More than 50 walkers marched in support and to raise awareness about victims of sexual and domestic abuse
A large group gathered at the front entrance of NBCC Woodstock Friday evening, Sept 20, to march to the Woodstock courthouse and back while delivering a powerful message.
Woodstock’s 15th annual Take Back the Night march attracted a broad cross-section of Upper Valley residents in the long-running effort to bring attention and solutions to efforts to eradicate domestic violence and sexual assault.
Women’s rights activists, Woodstock Police Force officers, local politicians, and representatives from non-profits joined area residents for the annual event hosted and organized by the River Valley Caring Communities committee.
Sarah Sherman, CEO and founder of We’re Here For You Canada — a charitable organization providing comfort kits to women and children victimized by abuse — helped organize the 2024 march.
She welcomed one of the largest turnouts in recent years, noting it was great to see representatives from organizations like the Valley Food Bank, the Rotary Club, Woodstock Mayor Trina Jones, Woodstock-Hartland riding candidates PC Bill Hogan and Liberal Marissa Pelkey and participants from Nackawic-Millville to Southern-Victoria.
Emily Essensa, representing River Valley Caring Communities and coordinator of SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Program), thanked the participants for joining the march.
“We march to remember our sisters who survived and those who were taken from us,” she said.
Essensa said women, from childhood, are warned against walking or going to unfamiliar areas alone and to avoid strangers. Unfortunately, she added, those warnings serve little purpose when most of the violence occurs within their own homes.
Essensa explained that Take Back the Night is the oldest effort to stand against female violence, dating back to the 1970s when courageous women around the world took a stand against violence.
Essensa said those women delivered a message that every woman should be able to “walk alone at night without the fear of being raped, harassed or otherwise harmed.”
She said the annual Take Back the Night marches around the world continue to publicly express women’s anger about the violence and the victim-blaming that accompanies it.
“Only the perpetrator of these crimes are to blame,” she said.
Essensa began her brief address by noting the event was taking place on the unceded land of the Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik and Passamaquoddy people.
She stressed the importance of the Indigenous history and their ongoing fight for rights and recognition.
“I think it’s really important to recognize the land because growing up and as a settler here, I never heard the traditional names of the territories,” Essensa said. “indigenous peoples were talked about in the past tense and all the struggles and discrimination they faced were also talked about in the past tense.”
She said indigenous women and children face higher rates of abuse.
Essensa said all Canadian women battle domestic violence and sexual violence at alarmingly high levels, citing recent stats that show that, on average, in Canada, one woman is killed by her intimate partner every 48 hours.
She added one in three women will have experienced some form of sexual violence before they turn 18. She said New Brunswick has the third highest rate of femicide in Canada.
Guest speaker Tanya Roberts offered more than statistics, sharing the pain of losing her 23-year-old niece to domestic violence last year.
“She waited for her boyfriend to change or she hoped she could change him,” Roberts said.
Roberts said the diary her niece kept demonstrated the difficulty of escaping a violent relationship.
“So many times she reached out and people said ‘I can’t believe he would do that’ and would gaslight her,” said Roberts.
She said statistics indicate women remain in violent relations until, on average, the seventh serious incident. That number hit particularly hard on Roberts, who noted her niece paid the ultimate sacrifice on the seventh time he abused her.
“It changed our family,” said Roberts. “It’s a different type of loss when you lose somebody and the hands of somebody else.”
Sexual assault and domestic violence are not limited to other communities. Mayor Jones, former Woodstock Police Force Gary Forward, and interim Chief Mark Bennett have all raised concerns about domestic violence in Woodstock. Most recent statistics indicate that Woodstock police respond to almost one intimate partner violence (IPV) per day.
Recently, the WPF appointed Cst Abby Derrah to the Street Crime Unit as the IPV investigator and coordinator.
Sherman praised the efforts of the Woodstock Police Force to address domestic violence and sexual assault.
