By Jenara Gardner
Volunteers from the Campus Center on Violence Against Women, a newly established program that attempts to educate and inform students about violence against women, participated in the conference “Violence Against Women: How the Law Responds” Saturday.
The conference, sponsored by Northeastern University School of Law’s Domestic Violence Institute, centered on different aspects of rape and domestic violence laws.
“The conference is really helping me get a feel for what I’m going to be training for the next couple of weeks and understanding the issues more,” said Natasha Kellet, a volunteer at the Campus Center on Violence against Women. “I’m going to be working with the bystander education program. The idea is to make people active bystanders. Like if they see something at a party that they think is wrong, they’ll know how to react to it.”
More than 100 people participated in the conference, many of whom were from schools around the Boston area.
“The conferences are a perfect example of how Northeastern caters to the curious student who really wants to learn more about the situations around them,” said Julie Miller, a Campus Center on Violence Against Women volunteer and sophomore American Sign Language, human serices and African-American studies major.
Lawyers Ken King and Kevin Reddington spoke at the conference about past experiences defending women who killed their abusers.
“It starts with a phone call,” Reddington said, when talking about his first contact with clients. “That’s how most of your cases start. You get a call and you have no idea what you are walking into.”
Reddington has been representing the victims of domestic violence for more than 22 years. He has recently been in the headlines with his most recent case when he defended Ann Gryboski of Cape Cod.
“They were the picture perfect family,” Reddington said when discussing the Gryboski case. “What people didn’t realize was that Ann was living a nightmare life as well. This had gone on for years. He would punch her. He knocked her teeth out. He had damaged her cheek.”
Gryboski shot her husband to death after more than 20 years of physical abuse. Reddington was able to keep Gryboski from being indicted, which is a real achievement in the present day court system.
“Why don’t they leave?” Reddington said. “Don’t you all sit there and wonder why don’t they leave? Well, there is a real strong reason why they don’t leave. It’s called survival. It’s called fear.
