Author and Victim Advocate Shawn Richard-Davis Pens Book Raising Awareness About Domestic Violence

by Lauryn Bray

In Setting Aside Silence (One Word At A Time), former victim advocate Shawn Richard-Davis offers a faith-based, interactive book for domestic violence survivors and their families. The book includes words, definitions, and quotes from the Bible to provide survivors with the language to describe their realities, so they can identify their experiences as abuse and seek help. In an interview with the Emerald, Richard-Davis talks about how her nearly 30-year career working for the City of Seattle sparked the motivation behind Setting Aside Silence.

"With my career, I spent most of my time with victims going to court and making sure that they were safe and that their families were safe," said Richard-Davis. "And I have always, even after I left the Seattle City Attorney's domestic violence unit to get a new job with the City as a probation counselor, considered myself an advocate for victims."

Richard-Davis has a degree in criminal justice and police science from Seattle University and worked as a victim advocate for the City of Seattle for 15 years. In 2007, she left the Seattle City Attorney's domestic violence unit to accept a new role for the city as a probation counselor. Suddenly, Richard-Davis found herself going from working with victims to working with defendants.

"I wondered how I was going to translate my work [with victims] to then go and work with defendants. But because of who I am — because of the compassion that I have for all people — it did translate very well," said Richard-Davis.

Richard-Davis says watching the news may have had a hand in the book's making. "What has happened in the last several years is [that] a lot of the headlines that you see are African American women and Women of Color being killed by their intimate partners, husbands, family members — [their partners] not only killing them, but killing their children, killing themselves — and although they get a headline, you don't hear much about them," explained Richard-Davis. "Domestic violence is something that stays with you. People are forever trying to heal from it, and I felt like this book [could] be a tool for people to start talking about it and not [continue to be] silent."

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Women's Health included in Richard-Davis' book, "A boy who witnesses the abuse of his mother is ten times more likely to treat his female partner in the same way. A girl who witnesses the abuse of her mother is six times more likely to be sexually abused," Richard-Davis writes.

"People would always say, 'How can you do that work?' There has to be people that are willing to do the work, willing to listen to the stories, willing to hold the stories and hold the burdens of other people, and I'm one of those," said Richard-Davis. "But now I'm asking the world to share it — share this burden with me and help others by not only reading the book, but getting some ideas of how we can make our world better and stop domestic violence."

Featured image courtesy of Shawn Richard-Davis; edits by the Emerald team.