Every T-shirt tells a story

Goshen - Some of the messages were painful, allowing for as much biography of domestic abuse as a woman could fit onto the front of a T-shirt. Some were heartbreaking, like the one that simply read: “Daddy, please stop hitting Mommy.” If you stood back from the more than 300 T-shirts on display outside the Orange County Government Center in Goshen last Thursday, you were reminded of how frequently women are abused by the men who say they loved them. But you also could see that there is strength in numbers and in each message of survival. The Orange County Coalition Against Domestic Violence hosted its second annual Clothesline Project outside the county building to bear witness to violence against women, crimes large and small, physical as well as emotional, and for which statistics will never present a true picture because there is so much hidden and kept silent. Here are some of the images and the messages from some of those women. For more information, visit the Web site www.clotheslineproject.org or contact Safe Homes of Orange County, Michele McKeon, executive director, 562-5365.