Timothy Chapman / Vaquero Radio
A survivor shared her story on how the university helped her get back on her feet after she lost her mother and children to domestic violence during an awareness event last week.
UTRGV observed Domestic Violence Awareness Month through an event called Vaqueros Stand Up Against Domestic Violence last Wednesday in the University Ballroom on the Edinburg campus.
Domestic violence survivor Amelia Flores was a guest speaker at the event and has shared her story for years after she was shot and her mother and children were murdered by her second husband.
She spoke about the love she had for her children even though her first child was a result of rape from her first husband.
“I was severely physically assaulted and sexually assaulted and that just happened a few days after I got married,” Flores said. “I didn’t say anything because I was very ashamed. First off, how can my husband rape me? That was what everybody used to think back then.”
Flores said when she was getting ready to attend the event, she was called by
Palacios and asked if she identified as a victim or survivor.
She said she didn’t give it much thought after the phone call, saying she once identified as both, but now she identifies as “victorious.”
“My message is the following: although all of you are going to have trauma, your trauma will be different but it’s trauma all the same,” Flores said. “What will be life changing is how you react to it. You have the power to turn that trauma into something negative. I could have ended my life, I could have just stopped, but I decided to turn it into something positive.”
Domestic violence ranges from physical and verbal abuse in any relationship and according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline website, an average of 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the U.S. and more than 12 million women and men over the course of a single year.
UTRGV Assistant Chief of Police Van Slusser said domestic violence can occur in many different ways through different people in a person’s life, such as relationship violence in dating or marriage, and family violence, whether it be from siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, etc.
He encourages people to recognize if they are in danger and to speak out for help.
“And that’s all we’re asking them to do, is to reach out to a counselor, to an advocate, to one of the many community service agencies out here, and then they’ll help them make those next steps,” Slusser said. “So, that’s what we’re really trying to do here is bring awareness and the ultimate goal of ending domestic violence.”
He said the UTRGV Police Department is on duty 24/7, 365 days a year and always has officers on campus ready to provide safety and security.
“We have our own crime victims specialist in our department, which will immediately hook that survivor into that support pipeline so that they can also begin the healing process and get the help that they need,” Slusser said.
Associate Director of Special Programs for the Office of Advocacy and Violence Prevention (OAVP) Priscilla Palacios explained how the OAVP helps students and staff.
“We are providing advocacy for our students, staff and faculty,” Palacios said. “We provide them with information and resources on what they can do on campus. We explain to them the processes and procedures of how to file a complaint on campus, how to file a complaint with law enforcement, or how to file or how to reach out to different resources in the community or departments on campus.”
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 800-799-7233.
The next Vaqueros Stand Up Against Domestic Violence event will be on the Brownsville campus in late October.
This is Timothy Chapman for Vaquero Radio.
