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Sheriff's Office shines purple for domestic violence awareness

Gaston Gazette - 10/14/2018

Oct. 14--One of the inevitable hardships of Rett Waggoner's job is adding names to a tree at her office every October.

The tree, a skinny set of twigs chopped down by a Gaston County Sheriff's Office deputy and stood up in a lobby across from the jail, is wrapped in purple and decorated with index cards. Its purpose is not to be festive.

Instead, it stands to recount the sad tales of lives lost to domestic violence.

"We have ages 2-80 on this tree," said Waggoner, the Sheriff's Office domestic violence court advocate. "We have strangulation victims, we have drowning victims, firearm victims, knife victims."

The Sheriff's Office is lit up purple this year, as it is every October in honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The office has two court advocates and four officers whose primary responsibility is to serve paperwork against alleged abusers.

But through September, Waggoner says her office has processed more than 1,100 restraining orders this year, an uptick from 2017.

It's a troubling situation for everybody involved.

"A lot of times there's a helplessness in it," Assistant Chief Deputy Garry Williams said. "You see a person in domestic violence and they don't know how to get out of it. You talk about trying to break out of it and trying to do change, but most of them are scared to take that first step because the spouse is the one who has that job, insurance, the place to stay and you're thinking about uprooting everything they knew just to get away from it. And sometimes as soon as it's over they say, 'I'm sorry I'll never do it again' and that's when the victim goes back and repeats the cycle."

The theme behind this year's campaign is the myths behind domestic violence.

Waggoner says sometimes people assume it's an issue that affects primarily only drug users or people in low-income households. It impacts all demographics, she said.

"It covers all spectrums, ages, races, all demographics basically" Waggoner said. "Low income, high income, it doesn't matter your status."

She believes the easiest way to reduce domestic violence is to "erase the stigma."

"It is not easy to leave," Waggoner said. "This is somebody you love and care about, and you want to believe that they can change, but they can't necessarily change without a lot of help."

You can reach Adam Lawson at 704-869-1842 or on Twitter @GazetteLawson.

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(c)2018 Gaston Gazette, Gastonia, N.C.

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