Jennifer Wiles
Staff Writer
Twenty-eight seconds of silence was asked of you as the lights dimmed and a sound of torture filled the Student Center theatre.
Twenty-eight seconds of hearing the word, “No” intensely beaten out of someone who clearly lacks the physical strength to overpower the abuser.
Attendees of the Domestic Violence Forum, sponsored by Jackson State University’s Housing and Residence Life, would later learn that the horror heard was an actual moment in the abusive marriage of Kendra Turner, founder of S.O.D.A., Survivors of Domestic Abuse. For those eight years, Turner silently suffered physical and verbal abuse from her husband.
The night she recorded the video was different for Turner because her husband did something he had never done before, he turned his raged to her daughter.
“You can do whatever you want to me, but what you will not do is touch my daughter,” said Turner.
According to Turner, abuse can begin with minor verbal abuse, maybe a bruise, then a broken bone, that eventually leads to a climax with only two options ¬ live or DIE!
Turner, a survivor, advocate, and entrepreneur, held two different forums with diverse approaches to bringing awareness of this prevalent issue to two different genders.
The guys referred to the audio as “heartbreaking,” but many of the ladies were familiar with it because someone in their family or themselves had experienced domestic violence.
Some men in the audience asked questions like, “Were you fighting back?” and “Why didn’t you leave?” Turner answered yes, that she was fighting back but sometimes women stay in abusive relationships because of financial situations, or they do not seek help because they want to protect their abuser in hopes that they will change.
Turner also cautioned that “victim blaming” only pushes women back into the hands of an abuser.
When talking about domestic violence prevention, Turner asked the men, “Would you date you? Or would you let your daughter date a man like you?”
The conversation turned to the prevention process.
“One sign that a man may not have my best interest at heart is when his actions speak louder than his apologies,” said Miss Jackson State, Destiny Lawrence, a senior biology/pre-medicine major from Fairhope, Ala.
Turner refers dating to the classic mask metaphor, stating that people send a representative in the beginning of a relationship.
Kendrick Whitehead, a freshman mass communication major from Greenwood, Miss., asked Turner several questions such as, “What made you walk away?”
Describing her abusive relationship as “Ike and Tina,” she asked him “Why did Tina stay? She loved him. I stayed for financial reasons too, plus I had no family.”
Turner stated profoundly, “ I have removed my mask,…I’m proud to say I’m a survivor.”
Some of the statistics given during the forum were shocking. One in 3 women will be victims to domestic violence and some will not make it out. Men have a 50 percent chance of becoming an abuser if exposed to domestic violence in their households.
Near closing, Turner urged the audience to stop victim blaming because people do not wake up and say, “I’m going to ‘let’ someone hurt me today.”
She urged the students to be a voice for the voiceless, honor thy mother and father and “remember abuse can happen to anyone, do not wait until it is at your door”
Katelyn Killings contributed to this story.
Photo: Jennifer Wiles
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