Baton Rouge leaders encourage survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence to speak up

By Andrea Gallo
Advocate
April 3, 2018

http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_00481f98-375c-11e8-8f40-1bd566ee8ad2.html

John Price, exec. dir. IRIS, left, Tamara Wade, asst. chief administrative officer, second from left, Racheal Hebert, president and coo of STAR, second from right, and Jan Ross, with the Huey & Angeline Wilson Foundation, right, watch Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome signs the pledge after a joint press conference encouraging the community to get involved in taking a stand against sexual and domestic violence committed against women and girls in East Baton Rouge Parish and beyond Tuesday April 3, 2018, in Baton Rouge, La. This initiative will kick-off a month of events to honor April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

After domestic violence deaths plagued Baton Rouge last year and as sexual assault survivors come forward en masse as part of a national #MeToo movement, Baton Rouge leaders are inviting survivors to openly tell their stories later this month.

April is sexual assault awareness month. Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, the Sexual Trauma Awareness and Response organization and members of a local women’s advancement commission announced Tuesday that they are ramping up a “start by believing” campaign.

They expect to host five listening sessions later this month and next month with survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence who openly tell their stories in a public forum. Racheal Hebert, president and CEO of STAR, said each survivor’s story should help to pinpoint and fix flaws in the health care, law enforcement and educational fields. 

“Our message to survivors is clear: what happened to you is not your fault and we believe you,” Hebert said Tuesday.

Hebert and Broome encouraged survivors to speak openly, and to encourage those who know survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence to believe them and help them.

Domestic violence led to 14 deaths and more than 5,000 arrests last year in Baton Rouge. Deadly domestic violence incidents doubled between 2016 and 2017 and comprised 19 percent of Baton Rouge’s record-level homicides last year.

Domestic violence has continued to be problematic so far in 2018. The March 21 death of Lovie Variste, who police said was beaten to death, was the third fatal domestic violence incident in five days in the city, police said. 

There have been gruesome cases of domestic violence, including a case last summer in which Miquel Angel Lopez was arrested for allegedly slitting his girlfriend’s throat and stabbing her to death after previously stalking, harassing and strangling her. The woman, Sara Hernandez, was the seventh domestic violence death last year, law enforcement said.

Domestic violence doesn't only affect women, either. The final domestic violence death  of 2017 was Benjamin McKneel, who was stabbed to death on New Year’s Eve. Police arrested his girlfriend, Katrice Belezaire, on a second-degree murder count.

“We have to have the conversation with our families, our friends, people that we come in contact with on a daily basis to let them know that there is a way out,” said Twahna Harris, the executive director of anti-domestic violence organization the Butterfly Society.

STAR said rape is the most underreported crime, with slightly more than a third of rapes being reported to law enforcement annually.

The group handed out fliers intended to get people to think about the issue, instructing them to fill out their names and answer the prompt: “When someone tells me that they were raped or sexually assault, I will _____.”