The Outrage of Partner Violence:
(Note: The term partner violence is used to describe a pattern of coercive control by one current or former intimate/romantic partner against the other, involving physically, psychologically, sexually and/or financially abusive behaviors.)
The intention of all forms of terrorism is to control through fear. In the context of partner violence, however, the terrorism is very specifically focused and personal. Perpetrators know and have often been involved in every intimate detail of their victims’ lives and the lives of their children, family members and friends. They know the victims’ work, exercise, and shopping routines. They know the victims’ health issues, account numbers and financial dealings. Perpetrators not only use this personal information to terrorize their victims; they use it to navigate and manipulate the criminal justice system as well.
People who experience partner violence, directly or through someone they care about, are often outraged by the perpetrators’ ability to avoid consequences for their actions and to continue terrorizing victims for extended periods of time. Victims become frustrated and discouraged by the barriers and safety gaps they encounter when they seek help. They often feel that even the professionals whose job it is to protect them don’t take threats against them seriously.
OutrageUs was born out of the desire to channel the concern, frustration and outrage that many victims and helping professionals feel into social action and effective strategies to address one of the most prevalent and lethal violations of basic human rights, partner violence.
What is OutrageUs?
“I feel like I’m on a small boat waiting on a monster to come up from the water below.”
Amanda Ross’ text message to a friend a few days before she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who was stalking her.
OutrageUs’ is a small web-based nonprofit that produces mini-documentaries and creates tools, informational materials and research informed strategies to help victims and communities stop partner abuse. Many individuals and communities want to do a better job of preventing partner abuse and helping victims – they just don’t know how. OutrageUs is advocating for change in how communities understand and respond to partner abuse by providing them with the multimedia resources they need for education and the development of strong networks of support and protection.
Since its inception in 2009, OutrageUs has produced eight mini-documentaries that feature the compelling stories of survivors, judges, prosecutors, officers and advocates who work to combat partner abuse every day. The films, as well as a variety of interview excerpts, informational materials, resources and links to promote awareness and safety, are accessible free-of-charge at www.outrageus.org. The films are short, three to seventeen minutes, so they can be used to prompt discussion in support groups and educational forums. Discussion guides to accompany the videos are posted at www.outrageus.org, along with fact sheets on stalking and coercive control (for victims, advocates, judges, law enforcement, health providers and mental health providers) that can be used for educational handouts.
OutrageUs wants victims, like Amanda, to feel like they are surrounded by knowledgeable helpers on a rescue ship rather than alone at sea battling a monster from below.
Acknowledgement:
OutrageUs intends to complement and build on the considerable advances made by many other committed individuals and groups to address partner violence. We engage in this work with full acknowledgement of the many extraordinary victims, survivors and professionals who paved the way for our efforts.
Who is OutrageUs?
OutrageUs Board of Directors:
Teri Faragher, M.S.W., is the President and Treasurer of OutrageUs. She has worked as a victim and community advocate to end interpersonal and family violence for over 40 years. She served as the Executive Director of the Domestic Violence Prevention Board, a local coordinating council on family violence in Lexington, Kentucky from 1986 to 2015. Ms. Faragher has spearheaded a variety of collaborative community projects aimed at protecting and supporting victims and holding offenders accountable. These projects include efforts to: increase arrests and enforce protective orders, develop supervised visitation services, identify and address high risk cases, provide frontline advocacy services to victims and conduct fatality and near fatality reviews. She has conducted hundreds of trainings on partner violence, children exposed to partner violence, stalking, the maltreatment of vulnerable adults, and developing a coordinated community response (CCR) to intimate partner and sexual violence. She has authored and co-authored a number of articles, including articles on domestic violence and guns, stalking, law enforcement response to domestic violence, dating violence and civil protective orders. She was the primary author of a model protocol for the development of CCRs and a co-author of the 2009 Kentucky Civil Protective Order Study.
TK Logan, Ph.D. is a professor at the University of Kentucky, Department of Behavioral Science. Her research focuses on gender-based violence including coercive control, sexual assault and stalking, firearm-related risks, personal safety planning, effectiveness of protective orders, and substance abuse disorder treatment program outcomes. Dr. Logan is an author on over 200 research articles and book chapters and serves on the editorial board of four journals. Dr. Logan’s books include: Women and Victimization: Contributing Factors, Interventions, and Implications (American Psychological Association Press) and Partner Stalking: How Women Respond, Cope, and Survive (Springer Publisher). Dr. Logan is also involved with a several community boards and national organizations working to prevent gender-based violence. Dr. Logan is also the lead on outcome research for 5 substance use disorder programs. She serves as the Vice President of OutrageUs.
Anita Capillo, R.N., B.S.N., SANE is the Secretary of OutrageUs. She has worked in the fields of partner violence and sexual assault for over 35 years. She served as the SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) Program Manager with the Lexington Division of Police for eighteen years and previously was the Coordinator of the Domestic Violence Victims’ Advocate Program in the Fayette County Attorney’s office for 12 years. She has presented numerous trainings on partner violence and sexual assault for a variety of disciplines. Her nursing experience includes the areas of labor and delivery, emergency/triage, pediatric and adult medicine. Ms. Capillo is or has been a member of the International Association of Forensic Nurses, the Emergency Nurses Association, the American Nurses Association, Sigma Theta Nu, the International Honor Society of Nursing, and the Kentucky Nurses Association for many years. She served on the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs SART (Sexual Assault Response Team) Advisory Committee, the Fayette County Domestic Violence Prevention Board, and is retired as the Clinical Coordinator for the Children’s Advocacy Center of the Bluegrass. She currently provides education for nurses on forensic examination of pediatric patients who have experienced sexual abuse. She co-authored several articles on sexual assault and the SANE program published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence and the Journal of Forensic Nursing.
Hilary Bickel Sykes is a survivor, independent legislative advocate, and public speaker on stalking and other forms of gender-based violence. She serves on the Fayette County Domestic and Sexual Violence Prevention Coalition, where she is a member of the Fatality and Near Fatality Review Team and co-chair of the Advocacy Committee. She also serves on the VAWA Implementation Plan Committee and is a member of the Administrative Offices of the Courts VAWA Needs Assessment Advisory Team. She formerly served as co-chair of the Kentucky Attorney General’s Survivors Council and was the recipient of the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Program’s 2022 Sammy award. She is the co-host and editor of OutrageUs’ Surviving Stalking podcast.
OutrageUs Collaborators:
Doug Boyd received a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University and serves as the Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries. Previously he managed the Digital Program for the University of Alabama Libraries, served as the Director of the Kentucky Oral History Commission and prior to that as the Senior Archivist for the oral history and folklife collections at the Kentucky Historical Society. Boyd serves as the co-general editor for the Kentucky Remembered series for the University Press of Kentucky, the digital initiatives editor for the Oral History Review, serves on the executive council of the Oral History Association, and as chair of the Oral History Section for the Society of American Archivists. Doug Boyd received his undergraduate degree in history from Denison University in Granville, OH. His most recent book, published in 2011, is Crawfish Bottom: Recovering A Lost Kentucky Community.
Walter Brock, Walter Brock Productions, is a critically acclaimed documentary producer/director whose work has been screened and broadcast all over the world. His most recent film LAND (And How It Gets That Way) about preservation, property rights, people and the land, was broadcast nationally on PBS in the spring of 2005. If I Can’t Do It (1998) received numerous awards and recognition, including an Emmy Nomination, a Dupont-Columbia Award and was screened on the prestigious PBS/POV Documentary series. An earlier film, A Season in Hell, about a young Kentucky woman’s struggle with eating disorders, was featured in POV’s 1992 season, won Best Documentary at the USA and Atlanta film festivals, and was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and The Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, France.
Survivors of Stalking
OutrageUs acknowledges the brave survivors who shared their stories and relived the most painful events of their lives in the hope that it will help and inspire others who have or are still experiencing the personal terrorism of partner violence.
What’s Next for OutrageUs?
OutrageUs will continue to utilize film and other media to bring awareness to some of the most misunderstood areas of partner abuse and to develop and provide information, tools and support to individuals and communities who are working to end abuse. The founders of OutrageUs believe that when people understand the realities of partner violence and have the appropriate tools to address it, they are inspired to act with humanity, determination and unity to stop it.
OutrageUs Mission and Purposes:
To increase public understanding, outrage and activism related to partner violence, which denies people’s basic human rights to freedom and self-fulfillment, and to empower individuals and groups to create meaningful and positive change in communities, governments and criminal justice systems to restore these rights.
The purposes of OutrageUs are to:
Promote system accountability by (a) increasing the visibility of survivors of partner violence who are willing to share their experiences of victimization and their efforts to seek justice; and (b) creating meaningful dialogue and innovative working collaborations between survivors, institutions, and local communities.
Increase public awareness of partner violence and public activism to address the injustice of partner violence through education, training, media, and the creative use of technology.
Develop a more useful and comprehensive array of resources for prosecutors, attorneys, police, advocates, and others interested in addressing partner violence with a specific emphasis on issues that are often misunderstood and unaddressed, such as stalking, dating abuse and intimate partner sexual assault.