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Oct. 4--A woman stood and cried in front of a small crowd gathered at the federal courthouse on Bay Street on Tuesday evening.
A month ago, the woman who went by a pseudonym "Hope," grabbed a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and her Bible and left her abusive husband.
She found refuge at a shelter for women and children in Beaufort run by Citizens Opposed to Domestic Abuse.
"They empower women, enrich us, let us know that there's another way to do things," she said of the shelter. "I am learning to love myself again."
Similar stories, thousands of them, weave in and out of Beaufort and South Carolina each year.
October is national Domestic Violence Awareness month and programs, such as Tuesday's candlelight vigil down Bay Street, will take place across the state to shed light on the growing social issue.
South Carolina ranks sixth in the country in deaths by domestic violence, according to Bonnie Lawrance, executive director of Citizens Opposed to Domestic Abuse. Beaufort County ranks 10th in the state for most domestic violence incidents, she added.
Since last October, five women and one unborn child have died as a result of domestic violence in Jasper, Beaufort, Colleton and Hampton counties, Lawrance said.
Within the same district, she said that last year the shelter housed 207 women and children, offered outreach to 750 women and children and fielded more than 5,000 hotline calls.
Angie McCall-Tanner, a deputy solicitor who also attended the vigil, said that in 2004, the judicial circuit that includes Beaufort, Hampton, Colleton and Allendale counties reported 1,000 more incidents than the district that includes Columbia.
Beaufort police Chief Jeff Dowling said Beaufort police handles between 60 and 80 domestic abuse incidents a month.
"Domestic violence ... has become so commonplace that it often goes unnoticed," said Sgt. Maj. Scott Booth, Force Recruit Training Battalion officer with Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island.
Booth works with Marines after a domestic violence incident is reported. He said that the number of domestic violence cases within Beaufort's three bases is on the rise as a result of several factors including an increase in operational tempo during wartime and Marines getting married at a young age.
He said that the numbers for domestic abuse incidents on the bases this year weren't in but that they are up from last year's 98 incidents and the 74 incidents in 2004 and 43 in 2003.
"I think the turnout was very good," Lawrance said of the ninth annual awareness vigil sponsored by Citizens Opposed to Domestic Abuse and Marine Corps Community Services. "People were really listening to what people had to say, and, I think, committed to making a change."
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Beaufort Gazette, S.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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