Dede Bartlett-New Canaan Marks Domestic Violence Awareness Month
For a sweeping view of domestic violence’s prevalence here, our town may not need the 1,000 purple pinwheels now stuck into the knoll outside Vine Cottage, each representing a resident who called New Canaan Police in the past decade because of violence in their homes, according to one local expert. To know just what domestic violence looks like, New Canaan also doesn’t need to recognize October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Dede Bartlett, co-chair of the New Canaan Domestic Violence Partnership, said Wednesday morning. “I think Ray Rice has done that for us,” Bartlett told dozens of New Canaan High School students who gathered in the main lobby with teachers, faculty, administrators, SROs and town officials for a proclamation reading. “How many of you saw the video clip of the Baltimore Ravens football player punch his girlfriend, knock her out and drag her by the hair out of the elevator?” Bartlett said, prompting everyone to raise a hand. “Yes, you, me and about 50 million other Americans saw that tape, and maybe for a whole lot of folks, it was the first time that they saw what domestic violence looked like.
