Sheldon-Williams leadership group puts spotlight on domestic violence
Students to raise awareness and funds for YWCA Regina white ribbon effort
Brandee-Lynn Quewezance braved the stage on Monday to tell hundreds of her Sheldon-Williams Collegiate peers about her experience with domestic violence.
She described, as a child, sitting at the top of the staircase and listening to her parents’ arguments.
“I was really used to doors breaking, holes in the walls,” said Quewezance.
“This one night, it kind of went overboard. I heard my mom get physically abused for the first time. I’d been really comfortable with tables getting thrown around and stuff; I thought that was normal.
“Social services started coming to ask me questions at school and pulling me out of class ... but at the time I thought this was normal, like, ‘They’re checking up on my family again.’ ”
Quewezance shared her story at an assembly to launch the high school’s Night Light Initiative.
Over the next six weeks, the students hope to raise $25,000 for YWCA Regina by June 1, finishing the campaign with a 24-hour awake-a-thon.
Hearing Quewezance’s story for the first time, her 40 fellow students in Leadership 30 decided to focus on domestic violence as this year’s cause.
“We try to look for something that we have connections to and we found that surprisingly a lot of students in our class were affected by domestic violence and family violence,” said student Josh Anderson.
For Anderson, that was by way of his grandmother, who only told her family last year that her first husband abused her.
“She’s like 90 now, so that’s 60, 70 years later, and it took her all those years to be able to talk about it,” said Anderson. “It still was super heavy to her, like she could barely talk about it still.
“Coming from my grandma, who’s someone that I look up to especially, it was really hard.”
A 2017 Statistics Canada report showed Saskatchewan has the highest domestic violence rates in Canada, with 480 per 100,000 people experiencing family violence.
It’s a rate more than double the national average.
In 2015, 4,563 victims reported physical or sexual assaults to the police in Saskatchewan.
Kendra Strong- Garcia of YWCA Regina said two of its local emergency shelters housed 700 women and children in 2016. She also said the YWCA turns away more than 2,000 people per year.
Carla Beck, MLA for Regina Lakeview, told the students something similar as a former manager of Transition House. She said in her two years working at that shelter, there were more than 1,000 women and children on the wait-list.
This is the third annual campaign for the Sheldon-Williams Leadership 30 class.
Students raised $16,806 two years ago for the Regina Open Door Society to offer English classes to its clients, and last year raised $19,215 for Mobile Crisis Regina while encouraging people to talk openly about mental health.
This year’s campaign is with the purpose of helping YWCA Regina to bring the white ribbon campaign to Saskatchewan.
The Toronto-based white ribbon campaign encourages men to not commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women.
“Even with the sky-high rates ... not enough people are talking about it, no one really knows that we have the highest rates and there’s just not the awareness around it that people need to come out and speak about this,” said Anderson.
Quewezance’s last words to her school community were, “You can get really comfortable with someone abusing you,” and “love shouldn’t hurt at all.”
To donate to the Sheldon-Williams Night Light Initiative, visit nightlightswc.com.