For nearly a month, a group has gathered each Thursday along Stoweâs Main Street to voice support for survivors of sexual assault and call for both the dismissal of embattled fire chief Kyle Walker and policy changes for the town.
As town officials stand by Walker, protesters say they arenât backing down.
âI still want the town to remove him, or I want him to step down,â said Sarah Henshaw, a Stowe business owner who has led public condemnation of the fire chief. âI donât think he can do an effective job as fire chief. At this point, I think there are women like myself who are fearful of having to call on him as a public safety officer in our town.
The woman who accused Stoweâs fire department chief of rape during years of sexual encounters when he was a Stowe police officer has shed her anonymity, even as her alleged assailant maintains their relationship was consensual.
She says she came forward in order to encourage other survivors of domestic and sexual violence to break their silence.
Rachel Fisher accused Stowe Fire Chief Kyle Walker of abusing her over the course of several years between 2009 and 2013 when he was a full-time police officer. She first came forward to police in January but is now coming forward publicly for the first time.
Sexual and domestic violence costs the state of Vermont an estimated $111 million per year â with nearly five times the amount spent on victimâs services funding corrections, according to a recently published report from the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.
Titled âThe economic impact of domestic and sexual violence on the state of Vermont,â it estimates 40,000 victims of violence cost each individual taxpayer $177.76 in the form of healthcare, victim support services, law enforcement, the judiciary system and the corrections system.
Advocates say this is just the tip of the iceberg, an incomplete analysis based on available data.
A high volume of sexual and domestic violence goes unreported to the authorities and the organization claimed the report does not represent the full cost or scope of the damage incurred.
Some of the most significant work during the pandemic has been done by people who are parts in a larger machine, working to make sure the social infrastructure in rural
The Lamoille Area Health and Human Services Response Command Center is that machine.
Formed in the early weeks of the pandemic, the command center brought together a disparate group of health and human services organizations under one umbrella. That was no mean feat; the various social services components were busy enough helping their own sectors of society â food insecurity, mental health, restorative justice, substance use, homelessness, unemployment, poverty â even before the world entered an era of communication via Zoom and other remote means.
Emily Rosenbaum, of Stowe, runs outreach for the control center. In the waning days of 2020, she surveyed the myriad organizations that make up the control center on what they accomplished in extraordinary circumstances.