Colorful T-shirts hung on a clothesline set up in the Pierce College Mall to commemorate Domestic Violence Awareness Month on Wednesday, Oct. 23.
Campus Violence Response Team Leader Holly Hagan, who hosted the Clothesline Project, has been in charge of it for the past six years.
Hagan created this project because she was once in a violent relationship. She described her numerous violent encounters, including having a shot gun pulled on her, being beaten countless times and being dragged by her hair to the backyard.
“One of the reason why people are in a domestic violent relationship is because they are not happy with themselves,” Hagan said. “In order to be in a good relationship you have to love yourself and be happy with yourself and that’s what I try to teach people at this point.”
According to the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence website, on average, three women a day are murdered by a current or former intimate partner.
In California 147 domestic violence homicides occurred in 2011. Of those 147 domestic violence homicides that occurred, 129 victims were female and 18 were male. Domestic violence homicides resulted in 11.8 percent of homicides that were committed in California.
Pierce College student Shaina Barnett knows friends who have been sexually assaulted and been victims of domestic violence, and thinks the Clothesline Project is very important.
“[I] offer love and support to anyone that needs it,” Barnett said. “Abuse is not love; you don’t put your hands on someone. The more we bring out awareness, the more people can come out into the open and justice can be served.”
Michelle Borsto, a sociology major, has been helping Hagan for two years.
She clarifies that there are different kinds of abuse including inter-partner violence.
“People think that inter-partner violence is violence that happens just between spouses but it’s not,” Borsto said. “It happens in high school relationships and in college relationships. It’s not just between spouses but between people that are dating.”
Borsto says to use caution when trying to help people that have just gone through a situation such as domestic violence.
“I find it’s best not to say anything,” Borsto said. “Just be willing to listen.”