Palestinians working to end domestic violence travel to Camden to learn from Finding Our Voices

Finding Our Voices visit by Middle East activists was second arranged by the World Affairs Council of Maine

CAMDEN — Palestinians from the West Bank working to curb gender-based violence in their communities met with Finding Our Voices on Aug. 6 for guidance on ways to do that.

The delegation’s Camden stop was part of a three-week, State Department-sponsored tour of the US that included visits with groups combating domestic violence in Washington D.C., Minnesota, and Las Vegas. Allison Hodgkins, executive director of the World Affairs Council of Maine, said the Palestinian group’s “focused goal” in developing an effective public awareness campaign is what led her to want to include a visit with Finding Our Voices on the Maine leg of the tour.

Finding Our Voices is the grassroots nonprofit carrying out ground-breaking, survivor-powered campaigns to break the silence of domestic abuse across Maine. Their signature public awareness program is posters and bookmarks featuring the faces and voices of 45 named, Maine women survivors aged 18 to 84 including Gov. Janet T. Mills.

“The State Department,” Hodgkins told Finding Our Voices CEO and Founder Patrisha McLean, “was very interested in having the [Palestinian] group meet you and members of your organization based on feedback” from Iraqi women’s rights activists who visited Finding Our Voices last summer. Both visits were arranged through the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program and took place in the Camden Public Library. Hodgkins said the women Iraqi leaders “really appreciated the ideas generated during your meeting as they were things that they could replicate upon returning home.”

The Palestinian activists who journeyed to Camden for ideas to bring back home were Rateeba Abu Ghosh, a politician as well as chair and co-founder of the Sharek Youth Forum who shared that she is a survivor of domestic violence; Suheir Farraj who heads a nonprofit improving depictions of women in the media;  and Montaser Abusharar, an officer in an anti-domestic violence unit of the Palestinian Civil Police. A translator from Washington D.C. facilitated communication between Finding Our Voices and the male police officer. Four other members of the group including a second translator were unable to make it to Camden due to flight delays.

Joining McLean with Finding Our Voices were the group’s Operations Manager Mary Kamradt, and 84-year-old Mary Lou Smith whose quote on the Finding Our Voices posters and bookmarks is “It’s never too late to leave.”

Gathered around a table in the library, Rateeba Abu Ghosh shook her head as she looked through the Finding Our Voices bookmarks featuring 45 Maine survivors. “On every one of these bookmarks,” she said, “I see a person back home that I know, who is a leader in our movement [to end domestic violence]. The women back home refuse to say they are survivors. If they broke their silence everything would change.”

Singling out the Finding Our Voices bookmark featuring a photo portrait of Gov. Mills and her quote “Years ago a man I loved threatened my life,” Abu Ghosh said,  “Women [Palestinian] leaders publicly breaking their silence] will be the key. Other survivors will look at that and think, ‘If this women is open to say it, that means I could do it too.”

Abu Ghosh echoed the conviction and mission of Finding Our Voices in Maine when she said of her goal for her own country thousands of miles away, “Breaking the silence is the most important way to combat domestic abuse.”

The Palestinian visitors pointed out particular challenges they face in curbing domestic violence back home, including a clan-based society and permission in the law for men to be violent to women including with honor killings. Honor killings, according to the Middle East Institute, punishes women for bringing “disgrace” upon their families, including “by refusing forced marriages, being the victim of rape, getting divorced, having sexual relationships, or engaging in adultery.” By many accounts, this kind of femicide is on the rise in the Middle East and South Asia. Another challenge to bringing safety to girls and women in the Palestinian territories, according to the police officer in the group Abusharar, is “working with very old legislation, that includes the lack of domestic abuse laws, in the absence of a legislative body in the Palestinian authority.”

Abusharar, who is also a trained lawyer, said “The Palestinian authority has been around for 30 years and the family protection unit [in his department] was only established in 2008 so it is quite recent.” Abu Ghosh and Farraj cited further barriers to meaningful change around domestic violence of “no political will”, as well as the influence of fundamentalists.

Abu Ghosh said, “You have a lot of people using religion as a way to oppose us, saying that by standing up against domestic violence we are trying to destroy the holy relation between men and women, and also taking on values coming from the west.”

But the biggest challenge of all to making a dent in domestic violence, according to the group, is the occupation of Israel. Abusharar said “the courts can’t implement our laws, and police can’t reach victims of domestic violence due to checkpoints and isolation.”

“Women keep living with their abusive husband,” said Farraj, “because they feel while they are at home they can protect their family from the Israel occupation, for instance making sure their daughters are not going out at night.”

The Palestinian women said a public awareness campaign opening the eyes of their community to the domestic violence all around them is critical: “The most important thing now,” said Farraj, “is not giving services to the 10 percent who tell you they are abused, but providing services to the 90 percent who don’t tell you that, before they become [death] statistics.”

And why with military violence raging in their streets is this group focusing on domestic violence?  ith the latter scourge, Abu Ghosh said, women “have an enemy living with them, sleeping with them in the same bed.” She said “We believe we will have our State very soon, and [if we work now to get a plan in place to curb domestic violence]  when we do have our State we will be prepared.”

Mary Lou Smith endured 43 years of domestic abuse by a University of Southern Maine professor. She thought nothing of making the two hour drive to Camden from her home in Scarborough to be part of the gathering at the Camden Public Library. “Our time with our new Palestinian friends,” she said, “proves that domestic violence is borderless. The goodbye hugs between Rateeba and I were of two survivors who understand each other and who are both committed to helping sister victims of domestic abuse.”