COLUMBUS – Steps to HOPE has set up a display in the storefront of their Second Chance Thrift Store downtown at 232 E. Mills Street for National Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October.

Heather Cash and Jessica Powell with Steps to HOPE designed the display along with Paula Childers, who is in charge of public relations with the shelter, to shed a light on what domestic violence does to a household.

“October is domestic violence month and we wanted to bring awareness to that,” Childers said. “Lee Lindsay, the executive director, asked me to do the windows in the store and so we kind of started with this haunted house idea and came up with the idea that a home should be safe and not scary.”

On the left side of the window display is a house that has been decorated like a normal home, and on the right side is the inside of a doll house with everything from the walls to the furniture spray painted gray.

“One of the houses looks pretty on the outside and was made from cardboard and reclaimed material,” Childers said. “It was made from the boxes that our office chairs came in, paper that we already have, everything was designed with anything we had on hand. We made it from scratch.”

Complete with patio furniture and windows made out of popsicle sticks, according to Powell, the outside of the house on the left side of the display is meant to represent what people see as a normal house looking from the outside in.

The inside of the house is spray painted gray and black to represent that “You never really know what is going on inside,” Powell explained.

On the inside, everything from the plants to the teddy bear on the floor is spray painted gray, according to Powell. Similar displays are up at Polk County High School and Polk County Middle School for domestic violence awareness.

Powell said a “Nightmare Before Christmas” themed display is up at PCHS to demonstrate the nightmares of domestic violence. A haunted house display is present at PCMS because, according to Cash, a person’s house should be not be as scary as a haunted house.

According to the North Carolina Coalition for Domestic Violence website, about one in three American women have been physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives.

“We encourage anybody who is obviously suffering domestic abuse or child abuse or sexual abuse to contact us or law enforcement,” Childers said. “The vast majority of people we encounter here do not have any self worth when they get to us. Everyone and everything has purpose and can be renewed if we think outside the box.”

In case of emergency, Steps to HOPE can be reached at 828-894-2340. Childers said Steps to HOPE is staffed around the clock and the shelter’s services are available to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.