Skowhegan Woman’s Club Joins Finding Our Voices to Break the Silence of Domestic Abuse

Billie Sherman with the Finding Our Voices poster of Amy Burns, whose state trooper ex held a loaded gun to her head with no repercussions from his superiors when she reported this to them. Photo by Patrisha McLean 

The GFCW Skowhegan Woman’s Club painted the town yellow on Friday October 6 for Domestic Abuse Awareness Month, getting Finding Our Voices posters up in 20 business windows and having many meaningful conversations along the way.

The posters feature the faces and voices of 45 Maine survivors including Governor Janet T. Mills, and are the most visible way the grassroots nonprofit Finding Our Voices is breaking the silence of domestic abuse one conversation and community at a time across the state. Finding Our Voices has brought the posters to 90-plus Maine downtowns, and multiple times to some, since launching the bold awareness and education campaign at the onset of COVID.

Five members of the Woman’s Club were joined on Friday by the town clerk/treasurer Gail Pelotte and two survivors on the posters, Mary Lou Smith, 83-years-old who drove from Scarborough, and Patrisha McLean from Camden, the nonprofit’s founder/president. McLean started Finding Our Voices following the domestic violence arrest in 2016 of her then-husband of 29 years, Don “American Pie” McLean. 

A young passerby takes in Mary Lou Smith’s Finding Our Voices poster taped into a window of Joe’s Flatiron Cafe. Mary Lou Smith, an 83-year-old who was abused for 43 years by her USM-professor ex and whose poster says “It’s never too late to leave," drove from Scarborough to help the group get the posters throughout Skowhegan on October 6. Photo by Patrisha McLean 

At Joe’s Flatiron Cafe where the group convened before heading out with the posters, the club shared with McLean and Smith that the daughter and adult grandson of one of their members were killed in nearby Madison by the daughter’s partner in 2017. The gunman also killed a neighbor in the rampage that ended with him being shot dead by deputies in a confrontation in his driveway. 

Club President Bonnie Chamberlain spearheaded Friday’s domestic abuse-awareness activity after attending a Finding Our Voices program at the Maine Film Center in Waterville in February. She said, “I’m very concerned about domestic violence,  especially in this rural part of Maine, and I don’t think people see that it is going on around them. I want people to talk about it more, I want people to reach out for help for themselves, and also to people they think might be in need of help.”

The Skowhegan group is one of 14 branches of the Maine Federation of Women’s Clubs.  According to Chamberlain, the women "unite for common purposes of friendship, socialization, education and service to the community” and her local club previously sponsored a six-part Channel 11 TV series on domestic violence called “Behind Closed Doors”.

From left to right, Mary Cayford and Deb Burnham show the poster of Olivia, a nurse from Vinalhaven, to Sally Jo Preble who straightaway got it in the window of her new store Teas and Treats. Photo by Patrisha McLean 

Chamberlain said that in the four hours of walking into local businesses with the three sizes of posters on Friday, "I was amazed that not one of the merchants refused us.” She said she was also moved by the personal experiences with domestic violence shared by store owners and employees. She is bringing the Finding Our Voices posters to the high school for their bathrooms as well as to the library, and plans to follow up with Redington-Fairview General Hospital and the District Attorney’s office to get Finding Our Voices material there as well. 

The group asked local businesses to keep the posters in their windows for as long as possible, and were tickled to see a vintage-edition Finding Our Voices poster from two years ago still in the window of Napa Auto Parts on Commercial Street.

Finding Our Voices is in the middle of a Fall “Talking About It” statewide tour of public libraries, with next stops on October 17 and 18 in York and Kennebunk. In addition to bold, survivor-powered domestic abuse awareness outreach the group provides sister-support that includes financial assistance and a pro bono dental program called Finding Our Smiles.

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Bangor Daily News
Skowhegan Woman’s Breaks the Silence of Domestic Abuse with Finding Our Voices
October 16, 2023