MILLVILLE — On Aug. 18, 2008, Donna Higginbotham was beaten into a wheelchair by her ex-husband.
She spent six months in that wheelchair, all the time fighting back through the courts.
By the time she recovered, her ex-husband had already been sentenced to 13 years in prison.
On Friday night, she was able to stand up and tell her story to a crowd assembled at Jaycee Plaza.
“I’m a victor, not a victim; I fought back,” said Higginbotham, a Vineland resident. “I was kicked, beaten, choked, stomped — everything he could do, he did — and left for dead.
“You are not alone,” she told the crowd of approximately 50 people, all gathered for the Domestic Violence Sunset Walk organized by the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office and the Center for Family Services’ SERVE program.
“I stayed on that case, called every day. Stay on the case. Work with the prosecutor’s office, and they will work with you.
“When I first started in the court, (the prosecutor’s office) told me it would take two years, but I stayed on the case and he was in prison within five months.”
The walk, itself, took the 50 participants — most of them volunteers or members of SERVE, or the prosecutor’s office of the victim/witness advocate, and many of them survivors of domestic abuse — up and down High Street, through the revelry and music that accompanies most Third Fridays in Millville.
That was no coincidence, according to SERVE Program Director Gina Ridge.
“October is national domestic violence awareness month. One in every four women are or will be victims of domestic abuse in their lifetime, and that’s just not talked about enough,” said Ridge, walking down High Street while a jazz band played across the street.
“People need to know they can stand up, and this is a good time to hold the walk — people see us out here, they stop, they ask us questions.”
Among the various elected officials to address the walkers was Freeholder Jane Jannarone, who took the opportunity to announce a new program she is spearheading to help victims of domestic abuse navigate the court system, called Assist.
Jannarone stated she already has offices set up for the program within Cumberland County Community Church, in Millville, and hopes to have regular office hours there by January.
“This is a very important issue for me — I myself have been a victim of domestic abuse,” Jannarone told the crowd.
“The program will give victims help in any way it can throughout the legal process; like pro bono help.
“When you see people getting 50 years for embezzling money, and seven years for murdering their spouse, something has to change.”
That last line garnered a large applause around Jaycee Plaza, and may have been a reference to the re-sentencing of former Millville Police Sgt. Robert Vanaman, who saw two years trimmed off his nine-year prison term last month for manslaughter in the 2006 shooting death of his wife, Barbara Vanaman.
Barbara Vanaman was one of 41 names called out at the end of the walk, all victims of domestic abuse-related deaths in Cumberland County since 2002. The solemn reading was made only slightly lighter by the announcement that 2011 was the first year that no new names were added to the list since the county began these events.
Rita Carr-Volpe, coordinator for the prosecutor’s victim/witness advocate office, helped read the 41 names. She has been with the victim/witness advocate’s office since 2001, meaning she has been involved with every case on that list, counseling grieving families and helping them throughout the legal process.
“They are people who have been thrown into terrible situations not by choice, but by circumstance,” said Carr-Volpe. “Their strength over the years has encouraged me even more to do my part to help them.”
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