PERRYSBURG TOWNSHIP – Owens Community College is raising awareness of violent crimes against women by
serving as host to a Silent Witness Project public display on Thursday. The public is encouraged to join
the campus community and participate in the program.
The Silent Witness Project will be on view from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. in the Center for Fine and Performing
Arts Rotunda on the Oregon Road campus.
The Owens appearance is being presented in collaboration with the Northwest Ohio chapter of the Silent
Witness Project, which was established by the Women’s Center at Bowling Green State University.
Currently, there are over 50 silhouette witnesses in the local collection. Owens will display 10 of
BGSU’s silhouette figures.
Bowling Green’s Silent Witness Project is a visual display of free-standing, life-sized red wooden
figures that are silhouettes of women who have been murdered in an act of domestic violence during the
last 10 years in Northwest Ohio. Each silhouette includes an individual chest plate as well as a
detailed story about the person’s life and murder. The goal of the project is to raise the awareness of
domestic murders and violence and remember those who lost their lives as a result of an act of violence.
In 1990, an advocacy group of Minnesota women artists and writers joined together with several other
women’s organizations to form the Arts Action Against Domestic Violence in response to 26 women losing
their lives as result of domestic violence in Minnesota. The first life-sized red wooden figures were
built, each bearing the name of a woman whose life was ended abruptly and violently at the hands of a
husband, ex-husband, partner or acquaintance. An additional figure was added to represent those
uncounted women whose murders went unsolved or were erroneously ruled accidental.
The organizers called the figures the Silent Witnesses.
Locally, the Northwest Ohio chapter of the Silent Witness Project was founded in 2001 by the Women’s
Center staff at BGSU in response to the 2000 murder of a college graduate.
For more information about the public display, call (567) 661-7583 or 1-800-GO-OWENS, ext. 7583.
