Susan Omilian was already a long-time advocate for women victimized by domestic violence when a phone call from her sister-in-law in October 1999 made her work far more personal.
“It’s Maggie,” the sister-in-law said, referring to Omilian’s niece, then a 19-year-old sophomore at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. “She’s been shot. She’s dead.”
Omilian, a Connecticut resident and the keynote speaker at The Umbrella program’s 22nd Annual Candlelight Vigil to recognize victims and celebrate survivors of domestic abuse, said that her work — which by that point included the founding of a rape crisis center and representing abused women in divorce cases — did little to prepare her for the shock of learning her niece had been murdered by an ex-boyfriend who then killed himself.
“It was another senseless act of violence,” she said. “But this time it was Maggie, our Maggie. Somehow I had separated my family out. Somehow we were ‘the other.’ This couldn’t happen to our family.”
Her niece’s death, Omilian said, made her re-evaluate her work.
“I really felt this was a call, but I didn’t know what I was called to do,” she said. Feeling a need for “revenge,” she said she did what a lot of others do these days: “I Googled it.”
That’s when one of the search engine’s results spat out a quote, “Living well is the best revenge,” a saying popularized by George Herbert, a 17th-century English poet and orator.
Omilian said she realized the maxim applied to victims of domestic violence, whose ordeals aren’t over when they survive abuse, but only when they “find the power to reclaim their lives” and become what she calls “thrivers.”
To that end, she started “My Avenging Angel” workshops in 2001 and published a corresponding workbook to help victims of domestic violence move on with their lives.
“We say they’re always going to be victims, they’re not going to move on,” Omilian said. “Our goal has to be bigger. It has to be broader.”
A victim, she said, only becomes a “thriver” when she is “a happy, productive, self-confident individual who believes she has a prosperous life ahead of her.”
About 80 people gathered at the Kellogg Environmental Center on Hawthorne Avenue in Derby for Tuesday’s vigil.
Umbrella Director Susan DeLeon began the program by reading from a statement issued by President Barack Obama in recognition of October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month before thanking the program’s “tireless” volunteers. DeLeon said recent achievements, including being able for the first time to staff “safe houses” for domestic violence victims 24/7, show “so many positive signs that we’re finally taking domestic violence seriously” as a society.
Derby Mayor Anthony Staffieri spoke briefly and also lauded the program.
“We all dream of a day when domestic violence will be an issue of the past,” he said. “You deserve a huge pat on the back to make this such a successful program.”
In addition to the candlelight vigil, officials with the program also presented certificates of recognition to several area police officers who had been nominated by victims of domestic violence.
