It isn’t a dirty secret anymore
The box of tiny, battery-operated candles went fast, as more than 200 people streamed into the homey headquarters of the Covina Woman’s Club last week for a vigil protesting domestic violence.
Visitors filed past a table lined with brochures about domestic violence programs. Then they faced a giant photo collage of Monica Thomas-Harris, an Upland mother of two, who was killed last month by her estranged husband. The killing generated headlines because it occurred after he was released from jail to get his “affairs in order” before beginning a prison term for terrorizing her.
Monica’s friends and family filled most of the chairs on one side of the hall. Across the aisle were dozens of elderly women with purple ribbons -- symbolizing bruises left by a batterer -- pinned to their chests.
The family’s pastor prayed; Monica’s father, sister and daughter shared pleasant memories, and more than 20 visitors lined up to speak.
“It’s not a dirty little secret anymore,” a former police officer told the crowd. “Open your eyes, watch out for your daughters.”
A counselor from a battered-women’s shelter reminded the crowd that “we all have a Monica in our lives.”
I tried to connect the speakers to the groups listed as sponsors -- the YMCA’s battered-women’s shelter; Cal Poly Pomona’s Stop Violence project; the National Organization for Women; Delta Kappa Gamma teachers’ sorority; Republican Women Federated; and 28 other women’s clubs in the San Gabriel Valley.
Leading the unlikely alliance, the 110-year-old Covina Woman’s Club. Motto: Gently to hear -- Kindly to judge.
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When I hear “woman’s club” I think old ladies with tight perms and expensive jewelry, more comfortable planning a luncheon menu than raising a ruckus over domestic abuse.
I said as much to Covina Woman’s Club Vice President Kim Plater. She laughed. The average age of her club’s members “is probably mid-70s,” she said. “We have one who’s 55, and one who’s 60. . . . We also have one who joined the club in 1925.”
They’re not “just making centerpieces for luncheons,” she said. “Though I’m very involved in that.” Their bake sales and fashion shows raise money to buy library books and fund music scholarships, help battered-women’s shelters and homeless programs.
This year, the club has taken on domestic violence. And with its president and vice president both retired cops, the hearing and judging are neither gentle nor kind.
“If this guy had kidnapped some old lady at the market and killed her, the whole world would be outraged,” club President Alice Slaughter said. But because Monica’s killer was her husband, “it seems less important somehow. We want that to stop.”
Slaughter and Plater met when they were police officers on the Cal Poly Pomona campus. Plater went on to become its chief. Both retired in 2002.
Imagine Thelma and Louise, as senior citizens, on the right side of the law. Plater, 60, is short and intense, with a long blond ponytail. Slaughter, 66, is stately and serious -- the growl to Plater’s roar.
Slaughter handled battering cases at Cal Poly Pomona. But this case hit her especially hard. Her daughter had worked with Monica, witnessed her husband’s parking lot rages and accompanied Monica to the police after he kidnapped her, bound her with duct tape and threatened her with a gun.
The husband, Curtis Harris, was arrested after the episode and locked up; he pleaded no contest to possession of a firearm in exchange for 16 months in jail. Curtis was released, despite a recommendation by the Probation Department that he be kept in jail. Two weeks later, he accosted Monica on her way to work and took her to a Whittier hotel, where he fatally shot her and then killed himself.
“We always believed that the system would work, and it didn’t work for Monica,” Slaughter said. “Having it fall apart like it did when it got to court just blew our mind.”
She and Plater began hounding police and prosecutors for answers, and sharing the story in their San Gabriel Valley social circle. “Everybody that heard it got angry,” Plater said. Age, race, income, politics . . . none of it seemed to matter. “We kept hearing from people who wanted to help.”
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The two women realized they had struck a nerve at their first stop, a meeting of the San Gabriel Valley Federation of Women’s Clubs, which represents 29 clubs and hundreds of women. “After we finished, one member in her 70s came up with tears in her eyes,” Plater recalled. “She said in 1954 her sister was murdered by her husband and no one talked about it. She said, ‘I’m ready to help.’ ”
When Mary Gates, a former Woman’s Club president, pitched it to her organization, the East San Gabriel Valley Republican Women Federated, the members didn’t hesitate. They began calling in political chips, and several elected officials responded, sending emissaries to the vigil with proclamations and promises of legislation. The group, which was already helping fund a women’s shelter, announced the vigil in its newsletter, under the banner “Republican Women Care.”
“The only way politicians pay attention is through money and numbers,” Gates said. “We hope we’re showing that a variety of women care a great deal about this. Who knows, maybe we can save a life. Or more.”
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