The month of October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and District Attorney Brian Hermanson held a ceremony on the front lawn of the Kay County Courthouse to bring awareness to the topic and honor victims of Domestic Violence on Thursday.

Hermanson was accompanied by law enforcement from Blackwell, Ponca City, Newkirk, Tonkawa and the Kay County Sheriff’s Department, as well as members of the Ponca Tribal Victim Services Program and the Kaw Nation Domestic Violence Program. State Representative Ken Luttrell and many courthouse staff and officials were also in attendance for the ceremony.

Luttrell and Hermanson each gave speeches and spoke on topics such as the severity of Domestic Violence cases that are regularly seen in Kay County, ones so serious that the victims of this abuse are unrecognizable. Hermanson urged the public to vote in the upcoming election so that the victim’s voices of this type of abuse are heard, especially pertaining to State Question 805 which would prohibit a person’s former non-violent felony convictions from being used to enhance their sentence. The most common case of this is Domestic Assault and Battery by Strangulation.