Women Stage Abuse Protest in Defiance of D.A.

In defiance of the district attorney’s office, members of the National Organization for Women displayed more than 50 T-shirts covered with hand-painted recollections of sexual violence, hung on a clothesline at the Ventura County Government Center.

Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, who is sponsoring Victims’ Rights Week, asked the Simi-Conejo chapter of NOW not to display its Clothesline Project at Monday’s information fair. He argued that some of the T-shirt scrawlings could be offensive to residents attending the midday fair.

But when NOW organizers realized that the prosecutors could not keep them off public property, they set up the exhibit anyway.

“Women have been hanging out their laundry for centuries, to dry and expose it to the air and sun as a means of further cleansing and freshening the clothes,” said Paige Moser, a project organizer. “The Clothesline Project hangs society’s dirty laundry out for all to see. The experience of these women shouldn’t be censored.”

The project has been shown without incident at several schools and churches in the county.

From a series of clotheslines hung between trees, pained and personal accounts by county residents warn onlookers about abuse.

“I thought it was my fault,” read one.

“I was 13. He was 37 and my new stepfather,” read another.

Although not appreciated by Bradbury, Oak View resident Pam McCay, 35, thought the display was powerful. She viewed the exhibit on her way to the courthouse to file a restraining order against an abusive ex-boyfriend.

“I wanted to cry when I saw some of these,” said McCay, who added that her ex-boyfriend had beat her. “It gives me the chills and makes my heart hurt--so many women, so many ruined lives. I have scars all over my body.”

She found one T-shirt, which spoke about becoming an ex-victim, particularly inspirational.

“That’s what I want to be, an ex-victim.”

The display brought tears to the eyes of juror Debra Riddell during a court recess.

“I know the hurt, it never goes away,” said Riddell, who said she was raped four times by a family friend when she was 6. “I just hope people look and realize this is serious. So serious.”

Riddell said she didn’t understand Bradbury’s objections to the display.

“It’s not offensive, it’s from the heart,” she said. “It needs to be shown, not hidden.”

Even participants of the information fair, who had received Bradbury’s seal of approval, were perplexed by his decision.

“I saw the Clothesline Project in Salt Lake City,” said Lee Reid, a therapist with the Domestic Violence Recovery Center, a nonprofit organization in Simi Valley. “I didn’t think it would be censored here in Ventura County. I’m very surprised. I really am.”

Lela Henke-Dobroth, who heads the district attorney’s criminal division, said she had never seen the display, but felt it was inappropriate.

“I have no desire to see it,” she said. “Our focus today is victims’ rights only.”

Jeffrey G. Bennett, who heads the district attorney’s bureau of investigation, viewed the display quietly. “Our position hasn’t changed,” Bennett said, adding he thought the exhibit was “interesting.”