Photo credit: Davide dePas
“They deserve my honesty,” Tamron Hall told Hollywood on the Potomac at the 22nd Annual Knock Out Abuse Against Women Gala. “You cannot ask people to be honest and then you stand there holding in a secret that could free your guilt, free your family of hiding something and most important, save a life.”
Tamron Hall is a national correspondent for NBC News, anchor/host for MSNBC, co-anchor of the third hour of The Today Show and host of “Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall” on the Investigation Discovery Channel. The show was born out of her personal experience with her sister’s death.
In 2004 Hall’s sister Rebate, who had previously suffered domestic violence, was murdered. She partially blames herself for her sister’s death because she feels there were many signals of domestic abuse at the time, but she didn’t do anything to intervene. This is not unusual in domestic violence cases where the victims themselves often hide their circumstances even from those closest to them; perhaps even more so with those closest to them.
MC Andrea Roane, W*USA 9 Anchor with Mary Margaret Farren
Hall received the Break the Silence Award at KOA’s Evening in Florence which also honored Mary Margaret Farren who received the Survivor and Advocate Award. She was the victim of a brutal attack by her then husband Michael Farren, a former deputy White House counsel under President George W. Bush. He nearly killed her. “I felt like my head was just mush inside and I thought ‘I’m dying,’” she told ABC News’ Amy Robach in a recent 20/20 exclusive. “And then I was thinking, I’ve got to hold it together. I have to stay conscious so I can save the girls. The wounds didn’t heal for a long time. The impact was so severe that I completely lost my sense of smell.”
Cheryl Masri, President of KOA and Gina Adams, VP at FedEx
A look at National Statistics is frightening:
Every 9 seconds in the US, a woman is assaulted or beaten.
On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men
On a typical day, there are more than 20,000 phone calls placed to domestic violence hot lines nationwide.
Intimate partner violence accounts for 15% of all violent crime
Tamron Hall sat down with Hollywood on the Potomac and talked about her personal experience with domestic abuse and why she has gone public with her story:
