GCU staff and Providence House associate director Mary Pettrow shared the potential impact of EMPOWER during a Senate Higher Education Committee meeting in December. They shared plans for strengthening current efforts and expanding case management, counseling and advocacy services.

“Four years ago, local law enforcement called us because they had a mother of two who had been held hostage in her home by her abusive husband and needed placement in Providence’s emergency safe house,” Ms. Pettrow told legislators. “During two days of being bound to the bed, she was repeatedly verbally, physically and sexually abused by her husband…On day two, she was released from her restraints to take a shower, and she jumped from her second-story bathroom window.”

That woman, who crawled to a neighbor’s house for help, was a mother of two enrolled at GCU. At commencement several months later, her teenage daughters and Providence House staff applauded as she crossed the stage.

“While it is certainly important to focus on stranger-perpetrated sexual violence and the impact that drugs and alcohol can have on escalating such incidences on a campus, I am encouraged to be partnering with GCU and Lakewood Police to additionally address intimate partner violence as well.”

Read Mary Pettrow’s testimony to the members of the New Jersey Senate Higher Education Committee on December 12, 2016 here: http://georgian.edu/wp-content/uploads/PHDVS-NJ-2016.pdf