Take Back the Night: Marion event raises awareness of sexual violence

Advocates dedicated to ending sexual, domestic, and relationship violence gathered to raise their voices, increase awareness, and show their support for victims of assault and abuse this week in Marion County.

Marion Technical College and The Ohio State University at Marion co-hosted Take Back the Night, a movement and organization that traces its roots to the early 1970s when incidents of violence against women in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles began to attract media attention.

According to the Take Back the Night website, one of the earliest protests was in 1972 at the University of South Florida where women demanded greater resources and safety measures for their protection on campus. In October 1975 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, citizens there staged a march and protest following the murder of microbiologist Susan Alexander Speeth. She was walking alone one night when she was attacked and stabbed to death not far from her home.

Wendy Weichenthal, one of the local event organizers and public relations specialist at Marion Technical College, said events like Take Back the Night are a necessary form of education, both for college students and the community.

"We know that sexual assault is an issue that affects everyone from children to senior citizens," Weichenthal said after the event last Monday at the OSUM Alber Student Center. "We know, unfortunately, college-age students are very high risk for sexual assault. We know that often it can come with shame and stigma and tonight we wanted to break that shame and stigma. We want to learn about what resources are here in our community to help show our support, help someone recover.

"And we want to take an active role in being a force for change and a force for support and help make this less of a topic that people find hard to talk about."

MTC and OSUM began hosting a local Take Back the Night event in 2017. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Marion event was canceled in 2020 and 2021.

Keynote speakers for this year's event were Linda Maloy, mother of a survivor of sexual assault and founder of the Crawford County Victim/Witness Program, and Catherine Harper Lee, a sexual abuse survivor and founder and executive director of the Ohio Crime Victim Justice Center (OCVJC).

Maloy, the director of patient experience at Avita Health System, shared the story about her daughter Maggie, who survived a horrific attack in 1994 when she was just 15 years old. A man, who is still in prison to this day, attacked Maggie on the morning of Sept. 16, 1994, while she was training with her school's cross country team in Galion. He raped and tortured her and then shot her five times.

Despite the harrowing experience that nearly took her life, Maggie Maloy survived and went on to serve the community as the victim advocate for the City of Bucyrus. She now lives out of state, but is still committed to helping victims of abuse and assault, her mother said.

"How was she saved? How did this miraculous thing turn about?" Linda Maloy asked while reflecting on the incident and Maggie's recovery. "Today, she is alive and well. She's living her best life as a paralegal. She actually moved out of state to take a position to do education for law enforcement and for victims of crime. So she is one that has taken the ugly story and has turned it into a success."

Maloy spoke about the depth of Maggie's courage in dealing with the brutal assault she suffered during the days and months immediately following the incident, including facing her attacker in court when given the opportunity to make statement.

"She looked at him. She looked at him, the man who had for hours tortured her, taunted her, strangled her, buried her under logs," Maloy explained. "And she looked at him, and she goes, 'Hi, nice to see you again.' For some reason, I thought it was going to take an ugly turn because I was afraid she was going to say other stuff, but she gave a long, deliberate pause and then she said, 'I beat you. You know that, don't you?' And she just let that hang out there.

"'I beat you. You picked the wrong girl that day,'" Maloy continued as she shared Maggie's victim statement with the audience. "'I'm going to go on and have a great life and you're going to be in a box. And to think of what you did, I would never want anybody to do that to your child.' She just laid it out cold. And she said, and it's so true, 'I can't stop everybody, but I can stop you.' And she did."

Maloy said she believes that Maggie gathered the strength to recover, face her attacker, and go on to live a happy and productive life due in large part to the "helpers" who came alongside her and the family immediately following the attack and later on as she grew up and developed as a person. Maloy said the law enforcement officers, EMTs, doctors, nurses, family, friends, teachers, and classmates all played key roles in helping Maggie recover and eventually thrive.

"I'm here today to support the survivors of sexual violence and the policies, practices, and laws that improve the system's response to the victims of sexual violence," Harper Lee told the audience that gathered in the OSUM Alber Student Center last Monday. "I'm also here today to speak on behalf of thousands of victims of sexual violence that I've worked with over the past 28 years and from my own personal experiences."

Harper Lee was the victim of abuse by her stepfather between the ages of 5 and 15, she told the group.

"I speak out about this because I was taught as a child that there should be some sort of a stigma associated with this and I still can't tell you the number of people that I meet, men and women, including two that just came forward last week, state legislators who are survivors of sexual violence," she said. "My opinion is that speaking out and sharing our experiences will help eliminate that stigma."

Since its founding in 2000, Harper Lee said the OCVJC has provided free legal assistance "to protect and enforce the rights of nearly 3,000 crime victims" and advocated for legislation on behalf of crime victims in Ohio, including the Marsy's Law constitutional amendment that was approved by voters in 2017.

Email: ecarter@gannett.com | Twitter: @AndrewACCarter

This article originally appeared on Marion Star: Take Back the Night: Marion event raises awareness of sexual violence