“Rise Up: A Survivors Tribute” held downtown

Lexington, Ky. (WTVQ) — In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office in Lexington is hosting it’s annual “Rise Up” vigil. This year’s theme is the ‘Rise Up: Survivor’s Tribute’

“The sheriff always does an amazing job of bringing both people that have impacted by domestic violence, whether that is a survivor and or their family, and also bringing those community agencies and resources together so people know what’s available,” said Diane Fleet, Associate Director for Greenhouse 17.

The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office has seen a rise in domestic violence cases and protective orders over the past couple of years.

So far for 2023 close to 2,000 orders have been filed.

The purpose of ‘Rise Up’ is to inform the public of what resources are available.

“So you’ll see we’ll have several organizations within the community come to our resource fair portion of the event,” said Crystal Happy-Clay, Director of The Amanda Center. “Once that’s done, we’ll segue into more of our somber programming, but it’s informational. We’ll have the community leaders come up and speak.”

And community leaders aren’t the only people that have the chance to speak.

“And then there will be a portion where we will have people who attend the event, it’s our open mic portion, that if they want to come up and say something,” said Happy-Clay. “If they feel so led to do so they are welcome to do that as well.”

Fleet is grateful for sheriff’s office for hosing this event.

“It just kind of creates an open forum for folks to have those conversations,” said Fleet. “And so, we will be there and we’re always really excited that she does this every year, yeah.”

To those who may be experiencing domestic violence, happy-clay says “We’re always here with smiling faces and we’re not going to pass any judgement on you or your situation. We just are here to help.”