UI student orgs, RVAP remember Mollie Tibbetts
RVAP and Dance Marathon remember Mollie Tibbetts who was a member of both organizations.
Mollie Tibbetts (second from left) poses for a picture with friends at Dance Marathon 24 on Feb. 3, 2018. Tibbetts was found dead in Brooklyn, Iowa after a month-long search.
September 3, 2018
As a member of the Rape Victim Advocacy Program and Dance Marathon, Mollie Tibbetts touched the lives of those she met through the two organizations.
Tibbetts was a direct-service advocate at RVAP. The organization works with the community to prevent sexual violence through consent-based education. She was trained to provide crisis counseling to survivors in the hospital.
Storm O’Brink, Tibbetts’ supervisor, met Tibbetts when she was a member of O’Brink’s first volunteer class.
“People often don’t do this work unless they feel called to do it, and I believe Mollie felt called,” O’Brink said. “She was newer to some of the issues we train on. It was wonderful to watch her grow over time. We loved having her on our team.”
UI sophomore Hannah Peterson met Tibbetts when the latter was her friend’s roommate. They lived across the street from one another and often walked to class together. Soon, they became close friends, hanging out in each other’s dorms, studying at the IMU, going to comedy shows, and participating in Dance Marathon.
Peterson said Dance Marathon can be difficult to get super involved in because it’s such a large organization, but that didn’t stop Tibbetts.
“Mollie loved Dance Marathon,” Peterson said. “She did everything she could for the organization, raising a ton of money, talking with our family’s kiddos at our family events, and dancing with the kids at the Big Event.”
Rhonda McCoy, the mother of the family that Tibbetts’ group was assigned to, said Dance Marathon meant a lot to the family. The distraction was needed after their daughter Charlie relapsed with a new brain tumor, she said.
“Mollie holds a very special spot in our hearts,” McCoy said. “Her smile, her willingness to hold a little girl that is really too big to be held, her loving her and making her feel like a million-dollar superstar for a few hours. My daughter needed that in a big way.”
After the news of Tibbetts’ disappearance spread across national media, those who knew her were shaken, Peterson said. Those who knew Tibbetts are focusing on remembering who she was, not the tragedy, she said.
O’Brink said this is a tragic milestone for those who work in the antiviolence advocacy field.
“I think the most tragic thing about being a murder victim is that your own death doesn’t even get to be about you,” O’Brink said. “Everything becomes about your murder. I wish America would have kept the conversation centered on her. Mollie never had to experience that horrible milestone in her time as an advocate, because instead she was mine.”
A vigil held Aug. 22 brought all of those touched by Tibbetts together. The McCoy family met Tibbetts’ older brother, Jake Tibbetts.
“It was such a powerful movement,” McCoy said. “When our three girls gave him a big hug that night standing in the grass of the building where we met Mollie, I realized our girls could give back in a way that we had never expected.
