.png)
NEWPORT – What if you had to completely uproot your whole life? Get a new job, maybe for the first time in years? Find a new place to live, figure out transportation, navigate social services? Maybe you have children you have to find a new school for, maybe you all need counseling. Maybe you need a restraining order to protect you all from your partner/spouse, the very person you should be able to feel safe with.
These were some of the questions posed to participants at the second annual In Her Shoes domestic violence awareness event, organized by staff and volunteers of Family Crisis Network (FCN). A Newport based organization that works to prevent and advocate in matters of domestic violence, sexual assault, crimes and homelessness, FCN invited the public to dinner and dessert at Quail Run Ranch Saturday, Oct. 5 to, “walk a mile in the shoes of those experiencing domestic violence” to develop a better understanding of what survivors must go through when they attempt to leave their perpetrator.
“I think it’s really important for people to understand that this is not just a family problem,
it’s a community issue,” FCN Executive Director Sarah Kramer said. “Our workplaces, schools, churches—it’s not something that exists in a bubble or is abstract. It affects where we live, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.”
In 2023, FCN served 142 adult survivors of domestic violence, which equaled 133 women and nine men according to Outreach and Education Coordinator Laura Nichols. In addition, FCN provided services to their combined 131 children who were exposed to domestic violence.
Local resident Amy Thomasson was one of five people on a panel at the event to talk to guests about their own experiences with intimate partner/domestic violence. Thomasson said she moved to Newport two years ago to escape domestic violence and stalking from her ex-husband, who she was married to for 18 years. During their relationship Thomasson said her husband used sexual assault, manipulation and gaslighting to humiliate and control her.
“He was an upstanding member of our church, our community, so when I finally found the strength to leave him, no one believed me,” Thomasson said. “He was able to convince people that I was lying for attention, to make him look bad, to take his kids, his money, all of that kind of stuff you hear people say.”
Thomasson said her husband used covert abuse, “a term no one was talking about 18 years ago.” Covert emotional abuse is used to control and demean another person without direct confrontation or physical violence, according to the National Domestic Abuse Hotline.
“He never hit me, he wasn’t an alcoholic, and from the outside our lives looked great, so I would be second-guessing myself, confused if this really was abuse,” Thomasson says. “I would be wondering, why didn’t he just stop? It wasn’t until later when I realized that this was wrong.”
Even after Thomasson was able to leave the marriage with their children and her husband was charged in court with stalking and nine counts of felony rape, the ordeal was not over.
“The prosecutor dismissed everything,” Thomasson said. “Basically, they were like, he’s a successful businessman and a beloved churchgoer, you’re not going to win this, thank you for your time.”
As a result, the restraining order against her husband was not renewed and he received two years of probation. However, once a judge ruled that Thomasson could have custody of their five children, she packed her bags the same day and got as far away from her family’s Anacortes farm as she could, which happened to be Newport.
“I’d never been here before, I didn’t know a soul,” Thomasson says, adding that FCN helped her navigate reinventing her life. “They really helped me take baby steps through the trauma and anxiety.”
Thomasson is now in school to become a trauma therapist and works as a behavioral and health specialist at the Pend Oreille River School.
At the In Her Shoes event, there was a display of 273 pairs of shoes to represent each of the individuals. Guests were each given a random scenario card about a figurative person that described different situations an abuse victim might be faced with. They would then look for corresponding cards at various volunteer-manned stations representing employment, family and friends, money, counseling, schooling, etc. to try and determine what the outcome might be. Sometimes, the outcome was tragic.
“Our person was killed by their abuser,” one guest said at the dinner afterwards, when people were invited to share their experience.
Though that scenario itself was not real, the numbers behind it are— intimate partner violence results in nearly 1,300 deaths and 2 million injuries every year in the United States, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline website.
Last Saturday’s event was dedicated to a local woman who lost her life to domestic violence, Patricia “Patti” Kroll Woodworth. Woodworth was shot and killed by her husband, Franz D. Kroll, July 31, 2022, after the couple had an argument about a baseboard trim job Kroll had done in their bathroom, according to the statement of probable cause. Woodworth had attempted to leave in her car and Kroll shot her twice.
Kroll claimed to be under the influence of alcohol and marijuana at the time and later hung himself in his Pend Oreille County jail cell Aug. 3, 2022.
Patti’s brother, Mark Woodworth, spoke at last Saturday’s event about the impact her death had on him and his family. He remembered her as an intelligent, creative artist of various mediums who loved cats and knitted thousands of caps for charity.
“I remember seeing headlines about Patti’s death in the newspaper and thinking about how I used to skip over headlines like that before because I didn’t know the person,” Woodworth said. “I don’t skip over them anymore.”
He added that while he knows him and his family are not responsible for what happened to Patti, he does sometimes wonder if they couldn’t have done more to help her leave her marriage.
“She had already been married before, also to a man who was volatile and controlling, and she took marriage very seriously; she didn’t want to get divorced again,” Woodworth said. “I still have texts from her on my phone that I haven’t been able to bring myself to read yet. I wish she could have seen herself as so many of us saw her—someone who was deserving of a loving, safe relationship.”
For more information about Family Crisis Network, including how to access resources, donate or volunteer, go to www. pofcn.org.
