because as you heard Ms. Meyer state, she got text messages day after day degrading her, talking about how she is not worth it when every day of her life she is worth it. Everybody is worth it and nobody deserves to go through domestic violence. We want these victims to build back up, to show their children and the next generation and their children's generation that it's not okay to live in fear of being hurt or dying at the hands of your loved ones. So we're committed in this fight with everybody here, with the city of Columbia, with the sheriff's department, with sister care, with Skadvasa, with all the other vendors that you have seen here today and gone by their tables. I'm a big reader and one thing I've read before when I was reading a book by Michelle Obama, she said that you may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world's problems at once, but don't ever underestimate the importance that you may have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own. So I just ask everybody here today as we start walking to do it with courage because together, step by step, we can create that contagiousness and that hope to eradicate this problem and hope that it does not affect our children from here on out. Thank you. Next up, we'd like to bring Captain Jack representing our Columbia Police Department and our police chief, Chief Holbrook, who is also out today doing an event. So we have multiple events going across the city, but Captain Jack, you got it. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Well, thank you very much. This being the city's 17th year, bringing awareness of abuse and violence to our communities. Thank you for joining us for today's mayor's walk against domestic violence. My name is Jack Scheerd. I am the commander of the Columbia Police Department's Investigations Bureau, which is responsible for investigating incidents of domestic violence, but also providing victim services through our advocates. I supervise all of our investigators, so it's really all acts of violence through gun violence and domestic violence. South Carolina is a beautiful place to live and raise a family, but sadly, we are currently ranked in the top five states for domestic violence and the top 10 states for homicides related to domestic violence. That is unacceptable. At the Columbia Police Department, we're working to lower this statistic. Our mission is to provide a professional and ethical service in the protection of our citizens while preventing crime and reducing the fear of crime through problem solving partnerships. We are dedicated, we have a dedicated group of officers, investigators tasked with this mandate. We are proud to have a victims advocates that serve on state boards and domestic violence prevention committees. They have a booth back there representing us here today. We collaborate with our community organizations like Sister Care, the University of South Carolina, the South Carolina Victim Assistance Network, South Carolina Legal Services, Pathways to Healing. We work hand in hand with our Fifth Circuit Solicitor's Office and all of these services help us provide alternative housing, clothing, counseling services, and other resources to keep our victims safe. Through these community partnerships and commitment to justice, we can strive to reduce victimization and make Columbia a better place to live because together we are greater. Thank you. So I'd like that opportunity to thank all of our public relations, all our city staff, all the organizers, all the service folks that are all here today to share information with you. We wanted to present a check for the city of Columbia. We had this little thing called a dunking booth the other weekend, and here's where we got dumped a lot. We're raising a little money and we wanted to present a check today to Sister Care. So for Sister Care here's $15,000. $15,000 for the Solicitor's Office which is part of myself and others who were dumped down in Sun City. Over a couple of weekends and we wanted to present it to you. Thank you. Thank you so much.