Maria’s Voice organization provides domestic violence prevention education

In April of 2020, Maria Fernanda Bliss Pew was murdered in her Maple Grove home in an act of domestic violence. In May of that year, her parents, Bill Pew and Lissa Weimelt, founded the nonprofit Maria’s Voice to focus on domestic violence prevention education.

“I knew nothing about domestic violence other than what I kind of inferred; you know, bumps and bruises and a broken shoulder, someone says, ‘I tripped on the rug,’” Weimelt said, noting that neither she and Pew, nor Maria, saw the signs of domestic abuse in Maria’s relationship. “You can’t see what you don’t know.”

Weimelt compared education on signs of domestic abuse to public health campaigns that have educated people on other issues: “It’s like, the guy next to me at the gym falls off his treadmill; he’s on the floor, he’s sweating. He might be having a heart attack or a stroke. And I know that because I’ve been trained to see the signs. We need to be taught to notice the signs of domestic violence. You can’t see it in yourself or in other people if you don’t know it.” 

Common signs include isolation, technology abuse

The first sign of domestic abuse is isolation, Weimelt said. “Domestic violence is all about power and control, the unequal power and control of one person over another,” she said. “In order to obtain and maintain that power and control, you have to isolate someone who’s being victimized from their family, their friends, their coworkers, their buddies at church, their friends in their book club. You gotta isolate them so that they don’t talk with folks, they don’t share with folks what’s going on with their life.”

Maria, an only child, was close to her parents. “One of the first things she told me that he said to her was, ‘Do you have to talk to your mom every day?’” Weimelt said, noting that Maria becoming removed from her family was a significant departure from her normal habits. 

Technology abuse is also common in relationships marked by domestic abuse, Weimelt said, and can be especially prevalent in teen dating.

According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey of 2016/2017, published by the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control in October 2022, 27.1% of female victims and 21.4% of male victims first experienced intimate partner violence at age 17 or younger. 

Technology abuse, Weimelt said, “can be cell phone abuse, this rampant amount of texts that you get that demand an immediate answer: Where are you? Who are you with? Why aren’t you with me? When are you coming home? And then that’s just repeated over and over and over again.”

Technology abuse can also include outing, which Weimelt described as, “If you don’t do what I tell you to do, if you don’t totally be in my orbit, I’m going to show pictures of what we’ve done, or I’m going to out you sexually,” as well as withholding technology, appropriating or changing someone’s passwords, or dumping their contacts – all of which happened to Maria.

“That’s really prevalent, because we spend our life on our phones and on the Internet,” Weimelt said. “That’s just another way to kind of segment into the isolation and, for the person who’s being abused, to let them know ‘I’m in charge. Not you.’”  

Difficulty recognizing the signs in yourself

It can be difficult for those within an abusive relationship to see what’s happening to them.

“You can intellectually know (the signs) without applying it to yourself,” said Twila Johnson, executive director of Maria’s Voice.

Johnson cites her own experience when she went out to lunch with her then-husband and a friend. The husband ordered Johnson’s food “because he was determined to make sure I looked a certain way. And it was just such a habit, I didn’t think about it,” she said, until her friend left to use the restroom and didn’t return.

When Johnson later called the friend, “She said, ‘I just couldn’t sit there any longer watching him control what you were eating.’ And it was at that moment that I woke up,” Johnson said. “If she hadn’t done that, I don’t think I would have started to notice all the things that were happening. I think that’s a very common thing that happens with a lot of people that are living within abuse.” 

Even people who’ve been in a domestic violence relationship don’t know they’re in one … It’s like going to the doctor and saying, ‘Gosh, that thing at the end of my foot? Something happened to it.’ You’ve got to learn that it’s a toe. You’ve got to learn that you stubbed it. It’s really basic.”

Lissa Weimelt, founder of Maria’s Voice

The Maria’s Voice organization, said Weimelt, takes a two-pronged approach to addressing domestic violence.

First, “We break the silence that shrouds domestic violence in shame and keeps it perpetrating in our homes. And No. 2, we train people on ‘What do you look for?’ Even people who’ve been in a domestic violence relationship don’t know they’re in one because they can’t name the science. It’s like going to the doctor and saying, ‘Gosh, that thing at the end of my foot? Something happened to it.’ You’ve got to learn that you stubbed it. You’ve got to learn that it’s a toe. It’s really basic.”

As part of the education efforts, Maria’s Voice representatives speak to and provide training for city employees, private businesses, school districts, service organizations, houses of worship, medical organizations, and more. “So long as we have the community support, it doesn’t have to rely on just the (police) officers anymore. It doesn’t have to rely on the prosecutors anymore. We can rely on each other,” Johnson said. 

Maria’s Voice, headquartered in Chaska, has been expanding its activities in Eden Prairie over the past year. This has included speaking to the Eden Prairie Lioness Lions and providing training to PROP staff on signs of domestic abuse.

The organization also received a grant from the U.S. Office of Justice, providing funding to disseminate prevention information in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District, which includes Eden Prairie.

Weimelt and Johnson indicated they planned to approach the City of Eden Prairie regarding adding their prevention education to the city’s wellness site.

“There’s a lot of city workers who interact with the general public, and we are really looking forward to training them for how they can safely help someone who may be in a domestic violence situation,” Weimelt said. 

Shoe cards

Weimelt and Maria’s Voice created “shoe cards” in response to the experience a City of Maple Grove public works employee shared after a training session in that city.

“He was doing some kind of work in this person’s house, and she followed him out to his truck, and said, ‘You need to help me,’ and he said, ‘I have been haunted all this time because I had no tools. I had nothing I could do to help this woman,’” Johnson said. Calling the police did not make sense because no crime was being committed at the time. 

The shoe cards contain information on resources such as the Minnesota Day One Crisis Hotline and the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Currently, the cards are available in English and Spanish, with plans to include Somali and Vietnamese languages in the future.

“The reason they’re called a shoe card is because they’re small enough to take very discreetly and hide it in your shoe,” Weimelt said. “So when you get alone or get away from the person who may be abusing you, you, you can refer to these resources quickly and discreetly.” 

At public events, “People come by our booth, they don’t say a word to us. They take this card and walk on, and they take it because they need it,” Weimelt said. 

Maria’s Voice representatives also have conversations with people of all ages at these public events. Weimelt attributed the ability to increase the organization’s outreach to events like Eden Prairie’s PeopleFest this year in part to a 2023 grant from the Eden Prairie Community Foundation.

PSAs will provide prevention education aimed at men

A forthcoming series of six public service announcements focused on men’s ability to prevent domestic violence is getting assistance from the Office of Justice grant.

Named “Rocky Speaks” in honor of Maria’s dog, Rocky, the videos will feature men speaking to other men about their responsibility to be good role models, speak up when they hear objectifying language, and understand the root causes of domestic violence, Weimelt said. 

“Obviously, women are offenders as well. But unfortunately, statistically, men are people who abuse others. So we wanted to start with a population that could speak out and have a lot of influence on the people in their lives – maybe the young man that they work out with, their nephews, kids that they see at work, kids that they coach – about this toxic masculinity that our culture perpetuates,” Weimelt said. 

The organization also works to educate prosecutors regarding the nuances of domestic violence.

“It’s not just about bruises and all that kind of stuff that we can see,” Weimelt said. “There’s financial abuse, etc.”

While some areas of abuse are not associated with chargeable crimes, “They go into the whole picture of what a person is doing that can ultimately be a crime that has a charge attached to it. Like stalking: that is a chargeable crime. Battery, assault (are) chargeable crimes. All of those things feed into the situation of domestic violence where you really need to understand the nuances.”

Law enforcement involvement often comes only after situation has escalated to physical violence

Johnson said that the involvement of prosecutors and law enforcement is “not a good indicator of what’s really happening in the community” in terms of domestic violence, “because most people aren’t even calling the police. Most of the time, when things escalate, it’s because it’s become physical. And that is not the first sign of domestic violence. You have to remember if I’m trapped in a marriage, that he has complete control of money, and he’s got complete control of things, I’m less likely to pick up the phone and call the police because I’ve been cut off from everything.”

Nationally, the CDC’s statistics indicate that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced physical abuse from a partner.

“That’s huge, just physical abuse alone,” Weimelt said. “That’s nationwide. Whether you live in beautiful Eden Prairie with, you know, a quite wealthy income level, or whether you live somewhere else in the United States that is not as blessed in terms of income and privilege and access, there’s domestic violence there, too.” 

Prior to Maria’s death, both Weimelt and Maria’s father, Bill Pew, had served on the boards of nonprofits, “but we didn’t know a thing about domestic violence,” Weimelt said. “When we started going through court processes and other things and started talking with the police, then people started saying what they knew about Maria, we all of a sudden understood that there were signs of domestic violence all around us. We just didn’t know what they were. My husband said to me, ‘Lissa, how can we prevent this from happening to another family?’ So that word ‘prevention’ was really right away in our thoughts.”

Maria, Weimelt said, was a private, quiet person with a lot of opinions who was a force in the household. “And she was really, really loved.”

Maria was the first administrative assistant in a business Weimelt ran. One day, Weimelt said, she came home from work, “and I was just bummed out and was very emotional and crying about something that had happened during the day. And she looked at me – because Maria is so practical and just such a problem solver and such a loving person – and she said to me, ‘Mom, just quit your crying and get to work.’

“I think about that a lot. Her picture’s in my closet. Every single morning I’m in my class and I say Maria, ‘I’m gonna go out there and talk about you again today. If you don’t want me to, you just have to let me know.’ So far, she hasn’t told me to stop. Quite the contrary. I hear every single day: ‘Mom, quit your crying and get to work. Because there’s a lot of work to do.’”

Editor’s Note: If you need help with a domestic violence situation in Minnesota or Fargo, North Dakota, you can contact the Minnesota Day One Crisis Hotline by calling 1-866-223-1111 to talk, 612-399-9995 to text, or visiting dayoneservices.org for live chat online.

You can also get help from the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) to talk, texting “START” to 88788 for text, or visiting thehotline.org for live chat online.