TIFTON — The 8th Annual Walk A Mile In Her Shoes took place at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College on Oct. 23.

The event is part of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which takes place throughout the month of October and is designated by the color purple.

The walk is an international event where men walk a literal mile wearing women’s high-heeled shoes as a way to get the community talking about gender relations and men’s sexualized violence against women. The walkers take a pledge that they will honor women in their relationships and avoid any kind of violence and control in their relationships.

“This is a very important event for us every year,” said Nancy Bryan, executive director of Ruth’s Cottage and The Patticake House, the organization that sponsors the event. “It ends out our month with something fun. We start the month with a candlelight vigil, which is a very serious event. We really look forward to this event to have an opportunity to smile and to see the men walking in high heels, which is always fun.”

Alpha Gamma Rho-Gamma Delta chapter contributed participants, as did the event sponsors Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, which hosted the event, the ABAC baseball team, Tift Regional Health System, Christy Dorman and The Howard Center for Women.

The Sycamore Police Department was represented by Chief Bill Ryder, who is also a RCPCH board member.

“Domestic violence affects everybody,” he said. “Everybody has a mother. You’ve got daughters, nieces, nephews. I’ve got a daughter and a wife. My mother was in an abusive relationship before I was born. It touches home with me.”

He said it was important for law enforcement to participate and be aware of the kinds of domestic violence and abuse that exist.

“We need to bring police officers out,” he said. “We need more participation from them but we also need to bring the officers out and get them involved in the community. The more awareness we bring with it, more women are less likely to be victims, if we can put things out there. And the officers need to see too.”

He said that law enforcement in the 70s and 80s didn’t take domestic violence seriously, but that started changing in the 90s.

“In the 2000s it started moving forward that domestic violence is a major thing,” he said.

Bryan hopes participants are mindful of how they treat their partners and understand that intimate partner abuse is more than just giving someone a black eye.

“People will say, “oh, well I’ve never hit a woman,’” she said. “There’s plenty of ways to abuse somebody without ever hitting them. It has to do with respect, controlling and manipulating. Hopefully these guys, most of them young men, will think about that kind of thing as they move on in future relationships.”

Bryan said that in 2017 Ruth’s Cottage received 742 calls to the crisis line, and that this year, as of September the crisis line has received 606 calls.

“These are people who call because they feel not safe. They feel afraid or threatened and they look to us for emergency shelter or perhaps help with a restraining order, what we call a temporary protective order, to keep someone away from them.”

Bryan said the number of people requesting a temporary protective order increased from 478 in 2017 to 381 so far in 2018.

“We feel by the end of the year, we’ll probably break a record,” she said. “That’s bad, but in a way that’s good. We know there are a lot of people out there that are keeping silent and aren’t reaching out to us. That’s another reason this event is so important. People will pay attention to men wearing high heels and carrying signs and doing silly things. It gets our name out there and people start understanding that we’re here to help.”

Bryan said that in the past year one person in Tift County lost their life as a result of domestic violence. That person was one of 96 in the state of Georgia.

“It wasn’t always just the direct victim (that lost their life),” Bryan said. “That included children that were in the home and sometimes the perpetrator.”

Bryan said that getting people’s attention is important, but that domestic violence is a difficult subject to talk about.

“Not many people want to hear or talk or even think about it,” she said. “But an event like this does attract people and then you’re able to make a point at the same time. The literal walking in their shoes is very symbolic of the whole issue.”