| Laurie Burns McRobbie
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“Joining Together to End Domestic Violence”
Stand Up and Be Counted Rally
Bloomington, Indiana
April 3, 2008
I’m Laurie Burns McRobbie, board member of Middle Way House and chair of the New Wings Community Partnership, a fundraising initiative for Middle Way. I’m also first lady of Indiana University, and so I am speaking to you today as a member of both the IU and wider Bloomington communities.
On behalf of Middle Way and both of these communities, I want to thank the Friends of Middle Way for their tireless efforts to help reduce violence against women. You’re sending a strong and clear message that sexual assaults, indeed assaults of any kind, will not be tolerated in our community.
Cause for Outrage
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Sexual assault happens in a larger context of violence against women. During the hour in which we stand here to be counted among those refusing to tolerate such abuse:
30 women will be sexually assaulted—one every two minutes—according to recent Department of Justice statistics. On college campuses, 20 to 25 percent of female students are raped during their college careers. At least one in every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused during her lifetime. Here in the U.S., an average of more than three women are murdered by their partners every day. Last year, 75 Hoosier women died as the result of domestic violence.
Think about those numbers, if you can bear to. That is equal to the number of young people killed in the war in Iraq every year. Think about the desperate outrage such carnage has evoked in many of us. I don’t believe we can have a civilized society when violence against women exists, and everyone should be equally outraged that it continues.
A Model Intervention Program
Fortunately for those of us here in Bloomington, we have Middle Way House. Let me give you more statistics: nationally, the rate at which women return to their abusers, after seeking help, ranges from 55 to 70 percent. In 2006, for women who spent more than three weeks in Middle Way’s programs, that rate of return was 2 percent. Last year, it was higher, closer to 10 percent, but we can rightly be proud of our own community’s response, and our own national model program in ending domestic violence against women.
Middle Way provides the crisis services needed to address the immediate aftermath of violence, the legal advocacy needed to help women with cases brought against their abusers, with transitional housing, child care, education, and job opportunities as women take their first critical steps towards independence and economic self-sufficiency.
The New Wings Community Partnership is working to raise funds for the renovation of a new facility on South Washington Street, where Middle Way’s valued programs and services can be brought together and expanded, and for the support of those programs and services into the future. The partnership is organized around giving groups, which contributors join by virtue of making multiyear gifts. In this way, as Middle Way continues to successfully seek grant support from external sources, it also has a predictable source of revenue that helps to smooth out the bumps in the unpredictable funding coming from the federal government, the state, and other sources.
Conclusion: Pursuing our Goals
The partnership has a $10 million goal overall, $5 million for the building, which we need to raise by the end of 2008, and another $5 million ongoing for programs and services. We have raised about two-thirds of what we need for the building project, and I want to thank you all again for not only standing up to be counted in raising awareness of the problem of sexual assault, but your efforts to help raise funds as well.
Thank you.
Laurie Burns McRobbie
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MWH is a United Way agency.