LEXINGTON, Ky. — Lexington’s community leaders want to put an end to rising domestic violence incidents.
One Lexington, a violence prevention group, is partnering with GreenDot Lexington, a domestic violence prevention organization, to offer bystander training to the community. It's part of a broader effort to curb a recent spike in violence in Lexington.
Devine Carama, director of One Lexington, is taking the bystander training for his second time, and says these skills are needed now more than before.
“We’ve seen more interpersonal violence on a youth level, youth dating violence going up and to make sure youth are prepared, and those that serve youth are prepared and proper ways to intervene and de-escalate conflict in the situation,” Carama said.
Green Dot Lexington Program Coordinator Dawn Runyon is directing the violence prevention training.
Runyon, who has helped train people around the city since before 2019, says that kids have to see positive ways to handle their conflicts. She believes it is the way to reduce gun-related deaths and the collective violence that occurs.
“Your youth will see that as well and they will start to learn that behavior and we will hopefully get to a point where they’re able to kind of handle conflicts amongst themselves that doesn’t resort to gun violence,” Runyon said.
Green Dot introduces proactive and reactive tools that prevent various types of intimate partner situations, including domestic abuse, dating, stalking, sexual, and child abuse.
Runyon, who has helped bring awareness to Lexington for over five years, is a survivor herself. She says it took a bystander’s support to make a difference.
“It was a situation where I was young, I was in this relationship, and I didn’t think I had a different option. I didn’t know what to do in a situation, and it was a bystander. it was someone outside of my situation who looked at what was happening and she made a choice that changed my life forever,” she shared.
Runyon says it was their courage that helped her want to do the same for others. “She chose to do that to save me and it’s that realization for me that draws me to wanting to do that for other people,” Runyon explained.
Carama says Green Dot’s efforts have been helpful in the past and can continue being a resource for this community and possibly others.
“We’ve been fighting this fight for years when it wasn’t the new wave, when we weren’t seeing a spike in domestic violence in Lexington. Green Dot has always been dedicated to this work. It’s only right that we partner with you to do this training,” Carama said.
The program recognizes intimate partner violence or “red dot” situations as those that need Green Dot responses.
Green Dot’s reactive responses include using the “Three D’s of intervening” — to be direct, distracting and delegating a safe, responsible person in situations that could potentially or already have escalated.