HONESDALE, PA — Staff from the Wayne County Victims’ Intervention Program (VIP), the Wayne District Attorney’s office and local police appeared at the October 11 meeting of the Wayne commissioners as the panel approved a proclamation designating October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

That proclamation begins with the jarring fact that “One of every four women will experience domestic violence during their lifetime and some 15.5 million children are exposed to domestic violence every year….”

An ongoing problem for those who might intervene is that many victims of domestic violence never seek help. Wayne VIP Executive Director Michele Minor Wolf said that Honesdale and Hawley police have found that most victims who became fatalities “never had contact with counseling.”

Wolf reported on two new outreach efforts: VIP committees in Wayne County schools and new counseling services especially designated for the county’s most rural areas.

The awareness effort included an October 15 vigil in Honesdale’s Central Park, where a list of 20 victims’ names were read; and the “red silhouette” program, which sees the blank silhouettes of recorded Wayne victims, appearing in storefront and office windows throughout the county.

Commissioner Wendell Kay said he had “no more fervent wish than that a day would come when we no longer need to have these conversations.”

In other business, the commissioners received the state’s approval of Wayne Human Service’s new $2,179,062 block grant appropriation.

Wayne County has a 24-hour crisis hotline available at 800/698-4VIP (4847). The daytime business office number is 570/253-4401.