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Devotional speaker shares survivor testimony on gender-based violence; House recognizes local "Safety Team" and its therapeutic self-defense program
Summary
Cassandra Grigware of Burlington's Safety Team delivered the devotional to the Vermont House on April 15, 2025, describing her experiences with sexual assault and domestic violence and urging action to address gender-based violence.
Cassandra Grigware, a member of the Safety Team in Burlington, delivered the House devotional on April 15, 2025, describing past experiences of sexual and domestic violence and urging the chamber and wider community to "transform silence into language and action," echoing Audre Lorde's essay she read from.
Grigware recounted surviving sexual assault by someone she described as a college acquaintance and domestic violence by a former intimate partner. She discussed the neurobiological response to trauma, including tonic immobility, and said that such bodily responses "should not be mistaken for consent." Citing public-health data, Grigware said, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "one in four women report having been raped in their lifetime," and that more than half of women experience other forms of sexual violence.
She placed local experiences in a global context, mentioning the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in Iran and ensuing protests, violence in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and reports of gender-based and reproductive abuse in the context of Israel's operations in Gaza. Grigware characterized these as part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence worldwide and urged solidarity and action to protect human rights.
Following the devotional, the member from Burlington recognized the Safety Team, describing a Vermont-based organization formed about 20 years ago by women from varied backgrounds who teach empowerment self-defense. The member said the group's founder and president, Dr. Christine de Blasio, helped develop what the member described as a "world's first course in therapeutic self-defense," and that Dr. De Blasio was named USA Today's Vermont Woman of the Year. "Their work helps survivors reclaim their bodies and voices," the member from Burlington said, asking the chamber to "give them a very warm welcome to the people's house."
The devotional and subsequent recognition brought a survivor-centered program and its local practitioners into the House chamber record; members invited the group's representatives in attendance to be recognized on the floor.
