LAWRENCE — One in five homicide victims are killed by someone they loved. That includes Gladys Ricart, who was murdered by her former boyfriend on her wedding day on Sept. 26, 1999.
Now an annual city ceremony, women were dressed in white wedding gowns with an awareness flag raised Thursday afternoon in memory of Ricart, a Dominican woman who lived in New Jersey, and all victims of domestic violence. Men who attended were asked to wear black.
The “brides” met in Campagnone Common across from Lawrence City Hall and then peacefully marched in the area.
The annual “Brides’ March” spotlights “the crisis of domestic violence in Lawrence and nearby communities,” according to Delamano, a local nonprofit that assists domestic violence victims.
Ricart was killed by “a man who claimed to love her.”
“Every year on that day for the last quarter century, the Brides’ March stands in white and black to memorialize Gladys and countless loved ones who continue to lose their lives to intimate partner homicide,” according to information posted on bridesmarch.com.
The Gladys Ricart and Victims of Domestic Violence Memorial Walk/Brides’ March is an annual event that was started in New York City in 2001 to remember Ricart.
The idea for the march was originated by Josie Ashton, a young Dominican woman from Florida, who was moved by the murder and outraged at the media and community’s insensitive response to Gladys’ murder.
Ashton resigned from her job and sacrificed more than three months of her life away from her then young family to walk, in a wedding gown, through several states down the East Coast ending in her home state of Florida, all in an attempt to draw attention to the horrors of domestic violence, organizers said.