GUELPH – The theme of this year’s Take Back the Night rally was “Break the silence; stop the violence.”
With the assistance of OPIRG’s Sound of the Drum drumming group and about 100 marchers, the rally was raucous, lively and loud.
“We think silence will save us. It doesn’t,” said Cindy McMann, public educator with Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis who organized the event on Sept. 19 that started at Marianne’s Park and marched through the downtown core.
“Speaking up doesn’t protect us either,” she continued, listing judgement, verbal abuse, violence, and lost family relationships among the consequences some women have experience after speaking up.
It’s no wonder many victims of sexual violence don’t report it to police – or even tell their family.
And yet many women who have been abused are often blamed for keeping silent if the abuser goes on to abuse someone else.
“We are blamed for our silence as much as our speech. We need systems to speak up and have our backs.
“We need to talk about consent in kindergarten all the way to Grade 12,” she said.
“We need to talk about restorative justice. We need to declare violence against women the epidemic it is, and then fund it like it is.
“This is the silence we need to break.”
Keyote speaker Amber Spence said she was silent about her abusive experiences most of her life.
The first time happened when she was so young she can’t really pin down an age.
Smells and sensations would trigger a reaction in her she could never understand.
When she was 14, she was “drugged and passed around” at a party.
She didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what happened and was met with resistance when she tried to tell people.
It wasn’t until her fourth year at university when she read someone else’s story of being raped, “and her words could have been mine,” Spence said.
“I didn’t realize others felt this way too.
“When you are silent, you really are alone,” she continued. “Building connections breaks the silence…. and leads to healing.
“I can finally see a future with joy.”
It has taken time, counselling and connecting with other women to understand the triggers that would prompt anxiety attacks, she said.
This was her first public speaking event, and she was able to do it because of her newfound strength.
“If I was still trapped in silence, I don’t think I would still be here,” she said, adding she would cut herself as a teen as a way to feel after making herself numb and silent for so many years.
“I agreed to speak today for teenage me,” Spence said.
“Help us break the silence – together.”
The group then marched through downtown Guelph carrying banners and shouting slogans like ‘Girls just want to walk home,’ and ‘We have the power, we have the right, the streets are ours, Take Back the Night.’
