As the public learned last Thursday morning about the murder of 31 year old Emma MacDonald at a hotel on the campus of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in the same building the annual Girls Empowerment Leadership Initiative Summit was being set up.
The juxtaposition of events was stark, said Ellen Moorhouse, the communications and marketing manager at the Massachusetts Status on the Commission of Women, host of the event — especially given that Emma MacDonald's husband Jeffrey MacDonald had been arrested and charged with her murder.
"I called it a cruel irony, and I don't even think that begins to describe the scenario in which we found ourselves," Moorhouse said, seeing hundreds of smiling girls and young women imagining their future.
She struggled that day personally and professionally to match the two together in her head she said.
Over her career, Moorhouse has worked with the commission and other organizations to focus on legislation and funding for women's rights and safety, as others involved with the summit have done.
"I like to say that I've long acted as the bridge between the community and the legislators that impact the policy that ultimately shapes our lives," Moorhouse said,
What kept her going last week she said, while meeting with school aged girls, was how many people are working to address domestic violence and related issues.
"I think it's sort of all the more necessary to do that work — harder though it may seem — especially in light of that violence," Moorhouse said.
According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, in the U.S., one in four women and one in seven men in their lifetime have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner.
According to The Boston Globe, Emma MacDonald's daughter is 10 years old. Jeffrey MacDonald has two other young children.
He “admitted that he had intentionally beaten his wife to death, using his hands, feet, as well as a variety of other objects, and that it was his intent to kill her in doing so,” according to a police report, The Boston Globe reported.
At his arraignment he pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail and will be back in court May 12.
Both worked in dining services at the university.
Two vigils are being held for Emma MacDonald, one on April 29 at 2:30 p.m., organized by the campus unions and another on May 5, at 3 p.m. held by the university in partnership with the Center for Women and Community, which supports survivors of domestic violence in Hampshire County.
