Nearly one in four women have experienced violence by a spouse or a boyfriend, according to futureswithoutviolence.org.
On April 8, a horrifying situation occurred when a Ferris graduate and alumnna of the social sorority Phi Sigma Sigma-Epsilon Beta, Lorian Handy, was tragically murdered by her husband, Jason Handy, when he shot her multiple times and then shot and killed himself in their White Lake home. Lorian’s 8-year-old son was home at the time of the murder-suicide, WXYZ in Detroit reported.
My heart dropped when I received the news from one of my sorority sisters. This was a shock to all of us—an earth shattering, horrific shock. I had never met Lori, but I have heard how wonderful and caring of a person she was.
Sadly, more than three women a day are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice statistics.
What happened to Lori happens far too often. My heart aches for her son who no longer has his mother, her family who lost a daughter and sister and for my sorority sisters who lost a sister and friend. What her son witnessed will affect him for the rest of his life, and that saddens me greatly.
About 15.5 million children in the United States live in families in which partner violence occurred at least once in the past year, and 7 million children live in families in which severe partner violence occurred, according to an article from the Journal of Interpersonal Violence titled “Violent Childhood Experiences and the Risk of Intimate Partner Violence in Adults: Assessment in a Large Health Maintenance Organization.”
It’s not fair that so many questions will remain unanswered for Lori’s family and friends, nor is it fair that her son will grow up without his mother.
With “Take Back the Night” coming up, it’s imperative to raise awareness on domestic violence and what can be done to help prevent it and to know the signs of domestic violence for others and yourself.
In a perfect world, domestic violence would not exist. Sadly, that is not the case.
In honor of Lori’s memory and the memory of those taken too soon by domestic violence, the best we can do is educate each other to look out for the signs, learn about the “cycle of abuse” and reach out when we believe someone we know
is in trouble.