Editor’s Note: In observance of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the San Benito News features the efforts of Harlingen-based Proyecto Libertad, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization providing legal aid to battered women and children from all over the Rio Grande Valley who are victims of abuse and brutality.
By MICHAEL RODRIGUEZ
Managing Editor
editor@sbnewspaper.com
Seen here are staff members of Casa de Proyecto Libertad: (from l-r) Yolanda Lopez, Sara Sluszka, Melissa Rubio, Ana Saenz, Nora Guajardo, and (sitting) Rogelio Nuñez, executive director. (Staff photo by Michael Rodriguez)
HARLINGEN – It’s not uncommon for women who are victims of domestic violence to step through the doors of Casa de Proyecto Libertad in Harlingen.
But what those who work at Proyecto can never get used to are the horrors in which these women, their clients, reluctantly share.
“Between the age of 11 and 12 he sexually abused me,” said one of Proyecto’s clients before sharing in graphic detail brutal beatings and rapes suffered at the hands of a man she was forced by her parents to marry.
Proyecto Executive Director Rogelio Nuñez said such cases are prevalent and backed by numbers. Take, for instance, statistics by the Texas Council on Family Violence, which reported that 1,431 Texas women have been killed by their male partners from 1998-2009.
Relevance lives in these statistics, yes; but for Nuñez, numbers can never do these women justice.
Proyecto can.
Want the whole story? Pick up a copy of the Oct. 12 edition of the San Benito News. Or view our E-Edition by clicking here.
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