NJ event to honor three 'women of courage and resilience', support domestic violence help
The event will honor three "women of courage and resilience" who support survivors of abuse in their respective fields. They are New York Times best-selling author Regina Calcaterra, state Sen. Linda Greenstein and Middlesex County Sheriff Mildred Scott.
All proceeds from the event will support Women Aware's free and confidential services for victim-survivors of domestic violence and their families in Middlesex County.
In 2024, Women Aware served 3,035 women, children and men through its comprehensive array of services that include 24/7 hotline, 24/7 emergency shelter, legal advocacy, support groups, children's trauma reduction therapy and community outreach. Women Aware is the lead agency in the Middlesex County Family Justice Center, the first in the county and fifth in the state to bring multidisciplinary and multilingual victim services under one roof as a best practice in the field of domestic violence intervention and prevention.
More: Women Aware serves domestic violence victim-survivors in record numbers
The evening's program, which runs from 5:30 to 8 p.m., will present the "Voices of Courage and Change" video. The film features testimony from victim-survivors of domestic violence and was filmed and produced by students from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts. An awards ceremony will be followed by remarks from Calcaterra, who penned the memoir "Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island.'
Individual tickets are $150 and may be purchased for yourself and/or for a victim/survivor so they may attend the program.
email: cmakin@gannettnj.com
Cheryl Makin is an award-winning features and education reporter for MyCentralJersey.com, part of the USA Today Network. Contact: Cmakin@gannettnj.com or @CherylMakin. To get unlimited access, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: NJ event to honor three 'women of courage and resilience'
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In remembering her life there, she focused on the beautiful aspects — the lady who owned the house, named Isabel, who would cook soups and traditional Peruvian dishes, and how the smell would drift through the rafters. Pat picked up Spanish and the local dialect of the region. Photos of her from that time were pinned onto a poster board at Mercy Circle. She is smiling and wearing a habit. James Connelly, 67, said his great-aunt went and visited her while she was in South America and brought him back a llama fur vest. 'Now, I can't really fit in it,' he joked. Connelly admitted that he was a little afraid of the traditional nun garb as a kid, but said he always admired her compassion and dedication. 'She set an example as a strong, female leader,' he said. 'And she passed that on to all the children she taught.' Indeed, when she returned from her time abroad, she reunited with Sister JoAnn and the two trailblazers took advantage of a burgeoning movement in American Catholicism, where many nuns moved from traditional roles to activism. Sister Pat did stints at Mercy Hospital, Little Brothers – Friends of the Elderly and Austin Career Education Center, helping teen dropouts and adults prepare for the GED. But in her later life, shaped by her experiences in Peru, Sister Pat prioritized helping immigrants. She and Sister JoAnn in the 1980s and '90s opened Su Casa Catholic Worker House, a home for survivors of torture from Central America, on the South Side of Chicago. Several years later, they started praying outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview. And they collaborated with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights to successfully pass a bill allowing religious workers to enter immigrant detention centers. They spent long hours with immigrants in detention. Pat warmed up the guards with homemade cookies and wrapped candy canes. Because she could speak Spanish, she was able to help detainees connect with family members. 'They just loved her,' Sister JoAnn said in January. 'Imagine how much of a help she was to them, speaking Spanish like she did.' The sisters stopped visiting immigrants in detention during the pandemic. And under the current Donald Trump administration, ICE has been unwilling to let anyone — even elected officials — inside, said Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at ICIRR, who attended the funeral. 'Sister Pat always used a particular word to describe the immigration detention system: demonic,' said Tsao. The sisters meant to retire after the pandemic, they said, but felt called to step in and help the tens of thousands of migrants who were bused to Chicago from the southern border by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. They founded a nonprofit called Catherine's Caring Cause to help asylum-seekers settle, opening 17 apartments to house 100 people. They shifted to provide 'Know Your Rights' information to their tenants when Trump was elected. In a final essay that Sister Pat co-authored with Sister JoAnn, they wrote about one Venezuelan family assisted by their nonprofit, who they said was recently deported to Costa Rica. 'The parents and their five children were seized at a local ICE office when they reported for a routine check-in as required by law,' the essay reads. 'ICE officials accused the husband of having a criminal background, which he denied. He never had a chance to present his case in court.' On Thursday morning, a migrant family lingered a little longer in the hallway outside the church sanctuary after her casket was brought out. They said they were blessed to be connected to Sister Pat through a nonprofit in El Paso, Texas. Their family of four was staying in one of the apartments the sisters rented. 'Pat was our angel,' said Jose Ramos, 37, whose daughter is disabled and needs extra support. 'She called us all the time to check in.' His wife, Victoria Naranjo, 34, said Sister Pat often encouraged her to write a book about her migrant journey. 'It's not easy being a migrant,' Naranjo said. 'She thought more people should know that.' Ramos said he thinks he might have been one of the last to speak to her before she could no longer use her voice.
