Victim’s Services

Offender and Victim Advocacy: Is there a Middle Ground? DC Public Safety-220,000 Requests a Month

November 22, 2010 By Len Leave a Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

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This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/04/offender-and-victim-advocacy-is-there-a-middle-ground-dc-public-safety-220000-requests-a-month/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From the nation’s capital, this is D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. We have, what I believe, is another very interesting show. We’re going to be talking about crime victims, and I know we’ve been talking a lot about crime victims lately, but this time, we’re going to do it from the faith based perspective, the fact that my agency, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency really has what I consider to be one of the best faith based programs in the United States in terms of reaching out to criminal offenders, volunteers and churches, mosques, synagogues to help them readjust from prison, or even on probation, but in this context, we’re going to be talking about it in terms of the faith based initiative. Anne Seymour is one of our guests today. She is with Justice Solutions. She’s a national expert on the issue of victims and victimology. Anne’s website is www.justicesolutions.org. I’ll be giving that out again all throughout the program. Reverend Bernard Keels, the director of the University Memorial Chapel at Morgan State University in the great city of Baltimore, Maryland, where I am from, www.morgan.edu, he’s also joining with us today. He’s a mentor and facilitator in terms of faith based groups. Before we begin the show, our usual commercials, we’re up to 200,000 requests a month for D.C. Public Safety, television, radio, blog, and transcripts. That’s media, M-E-D-I-A – dot-CSOSA – C-S-O-S-A – dot-gov. Your input into these shows is what makes the show enjoyable, and what makes the show come alive, and we really appreciate every email, every comment on our comments box, your responses via twitter, and your responses, once again, via email. If you want to get in touch with me directly, it is Leonard – L-E-O-N-A-R-D – dot-Sipes – S-I-P as in Peculiar-P-E-S – @csosa.gov, or you can follow us via twitter at twitter.com/lensipes. Back to our guests, Anne Seymour and Reverend Bernard Keels. Welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Anne Seymour: Thank you.

Bernard Keels: Thank you.

Len Sipes: Anne Seymour, now I’ve read your resume and been on your website, Justice Solutions, www.justicesolutions.org. You’ve done a ton of work with the U.S. Department of Justice in terms of victims’ issues. You are, what I was told by Christine Keels, the person who heads up our faith based program, truly one of the national experts when it comes to victims’ related issues. We’re approaching National Victims’ Week in April. Give me a sense as to what’s happening with the victims’ movement throughout the country. Is there a way of summarizing that in a couple minutes?

Anne Seymour: Yeah, I think, boy, summarizing the victims’ movement, we’re a very, very diverse movement. So it’s hard to summarize, but I will say that, you know, we’ve got 32,000 laws across the states and the Indian country at the federal level that protect crime victims. A big issue now for victims is making sure that these laws are more than just rhetoric, and so we’re looking a lot at compliance issues. For me personally, one of my big issues is also making sure that we’re identifying victims who choose not to go through the justice process, which is the majority of victims who don’t report crimes, and they never know that services are available to assist them, and so I’m working a lot now with victims who choose not to report, as well as with agencies like CSOSA, which has been really a national model in terms of the work they do with crime victims.

Len Sipes: And I think, and I thank you for that, and I think Christine Keels, the person who heads the faith-based program, really deserves a lot of credit for that and really has re-invigorated the whole faith based initiative. It’s interesting you talk about people not reporting crimes. Most crimes are not reported to law enforcement. 40% of property crimes and about 50% of violent crimes are reported. So I’ve oftentimes wondered what happens to those people who float through their victimization without going through the formal criminal justice system; that you’ve just brought up a very interesting issue.

Anne Seymour: It’s interesting, and I think it’s also very sad. I mean, one of the things we need to do is to make sure that everyone in a community knows about victims’ services, because I may not report to the police, but I may talk to my hairdresser, to my child’s student, or if I’m at school, I may talk to the school nurse and still not want to report. That’s my choice, and I support victims who choose that, but we still want them to know that they can access services for mental health counseling, for medical services that they may need. There’s a lot of services that do not require reporting and going through the system.

Len Sipes: Okay. Reverend Bernard Keels, director, University Memorial Chapel, Morgan State University in the great city of Baltimore, again, where I’m from. Morgan, www.morgan.edu, one of the well known institutions of higher learning in the Baltimore Metropolitan Area. You’re a mentor and a facilitator in terms of faith based organizations where, here in D.C., in Baltimore?

Bernard Keels: Yeah, with the Family Reunification Program in D.C. One of the things that I think Anne has touched on that is so powerful is that the whole issue of the rhetoric that is present in our society, churches and faith based organizations oftentimes had to separate the historical imperative from what’s happened in contemporary times. Going back to the Cain and Abel saga, where the first, probably the first victim was Abel, I think churches have to really begin to understand that there is a duality, if you will, with how people who are victims of crimes need to have restitution, need to have restorative justice that happens to them, and many, many times, churches tend to be so caught up into the dogma of worship that they forget the everyday issues that affect the people who are worshipping, i.e. crime victims, and yes, people do report crime victims to hairdressers and to strangers, and sometimes, the last place they come is a faith based institution because of the built in negative images of what it means to accuse, for instance, a cleric of abuse. Some of the institutional abuse you hear about, pedophilia in some of the mainline denominational churches, so faith based churches and institutions need to really broaden their understanding that it’s okay to leap out with your faith, but to understand the very basic issues that affect people, because people, after all, bring the whole idea of parishioners, and I think that’s where we have to become more relevant.

Len Sipes: The, especially when it applies to women victims, most, in most cases, women know who attacked them. In most cases, there is prior knowledge or a prior relationship. That is extraordinarily difficult when your best friend/brother/husband/friend of five years/somebody that you’ve known for the last 30 days victimizes you, and thereby the struggle, and we understand that, in terms of people not reporting crimes, they see this in many cases as a personal event, not necessarily an event that you would report to the criminal justice system, but she’s a victim nevertheless. So I would imagine, I can see that person going to their Imam. I can see that person going to their priest, going to their minister, going to their rabbi, and saying, although I don’t want to report this to the criminal justice system, I am reporting it to you, I need spiritual counseling in terms of best, next steps. What should I do, correct?

Bernard Keels: Yeah. Not only are you correct, but it’s so incumbent upon that spiritual director to recognize the boundaries of their ability, his or her ability, to become a meaningful mentor, a meaningful person that could intervene in it. So many times, people will go to their cleric, the imam, the rabbi as a way of sort of ameliorating the situation and saying that prayer will change that, or the fact that I’ll come to church will make it easier, and it takes a very strong and well-trained cleric to realize that it’s okay to be able to access those governmental, or organizations like a CSOSA, to be able to partner with those governmental organizations and partner with Anne’s group, and to be able to say, help me learn how to translate what I do so that a victim actually has a face and a person they can believe in in the process of healing.

Len Sipes: Now before going on in the program, to cretae clarity, some clarity out of all the issues we’re dealing with over the course of the next 25 minutes, we have to deal with the faith based component, and the faith based component, ordinarily, is one of mentoring people under supervision. So we’ve got to be dealing with the fact that there are people under supervision, and we use the faith community to mentor to them, to help them regain their footing, not do drugs, get together and take care of their families and not continue a criminal lifestyle. We’ve got to deal with that. We’ve got to deal with that in the context of the victims’ movement, and we’ve got to deal with the victims’ movement across the board. So that’s three gigantic topics that we now have, oh, 20 minutes to deal with. Do we want to start off with the mentoring to people under supervision/criminal offenders? Do we want to start off with that component and how that interacts with the victims’ movement?

Bernard Keels: Yeah, one of the ways that we started was to be able to help offenders understand that there’s not that much difference between a mentor and a mentee. So many times, we draw an invisible yet concrete barrier between those who have transgressed society and those who are nice, normal people. I’ve found that it’s important to tell your story and be a very good listener so that a person realizes that no matter how far you’ve gone, you can come home. The Hebrew biblical story of the prodigal son comes to mind. It’s important to realize that if we live against society, rehabilitation and restorative justice is possible, then that offender has to have the very realistic goal that if he or she can begin to first seek some forgiveness within themselves, their higher being, whatever it might be, then and only then can they begin to go to that person that they’ve transgressed and try to be able to create a more helpful and hopeful dialogue. So mentors have to be very careful not to prejudge a situation based on their own concept of morality, their own concept of religion. Religion becomes so narrowly defined sometimes that it can become dangerous when we begin to judge people from a unidimensional yardstick that says, if you’ve done this, then this is the result. I don’t know a person’s story, but I can hear who they are and interact with who they’ve been, and then share a bit of my own story. So I think that that mentoring thing, in the faith based community, has to be able to step outside of its own power, if you will, its own sense of history, and look in the universal sense of, what does it mean if I have offended Anne, to know that Anne has the right to come to her own terms of forgiving my offense.

Len Sipes: All right, so basically what I’m hearing is, first, the individual has to heal themselves. The faith based mentor, whatever religion that persons happens to represent, can’t be too judgmental. He’s there to help that person cross a bridge, but there is a certain point where he or she needs to acknowledge that they’ve done a tremendous amount of harm to another human being, they need to acknowledge they’ve done harm, a tremendous amount of harm to the community, so it’s just not that particular act in isolation. There’s no such thing as a burglary. There’s no such thing as a rape. It is multiple, multiple victims. It may be one person that the state uses to prosecute, but there’s an entire family, there’s an entire community that’s been harmed, and that offender needs to come to grips with that community –

Anne Seymour: And their own family as well.

Len Sipes: Yes.

Bernard Keels: Good.

Len Sipes: Go ahead –

Anne Seymour: Oh, I was just going to say, that’s the whole concept of restorative justice, is that you really need to look at the harm you’ve done to yourself. I really agree. You’ve got to go to yourself first. It’s not about me first as a victim advocate, or as someone who’s a probation officer, it is really looking at you and the harm that you did, but how I hurt you and your family first, and then your victim, and then your neighborhood, and then your community, so it’s very, very important that we understand, it’s almost like a tidal wave that occurs. It may start out as a little wave, but when you think about the impact of crime, it goes so far in our society, and I think traditionally, a lot of folks that are under community supervision, we’ve never made them think about it, and a big part of what we’re talking about today is that we want them to think about it, and we’re going to give them help to acknowledge that they have caused harm to people, and that we’re giving them an opportunity to make up for the harm that they’ve caused.

Bernard Keels: From a spiritual point of view, acknowledgment is only part of it, Leonard. Understanding becomes an even deeper part, because when you understand something, there’s a possibility for transformation to take place. So many times, people carry on the label of being an alcoholic or a drug addict or a recovering drug addict. I try to get a person to the point where they both acknowledge and understand they can become a delivered person so they don’t go that pathway again. They discover new pathways to conflict resolution, new pathways to understand that their personal issues don’t have dominance over someone else’s issue because of their role or their gender or their relationship or their wealth, and so many times, society begins to casually assign value on crimes based on who’s committing the crime.

Len Sipes: Well, the society puts labels on each and every one of us for a thousand different reasons, whether you’re African American, whether you’re white, whether you’re short, whether you’re tall, whether you’re Hispanic, whether you’re a male, whether you’re female, whether you’re from the United States, or whether you’re from Germany, we all tend to provide stereotypes. So the stereotype of the criminal offender, or the stereotype of the person under supervision, however you want to describe that person, doesn’t that come with the territory? Anne?

Anne Seymour: You know, I think it does. I think we are judgmental, even though we’re all mamby pamby and say we’re not supposed to be, but we do judge. We very often do judge a book by its cover. But it’s the same thing when, you know, when we talk about victims, people see victims as weak, as someone who might have been partially responsible for what happened to them. We make judgments about victims, and when we talk about why crime victims don’t report crimes, it’s because they are afraid that no one’s going to believe them, and they’re afraid of being blamed, and the thing that you mentioned, Leonard, I think is so important. Very often, they know the person, and so they don’t want to get that person in trouble, or they’re fearful of that person. So we need to recognize that we do judge people who have committed offenses, and very often, I think our judgments are way off, just as they are with crime victims, that we should not make assumptions that anyone is a certain way because they committed an offense, or because someone committed one against them. With victims, for me, it’s always so important to, despite all the research that tells us about domestic violence victims, and kids who are child abuse victims, everyone is unique. Every single person has their own story. Every person came to the path of victimization with a lot of stuff that came before that we need to recognize, which is going to affect how they cope with the victimization.

Len Sipes: I want to reintroduce my guests halfway through the program, and it’s going by like wildfire. Anne Seymour, Justice Solutions, www.justicesolutions.org, national expert in terms of victim assistance. Reverend Bernard Keel is director of University Memorial Chapel at Morgan State University in grand and glorious Baltimore, Maryland, www.morgan.edu. We go with the research, and you go with a certain sense of pragmatism, and I just want to touch upon this whole sense of labeling very quickly and then move on. If I don’t introduce that, if I don’t introduce the anger on the part of the crime victims, if I don’t introduce the anger on the part of the average citizen who happens to listen to this program, they don’t see the program is relevant. They say, Leonard, for the love of good god, at least acknowledge the fact that we are suffering and the community is suffering. Yeah, I do understand that programs need to be there for offenders/people under supervision. I need, I understand all of that, but somewhere along the line, you’ve got to acknowledge the harm. Okay, so if we acknowledge the harm, then we can move on and say that the research is pretty clear that these programs, and programs run the gamut from drug treatment to mental health treatment to finding jobs to dealing with a wide array of other social issues, do have a way of lessening recidivism, which means fewer offenders go back to the criminal justice system, which saves a) victims from being victims, and b) taxpayers from having to pay additional taxes. The research indicates that there’s approximately a 10-20% reduction in recidivism, so Reverend Keels, by mentoring to individuals, helping them cross that bridge, that’s accelerating that process, is it not?

Bernard Keels: Not only is it accelerating the process, but it really assures that recidivism does not become the revolving door that so many times is in the criminal justice system. Apart from the understanding of the offender, I want to really talk a bit about the victim. So many times, the victim, in his or her silence, has been shunned by all of the institutional support. Most of the institutional support in America is for offenders, and so the support, there’s parole, probation, there’s –

Len Sipes: 98% of it is focused on the person, the participant within the criminal system.

Bernard Keels: This is where the community becomes important. The community becomes the holistic vehicle by which we can rally around the whole adage about, it takes a village to heal something, can rally around and begin to say that it’s not your fault, that there is a way of you being able to come to grips with your own hurt, and maybe someday, at your pace, forgive, but not to put the victim in a sense of being revictimized.

Len Sipes: Yes.

Bernard Keels: So many times, faith communities make that mistake, Leonard, to revictimize the person.

Len Sipes: And that’s part of the problem here, in terms of the calls and letters that I get, or the emails, is that, don’t revictimize people who are victimized by crime. We do understand that you’re advocating for more programs for criminal offenders, and we understand that, but somewhere along the line, you have to advocate for us, which is the reasons why we’re doing these radio shows in.

Anne Seymour: I just remember, as a young victim advocate, and this was 25 years ago, I was training probation officers, and a woman lingered afterwards, and told me about being a battered woman. She was a probation officer who was in a chronic battering, and she told me about going to her minister, and he said to her, if you would just be a better wife and think about your children, it’s important that you stay with him for the sake of the family. And I remember her crying, and I remember crying myself thinking, oh my gosh, we have to do something if that’s the advice that faith communities are giving to victims, and that’s why I’m so happy to be addressing this subject today, because people do not, they’re not mean to victims intentionally, but they say the wrong things, and the faith community, in trying to keep the family together and trying to stick with, especially the Christian requirement forgiveness can be extremely hurtful to victims. So we have partnered, over the years, and developed wonderful training programs, and a lot of work like the mentoring that the reverend is doing, that helps them understand that they have two options: they can help victims, or they can hurt victims, and we’re kind of hoping that everyone sides on the help part, because there’s a lot of help needed by victims.

Len Sipes: There is middle ground. From what I’m hearing from both of you, there is a way of mentoring to victims, and to be sure that their rights and responsibilities are constitutional rights in most of the states, so there is a constitutional right in terms of the federal crimes, they are, they have constitutional protections. There is a way of taking care of the victim, and at the same time, being sure that the people under supervision, by my agency or any other agency out there, we’re talking about five million human beings, seven million people caught up in the criminal justice system and the correctional system, but the vast majority of them belong to us, the people who provide community supervision. There is a way to take care of the victims’ issues, and there is a way to take care of the people under supervision to provide them with that bridge, and in many ways, and I’ve seen it first hand in the 20 years that I’ve been dealing directly with the offender community, there are literally hundreds of thousands of people who have crossed that bridge, who do come to an understanding that they’ve done a tremendous amount of harm, who have gotten the programs and the services necessary to help them go from tax burden to taxpayer. So we can do it all, is the point.

Bernard Keels: Traditionally, institutions like faith based institutions have done, by every means necessary, to protect the pristine image of being perfect. Nothing bad happens here. Everything that walks through this door gets returned to a perfect relationship with the creator and all those kinds of things. One of the things that I try to do personally and professionally is to realize the need to be able to acknowledge brokenness with the victim, and to talk about those issues both biblically, historically, interpersonally, where broken does, when it becomes uncared for, brokenness becomes a characteristic, if you will, or a habitual cyclical thing where people feel to be broken. Case in point, and Anne reminded me so much, you’re talking about that crime victim went to her pastor, I had a young lady come to me some years ago, battered and bruised, and told me that she needed to be a better wife because she knew her husband loved her, and I said why, because he beat me. And you know, for her, that was her Judeo-Christian training in terms of wives, submit to your husbands. Property issues. And I said to her that, let’s rethink that again. If you remain in a state of brokenness, normally, you do not become well, you might pass that brokenness on to your offspring. So your children may begin to understand that that’s the role of a woman, to be battered, not to be made, self-actualized through her own abilities, her own talents, and when pastors and imams and rabbis are not properly trained, they will almost always go to maintain the integrity of the institution, and not the integrity of the individual who’s hurting within an institution, so it’s critical to do that.

Len Sipes: These are all extraordinarily sensitive issues, and I think we’re tackling them rather well. We’re not avoiding them. We’re not being a bunch of bureaucrats. Let me throw in one more. The great majority of, according to research, especially women caught up in the criminal justice system, they’ve been crime victims themselves. Males, I mean, there’s a strong piece of research, series of research articles out there talking about the fact that everybody caught up in the criminal, not everybody, the majority caught up in the criminal justice system are subject, have been the recipients of child abuse and neglect. The instance of women offenders being sexually assaulted, especially as children, especially by people they know is astounding. I understand why, after 40 years in the criminal justice system, why so many people do take to drugs, why so many people, in fact, it’s 50%+ claim mental health issues, not diagnosable mental health, but they claim their own mental health issues. I understand a lot of that, not trying to rationalize the criminal behavior or excuse the criminal behavior, but when you come from that sort of a background, I understand why they get into drugs, and I understand why drugs, in many cases, leads to criminal behavior. Who wants to tackle that?

Anne Seymour: Well, I’m happy to tackle that, and thank you for bringing up female offenders. I think a real theme of what we’re talking about is that, in the old days, we would have the people who worked with offenders, or people in prison on one side, and the victim people way on the other side, and we have come to a rightful conclusion that it is not black and white. We are all gray in this, and you raise a great example of women offenders, at least 90% of them have victimization and trauma in their background, which causes them very often to use and abuse, to cope with the trauma, which puts them in dangerous situations, which sometimes lead to criminal situations. Now tell me that’s not a victim assistance issue! And I actually am starting to work on women offender issues, but similarly, I think of CSOSA as a great example. Why does CSOSA have a victim assistance program? People go, they’re supposed to be working with people on probation. It is great! Every probationer, and people talk about victimless crimes. I’ll make the case that there is no such thing as a victimless crime! For every probationer, someone is hurt by that. So they need to be having victim services to be able to recognize that fact, and I will give you another example. Prison rape is an issue. That’s a huge concern now in this country. Who is stepping up to the plate to work with people who are incarcerated, men and women and youthful offenders? It is victim advocates. We have a moral obligation to not say, this person’s a criminal or a murderer, or they raped themselves. That doesn’t matter to us. They’re a victim in need of help, and so I just say that, because we not only judge people, as we said earlier, but we tend to pigeonhole people, and the beauty of what CSOSA is doing, and I hope a lot of other programs out in this country and internationally is recognizing that we’ve, we can’t box ourselves in anymore. We just can’t. Everyone is or knows a victim of crime. Everyone knows someone who has been through some sort of criminal or juvenile justice supervision, so let’s look at it from that perspective. This affects every single one of us.

Len Sipes: It’s a massive amount of suffering, whether you’re the victim, whether you’re the person caught up in the criminal justice system, whether the person caught up in the criminal justice system who was victimized when they were young, there’s just a massive amount of pain going on out there, and I guess it’s our job, in terms of the victims’ community and the faith based community and government, I sort of have to laugh when you say government.

Anne Seymour: No, it’s a big role.

Len Sipes: Well, we would like to, but I think the leadership is going to come from the victims’ community, and I think the leadership is going to come from the faith based community, quite frankly, because you all can say and do things that we can’t in government.

Anne Seymour: The giant sucking sound we want.

Len Sipes: The giant –

Anne Seymour: – to get wrapped into what we’re doing.

Len Sipes: The giant, the giant sucking sound. Well, but we also want, at the same time, we want to convince people that it’s all shades of gray, that there’s very little black and white here, that it’s very little E=MC2, that there is a massive amount of suffering. If the faith community steps up to the plate and provides the leadership which they’re so capable of doing, and can mentor to individuals in a way that government, quite frankly, cannot. I’m paid to do what I do. So that person, regardless of where I spent my career, part of my career in terms of helping people caught up in the criminal justice system, I’m still paid to do it. The mentors are there because they see it as God’s work.

Anne Seymour: And the keyword in all that is servant leadership. Leadership by itself does not hold, I think, the true sense of what can be accomplished by serving others, a servant leader takes, at the very center of his or her setting to meet a person at the point of their need, and the need of victims, the need of offenders, the needs of the secondary and tertiary victims who sometimes feel helpless because someone they love has been victimized are really, really important, and one of the things that I try to consistently understand is this marvelous study in the Hebrew scripture about Nathan, the friend of David. David had victimized people without realizing, because his authority said you can do it. You’re the king, take Uriah and kill him. You know, you’re the king, do whatever you want to do, and Nathan appeals to the core of who he is, and here through the friend, the king, who has an influence over his subjects, comes and writes one of the most powerful restorative psalms that you can read in Hebrew scripture. So I think that it’s important that that victim realizes, never be forgotten, that Anne and I are crucial to what you do, but you are crucial too, because a part of the government, the rules and the issues become subtle and arrived at, and we’ve got to be able to go into institutions and say, for instance, the homosexual rape, indeed, is victimizing people.

Len Sipes: Okay. Anne, I’m going to give you the final 30 seconds of the program.

Anne Seymour: I just want to reiterate that I think we’re all in this together where we are victims or people who choose to victimize others, everyone’s going to have needs, and we as a community, I think, have an obligation to identify the needs of victims and try to meet them, but also recognize, I really appreciate what we’ve said, this whole thing is that, I think a lot of offenders, not all of them, a lot of them deserve a second chance, and the only way they can get that chance is if a community is willing to accept them and accept the fact that they have done something terribly wrong and give them opportunities to be held accountable to their victim and to their own community.

Len Sipes: Our guests today have been Anne Seymour of Justice Solutions, www.justicesolutions.org, a national expert on the issue of victimology. Reverend Bernard Keel is director of the University Memorial Chapel of Morgan State University, www.morgan – M-O-R-G-A-N – dot-edu, a mentor and faith based group facilitator. Ladies and gentlemen, this is D.C. Public Safety. Once again, we are extraordinarily appreciative of all the contact that you provide us, either through the show notes, the comments, and our four websites at media – M-E-D-I-A – dot-csosa.gov, or reach me directly via email, Leonard – L-E-O-N-A-R-D – dot-sipes – S-I-P-E-S – @csosa.gov, or follow us by twitter – twitter.com/lensipes. I want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Faith-Based Initiatives, Interviews with Staff, Reentry, Victim's Services

Scam Victims United-NOVA-DC Public Safety

May 18, 2010 By Len 1 Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/03/scam-victims-united-nova-dc-public-safety/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

- Audio begins -

Len Sipes: From our microphones in downtown Washington, D.C., this is D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Back with the National Organization for Victim Assistance with Dr. Will Marling, the Executive Director of NOVA, and Shawn Mosch. She is a victim of fraud, but she turned that victimization into positive action. She is now with Scam Victims United at www.scamvictimsunited.org, but before talking to will and talking to Shawn, I want to thank everybody, once again, for listening, watching, and reading the materials that we have at our website at media.csosa.gov, D.C. Public Safety radio, television, transcripts, and blog. We are up to 200,000 requests on a monthly basis for everything that we do, and we are extraordinarily appreciative of everything that you’re providing us with, even the comments as to how many times I screw up, or ideas for new programs and directions in terms of where we should go, and meaningful conversations in terms of the comments log. You can log into the website, again, media.csosa.gov, or you can email me directly at Leonard L-E-O-N-A-R-D.sipes S-I-P not T, P-E-S@csosa.gov or you can follow us via Twitter. That’s Twitter.com/lensipes,L-E-N-S-I-P-E-S, no break in those words. Back to your program. Dr. Will Marling, the Executive Director of NOVA, and Shawn Mosch, the person basically in charge of Scam Victims United, and to Will and to Shawn, welcome to D.C. Public Safety.

Will Marling: Thanks, Leonard.

Len Sipes: Will, I’m going to start off with you. How does the National Organization for Victim Assistance get involved with this issue of fraud. It’s pretty apparent to me – first of all, ladies and gentlemen, National Organization for Victim Assistance has been around for decades. At the very beginning of my stint in Washington, D.C., thirty years ago, there was the National Organization for Victim Assistance. When I worked as a senior crime prevention specialist for the Department of Justice’s clearing house, they also gave me the victim’s beat, which I knew nothing at all about, and the folks at NOVA were wonderful in terms of instructing me, and now we have Dr. Will Marling, who is now in charge of NOVA. How did we get into the scam and fraud issue?

Will Marling: Well, I tell you, we have a victim assistance line, Leonard, and you know, our expertise is primarily in violent criminal victimization and identity theft, but we get a lot of calls on this line. And of course, when people are looking for assistance, they see victim assistance, and we get, sometimes, a wide range of victim calls, but fraud victims, is there any angle, opportunity, remediation? What do they do? And while that’s not our area of expertise, we felt it important to start looking for at least some resources. We want to be able to at least hand them something, and that’s when we had the opportunity to connect with Shawn Mosch and Scam Victims United. And she’s a great resource, and the website’s fantastic. It’s a really useful tool.

Len Sipes: Is there any difference between identity theft and scams and frauds. It’s all pretty much the same thing, correct?

Will Marling: Well, no, no. I mean, you know, it all depends on the nature of the victimization, of course. Identity theft, you can have your identity stolen and never even know about it. The average identity discovered, the average identity theft discovery is twelve months, maybe, with a victim. With a scam situation, you’re engaging in something, and you believe that it’s an ethical, reputable approach, and then you discover that it’s not. There’s deception and this kind of thing, so there are different dynamics to it, and Shawn’s situation is even more irritating. She can tell you about that, but especially when people think they’re getting something, but they’re not, actually, that’s fraud.

Len Sipes: Absolutely. Now, I think I’m a perfect example of where I did not know. I mean, I’ve been in the business for forty years and I’m having a hard time distinguishing between identity theft and fraud. So, you know, there’s probably lots of people out there who may see – maybe they’re as dumb as I am and they see these issues as being one and the same. I mean, in essence, we’re concerned with burglary, we’re concerned with theft, we’re concerned with robbery, but much more money leaves our pockets through ID theft or through fraud and scams than through garden variety street crime, correct?

Will Marling: Well, you know, statistically, some of that’s hard to track. You know, we have uniform criminal reporting and a lot of that is related to the violent criminal side of things, which is horrific. But from the financial side, the emotional impact could be significant as well. When people take your earnings and something you’ve been saving for, or sometimes people end up losing quite a bit, and end up having to try to recover that, but at the heart of it, it’s an attack on us, personally, and it really steals something from us emotionally, many times, traumatically, and that’s why we still emphasize that. We recognize that certain outcomes from physical violence are different, and we as an organization are still committed to supporting violent criminal victimization folks who have that need, but we definitely see the growing, increasing demand on supporting fraud victims, because it’s there. And in the economic situation we’re in, these perpetrators are looking for every angle to still line their pockets with more money.

Len Sipes: And we’re going to do our very best today to stop them. Shawn Mosch, a victim of fraud. Tell us a little bit about that story and what brought you to create scamvictimsunited.org or scamvictimsunited.com.

Shawn Mosch: Well, back in 2002, my husband and I were selling a 1951 Buick Special that he had owned since he was in college, and we didn’t have a place to store it anymore, so we were selling it, and put an ad online, got some people that were interested. There was one person that sent us a cashier’s check to pay for the car and also to pay for shipping the car from us to them.

Len Sipes: Right.

Shawn Mosch: And we brought the cashier’s check to the bank, and because we didn’t know this person at all, we said to the bank, “We’re selling a car and we want to make sure that this check is good. You know, I don’t want to ship the car off or start using the money from this check and find out later it’s bad, and then we’re left in the hole.” And they said, “Oh, no, it’s a cashier’s check. Those are verified, it’s good in twenty-four hours. No problem.” And I said, “Wait, verified as good in twenty-four hours? That seems a little fast.” And they said, “Yeah, because cashier’s checks process faster.”

Len Sipes: Right.

Shawn Mosch: Twenty-four hours. That’s all you need to wait.

Len Sipes: I thought a cashier’s check was as good as cash. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Shawn Mosch: That’s the other thing that, you know, “Oh, they’re as good as cash,” so they assured me it had been verified, it was good, it was clear. The funds were available. And I said, “Okay,” so we went forward with the transaction. So part of that money was for shipping the car, and that we did to the person that was going to take care of that transportation, and then the other part was for the sale of the car, which we kept. So one week to the day later, the bank called us and said the check was counterfeit. And I said, “Well, what does that mean for me, because you already told me it was good and it was clear. You can’t un-ring that bell.” And they said, “That means you owe us the money.” I said, “What do you mean, I owe you the money? You told me it was good. I wasn’t going to touch the money – ”

Len Sipes: Until you told me it was good.

Shawn Mosch: Until I knew it was good and it was clear and it was verified. “You told me it was. What did I do wrong?” And actually, once I got talking with our legal department, my husband even asked them, and this was now days after we had found out it was counterfeit, and he said, “How long does it really take for a cashier’s check to clear?” And they put him on hold and then came back to the phone and told him, “Twenty-four hours, sir.” And we said, “Well, wait a minute. If that was accurate, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Len Sipes: It is, it is -

Shawn Mosch: Like it’s the real time, and they were never able to give us that information. So basically, I was upset. I started talking about this to anyone and everyone that would listen, started a message board, and through the message board, we found other people that this was happening to. So at first, I thought it was just my bank’s policy was messed up. So then, as I started to look at it, I found, ‘No, it’s the banking system.’ The banking system will tell people the check is good, it’s clear, and make the funds available in twenty-four hours before the check has been honored by the issuing bank. So now you can use and spend that money and then it could be 7-10 business days later that it comes back as counterfeit, and then you are liable for all that money.

Len Sipes: And how did you, how did all this make you and your husband feel?

Shawn Mosch: Oh, we were very upset.

Len Sipes: Yeah.

Shawn Mosch: So, we started talking to the media, and once it started to get in the media, we got even more people that were telling us, “Oh, it happened to me. Oh, same thing,” so then we started the website, Scam Victims United, and that was in early 2003. In the first two years of our website being operational, we helped stop over $2,000,000 from going into scams.

Len Sipes: That’s amazing. Now, okay, so you hold the key, then, for the rest of us, to tell the rest of us what not to do.

Shawn Mosch: That’s ironic that you used that phrase, because I did a presentation called ‘Education is the key.’

Len Sipes: Right.

Shawn Mosch: So we can all hold the key. Education about scams and frauds is the key.

Len Sipes: But every day, we are confronted with these scams, and I remember being on my computer and being three-quarters of the way through this statement from my bank and it just struck me – again, I’ve been a senior crime prevention specialist for the federal government. I’ve been involved in the crime prevention arena for a decade. I’ve been in the criminal justice system for forty years, and I was within a keystroke of sending fraudulent information through a phishing scheme. Any one of us could fall for this. I was on Gmail the other night and, you know, the scams that run on Gmail seem to be every single day. This is amazing. I mean, we are under attack.

Shawn Mosch: Every time we think we got the word out about this scam, they’re going to invent another one.

Len Sipes: And they look so legitimate.

Shawn Mosch: Oh, yeah, so many of them, they use the logos and all the right letterhead, and you get the check – the bank managers can’t even tell, by looking at the check, if it’s good or not.

Len Sipes: That’s amazing.

Shawn Mosch: But this is why I always tell people that if you are sent a cashier’s check or money order – because they’re also counterfeiting money orders and traveler’s checks – if you’re sent any one of those for payment for anything – something you’re selling online, a donation to a charity, payment for a room you’re renting, if you are sent cashier’s checks, money orders, traveler’s checks, and then told you need to wire any money to anyone, it’s a scam. They will go as far as doing on Craigslist – they’ll go out there and find somebody who’s renting a room. They’ll say, “Yep, I want to rent your room, send you a cashier’s check for the first month’s rent and deposit.” Then, once they know you’ve deposited the cashier’s check, they’ll say, “Oh my gosh, something happened. I’m not going to be able to move in with you. I’m so sorry. I have to back out of our contract. Can you just wire me back the money?”

Len Sipes: Wow, that’s amazing.

Shawn Mosch: This is the thing that I get all the time. So many people would say, “Well, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to wire money to somebody I don’t know.” But in that situation I just described, if you were renting out a room in your home to someone, and then they emailed you and said, “My mother passed away. I have to stay where I’m living to help out the rest of my family and I have to back out of our contract and not move into your room. I know I already sent you a thousand dollars. Keep a hundred for your trouble and inconvenience. Wire me back the rest.” Most people go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Yes, of course, I’m going to send you your $900.”

Len Sipes: Right. Okay, well, what are the three major things, as consumers, as regular, everyday people, that we can use to prevent this sort of thing from happening to us?

Shawn Mosch: Like I said, if you’re sent any sort of check, cashier’s check, money order and asked to wire any portion of it to anyone for any reason – I don’t care if their grandma died and their house fell down on top of them and they need the money – don’t.

Len Sipes: It’s a fraud.

Shawn Mosch: That’s the first thing. I mean, absolutely 100%, every single time I have ever talked with a person and that is their situation, it is a scam.

Len Sipes: Okay, give me another.

Shawn Mosch: Again, like you were talking about with the phishing scams, never ever click on a link in an email. If you get an email from your bank that says that there’s a problem with your account, call the customer service number to your bank and talk to a real human being.

Len Sipes: And don’t call the customer service number listed on that email. Right.

Shawn Mosch: Yeah, you can’t call the phone number listed in the email, because that might be redirected to the scammer, who is going to tell you, “Oh, yes, we need your information.” You know your bank. You bank with it every day. Pick up the phone and call their local number. Same with credit cards, where they say there’s a problem with your credit card. Flip over your credit card; look at the back. There is a customer service phone number. Call that number and say, “Hi, I got an email saying there’s a problem with my account.” If there really is a problem with your account, their help center will be able to pull it up and there will be a big flag on your account that says, ‘Yep, here’s the problem we need to fix.’

Len Sipes: But even -

Shawn Mosch: Don’t click the links on the emails.

Len Sipes: The example that I gave a little while ago with Gmail – I mean, all they’re asking for is account information, and I’m saying to myself, “Well, they’re not asking for my social security number. They’re not asking for my date of birth. They’re not asking for my home address. They simply want the account information. How could that possibly help them?” And then I said to myself, “Oh, silly, everything in there – something in there – whatever it is that you used to sign up for it provides them with access to practically everything else that you’re doing. Don’t do it.” And I emailed it to Gmail and they emailed back saying, “Yes, it’s fraudulent. Don’t worry about it.” But what that does is there are so many of these frauds going on, it almost makes you wary of any official correspondence coming to you via the Internet.

Shawn Mosch: It does, and I noticed that with myself, that every email I read, I kind of look at it and go, “Well, is this person really up and up?” And I do my research now. Google is a wonderful resource. If you are in doubt at all, copy and paste the person’s email address into a Google search, and if they have done this scam to somebody else, there is probably a post somewhere. We have had so many people come to our website because they did just that. They either Googled the name of the scammer, their email address, the companies they said they were working for, or their phone number, and it brought them right to our website, because so many people have posted, “Here’s the name and information about our scammer on our message board, so then we’re helping others to prevent the scams, because they did the Google search and found the information.”

Len Sipes: We’re more than halfway through the program. I want to reintroduce our guests. Dr. Will Marling is the Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, long, venerable, and honored within the criminal justice system for the work that they do. You can reach the National Organization for Victim Assistance, www.trynova.org. www.trynova.org. Our other guest today is Shawn Mosch. She is a victim, but more important that she took her victimization and turned it into something wonderfully positive. She is the person who organized Scam Victims United and it’s www.scamvictimsunited.org or www.scamvictimsunited.com. All right, so basically, any time you get a cashier’s check, any check, and you’re asked to wire the money back, that’s an obvious fraud. You know, never click any attachment or an email asking for any personal information. Go back to your bank, go back to your credit card company, go back to Google and just be suspicious of just about virtually any email requests that you get. But I bet you people are scammed all the time by regular U.S. mail.

Shawn Mosch: They are. The ones we see the most are the Internet ones, because most of the scammers are in another country and the problem is, you report the crime to your local police, and they can’t do anything jurisdiction-wise because they’re in another country.

Len Sipes: Because they’re in Russia.

Shawn Mosch: Now if Nigeria, the United Kingdom, usually. Sometimes Canada. But Nigeria is probably – if I had to put a top three, it would be Nigeria, U.K., and then Canada.

Len Sipes: Mm, that’s amazing. So I was overly stereotypical, because I heard so much about servers in Russia, even if they’re in other countries, being used for scams, but England and Canada and Nigeria, those are the three. All English commonwealth countries.

Shawn Mosch: Exactly.

Len Sipes: Interesting, interesting.

Shawn Mosch: Yeah, with Canada, the big one was the Canadian lottery, that they would get a letter saying that they had won the Canadian lottery and then you have to contact this person. Now you might get that first letter of contact via snail mail, but after that, things like the cashier’s check are usually sent overnight, like FedEx, the reason being the scammers know if they mail that counterfeit cashier’s check in the U.S. mail, that’s mail fraud.

Len Sipes: Yeah, and there’s a whole organization to -

Shawn Mosch: They use a delivery system, then it’s not.

Len Sipes: Okay, understood. I mean I get the British lottery scam every single night in my Gmail. When I open up my Gmail, the British lottery scam is there every single night.

Shawn Mosch: Oh, I get it too. I get it sent to admin at scamvictimsunited.com.

Len Sipes: [Laughs] Well, again, what is the larger perspective in all of this, Will Marling, Executive Director of NOVA. What is the larger perspective? Have we covered it in terms of our introduction? I would imagine – my guess is that this is happening a hundred times more than burglary, even though we don’t have hard data on it. My guess is that this is happening far more than street variety crime, and that this is a real issue, not only for this country, but for organizations like yours.

Will Marling: Well, sure. I mean, it’s hard to quantify, certainly, because these spamming situation, they can send out a hundred million emails and even a very tiny percentage of response is still a meaningful response for them, because it’s just the law of large numbers. Our main concern is educating people, like Shawn does so well, because really, at the end of the day, a lot of it truly is common sense, and that isn’t to minimize people or to criticize people who have fallen for this, because to be honest, we’ve had people perpetrate on our organization for things. And sometimes, you know, you want to step forward and, with an open hand, meet people and assume the best, but then you discover later on – but with a lot of these things, it plays on certain intrigue that we all have. The opportunity may be to get something for nothing, like some of these phishing opportunities, but as much as that, many times it’s just stopping and thinking. You know, does the bank need to ask you for all your personal information? Shouldn’t they have it already? I mean, why would they need to verify all that?

Len Sipes: But it’s impossible, though, Will. I mean, don’t you think, in the situation with Shawn, somebody handed her a cashier’s check. If somebody handed me a cashier’s check and if my bank said, “You know what? You’re good to go,” I would pretty much bet the farm that I’m okay.

Will Marling: Well, sure. And that’s because you have a good relationship, at least at the time, with the bank, and you’re trusting them. But again, you know, we’re talking cashier’s checks, and so it’s an awareness issue. It’s a consumer consideration to say exactly what’s going on here, and to be honest, it’s going to continue, I presume, at that level, until the banks become more committed to educating consumers themselves, and their clients, their customers, as to what truly can happen. I can’t see any reason for the bank to say, “No, we need to hold onto this. There could be a concern. We see a profile, we see a pattern, and here are the steps we recommend you take. Let’s work together on this.” But the bank just needs to recover their money.

Shawn Mosch: Banks don’t have any incentive – the bank doesn’t lose any money. It’s the customer that has to pay back, so if the bank was liable, you know there would be changes, that they would be making sure that the check is legitimate before a penny went out. And I have stressed to people that all it would have taken was for the bank to say, “The funds are available, but the check might not clear for 7-10 business days.”

Len Sipes: Right, so let’s not touch the money until -

Shawn Mosch: Probably 96% of the scam victims. Excuse me?

Len Sipes: I said, so the bank would say, “Let’s not touch that money until it does clear.”

Will Marling: Right.

Shawn Mosch: Right, but on a banker’s stand, because I’ve talked to the bankers on this issue, they say that for every cashier’s check that comes in, you have to hold it for 7-10 days, we’re going to get pissed off customers coming in and going, “Well, it’s my money. I want my money now.” You know, “My brother-in-law wrote me that cashier’s check, so I know it’s good.”

Len Sipes: Well, let him sign a release, then.

Shawn Mosch: In that case, have a form that they sign that says, “I’m releasing the bank of any liability. I understand that it might still come back on me.” At least tell people that it could take 7-10 business days, versus saying “Twenty-four hours. Good as gold.”

Will Marling: Right. I mean, all you need to do is hold onto the money. My thing is, okay, clear as the bank hands you the money – well, hold onto the thousand dollars for two weeks, because you can turn it back into the bank, right?

Shawn Mosch: Exactly.

Will Marling: But people don’t think about that. Naturally, we’re trying to conduct our business, and if the people you trust, which is your bank, like Shawn’s saying, since she was fifteen – you know, the bank says, “Hey, you’re okay.” Well, you know, it’s like somebody in the business saying, “It’s okay.” And that’s what needs to change.

Len Sipes: It’s sort of like the automobile industry years ago, where in the crime prevention field, we knew that by computer chips and keys, would virtually eliminate, to a large degree – now they can come along and tow the car away – but if you would have a computer chip in a key, that would eliminate probably 70% of automobile thefts. They’ve done that, and automobile thefts have plummeted. It’s the same way with the banks. They’ve got to step up and take responsibility, it sounds like.

Will Marling: That’s what it sounds like to us, too.

Shawn Mosch: Exactly.

Len Sipes: Okay. Shawn, we only have a couple minutes left. This program has flown by like wildfire. Give me a couple more tips in terms of what people need to do.

Shawn Mosch: Again, Google is your friend. Google everything and anything. Go to places like our website. We have a message board where we update information on scams. You can do a search there. We’re also on Twitter and Facebook, where you can follow our blog, where we’ll let you know about the latest and greatest and newest twists in scams.

Len Sipes: I’m going to do that.

Shawn Mosch: Also checking out the Internet Crime Complaint Center. When we were talking about statistics and how much money is lost to scams, the Internet Crime Complaint Center keeps track of that kind of information.

Len Sipes: Is that the FBI center?

Shawn Mosch: They always say – excuse me?

Len Sipes: Is that the FBI center? The Internet crime center that you just mentioned?

Shawn Mosch: They are a coalition between the FBI, the national white-collar crime center, and a couple other organizations.

Len Sipes: Okay. What’s their website? Do you know offhand?

Shawn Mosch: Um, the ic3.org, I believe?

Len Sipes: Pardon?

Shawn Mosch: It’s Internet Crime Complaint Center is probably the best place to go.

Len Sipes: That’s why – just Google that and people can get to it. All right, do you have another one?

Shawn Mosch: Exactly. Well, I was just going to say that even their statistics, though – and they will tell you this, too – are low, because they know that not everybody reports scams and frauds. Because most people will say, “Oh, I’m embarrassed that happened to me, that I fell for it.”

Len Sipes: I was mortified when it almost happened to me. Go ahead, please.

Shawn Mosch: If somebody robs you on the street corner, you would report it.

Len Sipes: Right.

Shawn Mosch: People who are victims of Internet scams and frauds need to report that, too, so that we have accurate information of how much is being lost so that we can encourage our lawmakers to change things to protect the customers, because if we would have kept all that money in the U.S., the economy would be doing a little bit better right now.

Len Sipes: Oh, absolutely. And you’re right, looking at it from an economic point of view, you’re a thousand percent correct. I wonder how many millions or billions are leaving the country every year due to fraud. We have a minute and a half left.

Shawn Mosch: If just our website can stop $2,000,000 in two years.

Len Sipes: Wow. Okay, and I’ll give out the website at the end of the program. Will, do you have any closing remarks?

Will Marling: Yeah, just to clarify, it’s ic3.gov. Ida Charles three dot gov is the Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Len Sipes: Right. Ic3.

Will Marling: Yeah, that’s the one we give out, and snopes.com is also another site that collects scams, aberrant emails – it’s snopes.com.

Len Sipes: Okay.

Will Marling: And I think we’re becoming more educated – there’s no question. But you feel for folks who just don’t realize what’s down the pike. Wailing is another issue for even executives, where people get information on the inside a little bit, enough to go through, say, an administrative assistance and forward on, and so the executive thinks that it’s legit because the administrative assistant forwarded it on. It all looks legitimate. So even within a company, you just have to be careful with your email. You have to know exactly who you’re talking to and what they’re talking about.

Len Sipes: Well, we’re out time and I do want to summarize; what I’ve heard today is that if you’re sent a cashier’s check and your asked to wire money back for whatever reason, don’t. It’s a fraud. Never click on an email where they’re asking for personal information. Contact the bank, contact the credit card company. Every email request, be extraordinarily suspicious as to what it is that they’re asking for. Google is a friend, one of the things I heard from Shawn. Google that information to see if there’s anything that pops up on the Internet in terms of fraud information. You’ve got the Internet Crime Complaint Center, i3g.gov, and we’ll mention snopes.com S-N-O-P-E-S.com. And I do want to emphasize, again, Shawn’s website: www.scamvictimsunited.org or www.scamvictimsunited.com. And once again, for Dr. Will Marling, the Executive Director of NOVA, it’s www.trynova.org. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you again. 200,000 requests. We couldn’t be successful unless we had your input, your suggestions, and criticisms, and feel free to point out all the times I screw up. I am enjoying those. And again, for those of you who ask us questions that are outside the scope of the radio show, that’s fine with us. We’ll find help for you, so feel free to get back in touch with us if you like. Again, it’s leonard.sipes@csosa.gov. Again, that’s for the Court Services and Offenders Supervision Agency in downtown Washington, D.C., or follow us via Twitter at Twitter.com/lensipes. I want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

- Audio ends -

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Criminal Justice, Fraud, Identity Theft, Internet Crime, Victim's Services

Crime Victim Rights and the Courts-DC Public Safety-NOVA

May 18, 2010 By Len Leave a Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2009/12/crime-victim-rights-and-the-courts-dc-public-safety-nova/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

- Audio begins -

Len Sipes: From our microphones in downtown Washington, DC, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Back on our microphones, Will Marling from the National Organization for Victim Assistance. NOVA has been around for eons in terms of being what I consider to be the premiere organization representing victim’s rights all through the United States. I can remember a long time ago when I worked for the Department of Justice’s clearing house, they gave me the assignment of being the Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention and Victim Assistance, and that’s when I found out about NOVA, interacted with NOVA, and I’ve had a deep and just a complete respect for NOVA ever since that happened, and that’s close to 30 years ago. With Will Marling today at NOVA, we have what I consider to be a supreme honor, Richard Barajas. He is the Chief Justice, Senior Status, Texas Court of Appeals in El Paso, Texas, talking about a judicial approach to victim assistance. Before we get into our program, the usual commercial – ladies and gentlemen, we are up to 230,000 requests a month for DC Public Safety, that’s media.csosa.gov. If you want to get in touch with me to give suggestions, criticisms, suggestions for new programs, please feel free to do so. My e-mail address is leonard.sipes@csosa.gov. You can follow me via Twitter at twitter.com/lensipes, and to Will Marling and to Richard Barajas, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Will Marling: Thanks, Leonard.

Richard Barajas: My pleasure.

Len Sipes: You know, it is really interesting, this whole concept of a judicial approach to victim’s assistance, because for years, we’ve sort of seen the judiciary as being, well, not exactly the best of friends of victim assistance, but then again, the entire criminal justice system could be seen as not being the best friend of victim assistance and victim’s issues. I think we’ve all, whether it’s law enforcement, whether it’s corrections, whether it’s parole and probation, or whether it’s the judiciary, have improved our act in recent years, and now we have Richard Barajas, again, Chief Justice, Senior Status, Texas Court of Appeals. He’s also at the moment running a college program at Cathedral High School in El Paso, Texas. Will or Richard, tell me a little bit about this concept of a judicial approach to victim assistance.

Will Marling: Judge, you fill us in.

Richard Barajas: I think the approach, Len, is not so much a new approach; it’s perhaps a resurrection of sorts. It might be a misstatement to talk in terms of the judiciary as not being friends. I think the problem historically has been that the judiciary has seen itself as being detached from many of these issues in an overbearing effort to appear to be fair and impartial, but the truth is, the way our Constitution is drafted, the way the state laws are drafted, we do pay tremendous deference to the criminal defendant in our courts system, but at the expense of the crime victim, whereas we do have Constitutional protections in many of the states, of course federal laws, that would render rights for crime victims, but then they’re often overlooked out of fear for appearing to have an imbalanced criminal justice system in favor of a crime victim. So it’s really all about balancing the rights of the criminal defendant and the intended victim.

Len Sipes: And I think you’re 100 percent correct, and you would be considering your status, but it’s just that – we have a criminal justice system that has,you know, when I came up through the criminal justice system, I was schooled in balance. I was schooled in rights. I was schooled in Miranda. I was schooled in all the processes that you have to go through to be sure that the person who you arrest is fairly treated and the case being presented properly in court, and the victim was seen as sort of a sidebar issue. The victim was seen as basically a tool to help you prosecute this individual, bring this individual into court, so the rights were constantly emphasized for the offender. We didn’t receive a lot of emphasis on the rights of the victim, and I think that that’s changed dramatically over the last 30 years, but I think there is still room for a lot of improvement. Will?

Will Marling: Well, definitely. We get completes on our toll-free number from victims, and we have an 800 nationwide number, 800-TRY-NOVA, and one of the complaints is, is that very issue that victims feel like they are really neglected in the process. Part of that is within our justice system because the emphasis is on the accused versus the state and so on, but it’s amazing that even in law enforcement, it’s some of the simple things that can tell people, that can communicate to victims, that they matter, that we’ve sensitive to their issues, listening to them, and these kinds of things. Of course, I think Judge Barajas, his heart, his understanding of recognizing the needs of victims is significant, and in some ways educating that particular and significant important component of our justice system, to be significant to meaningful contributions to these people at many times the worst point in their lives.

Len Sipes: So what does the judiciary bring to the table, your honor or Richard? Again, we in the larger criminal justice system have lots of room for improvement, and I must say, it’s interesting this whole sense of the detachment of the judiciary. I’m doing more and more programs involving the judiciary throughout the country, more and more programs involving court systems, where the courts are taking a very, very, very active role in terms of bringing the entire criminal justice system together to do a better product, whether it’s reduce crime, whether it’s victim assistance, whether it’s a wide array of different things, I see an evolving judiciary. I see a judiciary that’s not so much detached as it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I see the judiciary more and more as almost being a full partner with the other criminal justice agencies as long as we understand that you have a specific job to do, and ultimately you must be fair to all parties. That’s exactly what the law requires.

Richard Barajas: I think the interesting thing, Len, I go back to being on the bench, to 1991, and recently retired to take the position I have now, but before that, I was an elected district attorney in the state of Texas, so I will tell you my perspective is one from an elected prosecutor who through no coincidence ran on purely a crime victim’s platform when I was first elected back in 1987. But I think what it is, is the evolution of the judiciary, and a lot has to do with what the Supreme Court has done, for example, with how judges can voice opinions and things of that nature, so that they’re not detached anymore, but rather can be more than simple robot [PH] drones that call balls and strikes. Let me give you a simple example because Will has heard me say this many, many times when I’ve spoken – imagine for a second a world where you bring a criminal defendant in who is accused of a crime, and the judge on the bench admonishes that defendant of every right he has under the laws of this country and in the state, as he should, and then he turns to the victim of crime and admonishes the victim of crime of every single right that victim has under federal law and the laws of every state. The balance that that would have, and the impact that would have on society will be monumental. We are simply afraid to take that step, so that’s why I’ve often lectured on the proper balance of these issues, is that years ago I wrote a law review article, and the research we did was really telling that originally the founding of our country, crime victims had rights. They had a place at the table, but it eroded over a period of time, and one would argue, the purists would argue that crime victims still have that right under the 9th Amendment, but it’s kind of taken a backseat to more expressed and delegated rights that criminal defendants have. If you could just openly express, in court, in front of the defendant, in front of the public, that this is a balance system that alone will dramatically change the perception of the judicial system in this country forever.

Len Sipes: Why doesn’t that happen, your honor?

Richard Barajas: They’re afraid. I think they’re often afraid of making people believe that they’re overly balanced in favor of the victim, whereas I think with more education, and I think education, Will and I have had this discussion, I think judges as a rule are afraid of crime victims in the courtroom, almost without exception. I was. The big reason is that you can have a perfect case all the way up the criminal justice,perfect not in the sense of guilt or innocence, but in the sense of the process that the system was meant to pursue, and then one judge can screw it all up by saying the wrong thing because he was sensitive or not knowledgeable, but by the same token, they’re afraid to really turn to a crime victim and tell them they have rights. Police officers do it all the time, well, crime victim advocates across this country do it all the time, but how often have you ever heard a judge actually say that in open court? I can see a day when the judge will tell us, and I mention the crime victim, you’re there to be notified and tell this crime victim, and if you are not notified, I want to know about it. What a change.

Len Sipes: Oh, it would be a tremendous change, and I can understand the fear, I can understand the apprehension on the part of the judiciary. All of us who have been schooled in offender rights, and we’ve been schooled extensively in offender rights, regardless of whether it’s my time as a police officer going through six months of the police academy, regardless as to my criminological training, regardless as to my law training, this whole I guess atmosphere, this whole training, volumes and volumes have been written on the evolution of the rights of the offender, the taking of the Bill of Rights and applying it to the states. That’s a fascinating history, but when you’re schooled in that for decades, suddenly the victim comes along and you go, what do I do with this person? That person doesn’t fit nicely in terms of all of my training. The nationalization of the Bill of Rights, the application of the Bill of Rights from the federal government to the states, and that slow, gradual evolution and how it was applauded along the way as being what a fair and just government does, nowhere along the line did it say the word ‘victim.’

Richard Barajas: I think, Will, you would agree, without any question, nobody can deny we’ve made great strides in the area, but I’ll tell you, Len, as a former district attorney in speaking to so many of my then peers and colleagues, a crime victim was seen as a necessary evil within the criminal justice system because you had to deal with them and you had no control over emotions, so you may have had a good case and then it all just kind of unravels in court with a victim that you can’t control the emotions. So for generations, prosecutors simply did not know how to deal with crime victims, and if the prosecutor can’t deal with them, that scares the heck out of the judge. We’re talking maybe a retrial and then mistrial.

Len Sipes: Well, that’s just it – isn’t that the issue? In this day in age, everybody in the criminal justice system has a tremendous amount on their plate, whether it’s law enforcement, whether it’s corrections, it really doesn’t matter. Everybody has just a tremendous amount of work on their plate, and for a judge to have a decision overturned because he or she inappropriately, as far as the appeals court is concerned, did not give enough consideration to the defendant’s rights and gave a bit more to the victim’s rights, and that possibly could be seen as prejudicial, isn’t that the fear that judges are going to find decisions overturned and a tremendous amount of time and effort is going to be wasted in the process, or am I over blowing the situation?

Richard Barajas: I don’t think you’re over blowing it. I think it’s multi-faceted. Of course in jurisdictions where you elect judges, nobody wants to be reversed anywhere, but within jurisdictions where you elect them, this kind of insensitivity is a disaster for defeat in an election. In areas where they are not elected, whether it’s a recall election or whatever the case may be, once again the emotion behind this thing is tremendous. I’ve reversed cases based on,well, you have a judge where you don’t really know,[INDISCERNIBLE] on the rulings, unfortunate until they say something they shouldn’t say. We’ve had cases where the judge will all of a sudden blame the crime victim. That’s a question of sensitivity. We have a sexual assault, and you still see that today, and that’s a question of judicial education. I think, quite frankly, that this country has yet to really understand how to educate judges, perhaps by judges, so you have that sense of comfort with who’s actually doing the lecture without the emotion that sometimes they fear, to let them know it is all right to say things and it is not all right to say other things. I’ve never been to a judicial conference that addresses that issue, Will, in all the years I’ve been on the bench.

Will Marling: Right.

Len Sipes: I think the entire system has that fear. The bottom line is this – I think all three of us would agree, that what we have in most of the states and at the federal level, is we have constitutional protections now for victim rights, and that is probably just the beginning step, but it is,having those rights and implementing those rights are two different things. I’ve had other shows on victim assistance and victim’s issues where I’ve interviewed people who are on the street level, the law enforcement level, the parole and probation level, the corrections level, who I’ve looked at them, they’ve been in my studio and I’ve looked at them in the eye, and I’ve said, okay, now that we’ve established the fact that these Constitutional rights are in place, how many times have you had to go back to your administration to remind them that those Constitutional rights are in place? So having rights in place and enforcing it, and having the system really deal with it, I think are two different things, and I think that’s the lack of comfort. We all want to move in the best interest of the victims. We all want to move in the best interest of public safety. We all want to move in the best interest of the offenders that we’re dealing with, and sometimes we’re just scared that the victim is going to somehow, someway, mess things up. I think that’s the heart and soul of it; that’s what we’ve got to get over.

Will Marling: Sure. And if I could speak to something there on behalf of the victims, the issue of educating the victims in the process gives them an opportunity to understand how they can contribute to that potential conviction. They don’t want it overturned anymore than the judge does. That’s what people don’t understand. The problem is, in terms of educating them, if we can work with the victim to educate them as to how this process works, then they will serve us by in large. Will they be impacted by emotion? Yes, but many victims have to learn under incredible pressure how to demonstrate a real resolve against demonstrating any emotion. Imagine if we could work with them to communicate, here’s the process, which is what this is supposed to be doing. That’s what advocacy does. It informs them about these things, so that in that process, they actually will contribute in meaningful ways to the appropriate just outcome. The fact is, that whoever is accused, the victim is still there. It’s the same victim. If you acquit this guy and then arrest somebody else and bring them into the same courtroom, it’s still the same victims, and sometimes that’s what’s completely missing here. The accused should have rights, of course, for a balanced process, but there is always a victim and they still have to deal with the realities of their losses.

Len Sipes: Again, the Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA), who’s been around for decades, has a superb reputation in the world of victim assistance and throughout the criminal justice system. Richard Barajas, the Chief Justice, Senior Status for the Texas Court of Appeals in El Paso, Texas, has had to leave and go to another appointment, so we’re going to continue the conversation with Will. Will, to summarize the first half, basically what we were talking about is the idea of the judiciary getting more actively involved with this issue of victim’s rights, even to the point of the judge from the bench, and we all know how the judge from the bench reads the rights of the defendant and makes sure that the defendant understands his or her rights upon prosecution. He was even suggesting that the judge reads the rights to the victim, so the victim or the victims understand exactly where they stand within the criminal justice process. I think that that’s an extraordinarily powerful incentive, so I really do thank Richard Barajas for stopping by today and talking about that. But let’s continue with the conversation, because if you work with victims beforehand, I guess principally on the law enforcement end of things, and if you build your case well, and if you really respect victim’s rights because in most states there is a constitutional amendment respecting or delineating or spelling out victim’s rights, if you do everything before you get the person to court, the less the court has to worry about victim’s rights, correct?

Will Marling: Yeah, that’s exactly right. Thirty-three out of fifty states have victim’s rights in their constitution, and of course the idea of victim’s rights, Constitutional rights is an important one because it doesn’t really affirm what we already hold to be true, and of course, we articulate those rights because then we want to make sure that people know that, they’re articulated that way, and then enforcement of those rights, protecting those rights. Well, if we were to articulate and protect the rights of the victims, then a lot of things happen then. The respect for that person who’s been through a horribly traumatic situation and suffered probably great losses if it’s a survivor of homicide for instance, and then helping that person address the issues that they’re facing. The unique thing about a crime victim, of course, is the added dimension of trauma, and that’s sometimes what is so assumed, that the person’s been traumatized, but it’s how you work with that person. I will admit that say, for instance in law enforcement, when you’re dealing with somebody who’s been traumatized and maybe you’re not trained in that, you learn to deal with it, but you might not really understand what’s going on there inside that person. So the trauma,if you know how to address that person, if you know how to speak to them, if you know how to support them meaningfully, they are going to be most likely an asset to the case that you’re trying to build in the violation of law and the prosecution of this case. That’s what we would promote.

Len Sipes: One of things that we discussed in the first half of the program was the fact that in my training, at least in my 40 years in the criminal justice system, it was 99.9 percent the training was focused on the rights of the victim, and the message was consistently there – if you focus on the rights – I’m sorry, focus on the rights of the defendant, and if you screw up those rights, if you violate those rights, if you do not appropriately read him his Miranda rights in terms of a custodial interrogation, now, it’s funny because you didn’t have to read the individual’s rights unless you were going to interrogate him, but everybody sees on television that as soon as the arrest is made he’s Mirandized, but our folks were saying, oh, no, go one step further. Advise him of his rights right up front, even though you don’t have to and even though it’s not required by the court because we don’t intend on asking him anything because we have a witness who basically saw him do what he did and that’s all we need. It goes that far. It’s like protect the rights of the defendant and the victim? Well, the victim is there to help me prosecute – what more do I need to know about the victim? If we did a better job, if we made sure that the victim was properly prepared, if we respected the various rights mandated in most states of the victim, the right to,just basically the right to be informed and the right to proper treatment on the part of the criminal justice system, that would make for a better case. It would be easier for the state to prosecute that case, but we’ve got to do that upfront.

Will Marling: Yes, absolutely, and the education of victims in terms of this process, the judicial process, the criminal process, that comes into victim’s rights. A lot of the victim’s rights statements, whether they’re legislative or some kind of statutory decree or in a Constitutional setting, those rights are an articulation of information for those victims. They have the right to know about certain things, to be fully informed of the process. Well, when people are made aware, typically that helps them understand how to contribute. You’re not going to find a victim who wants to cause a problem in a court setting. They don’t want to jeopardize those proceedings, but they don’t actually know that what they might do could jeopardize that, for instance, an emotional outburst in front of a jury. So what happens is, if they’re historically even allowed in the courtroom, and may times a defense attorney would simply put them on the witness list even though they were never intended to be called, they couldn’t participate in that. We have lots of stories of people listening to their trial of their deceased loved one, murdered, as they stand outside the courtroom with their ear pressed against the door. They’re not even allowed in. Of course, they’re the one most impacted by it. If they are allowed in, but they don’t realize that that outburst could cause a problem in terms of the proceedings, they don’t know. Well, if they’re informed of these kinds of things, how this process works, why it’s important for you to maintain your decorum, why it’s important for you to recognize if this is too traumatic for you, then that helps everybody because we want to have fair and just proceedings, but in every case, there is going to be a victim. Even if you change the setting for the accused, the accused is acquitted and somebody else is arrested, it’s still the same victim. They still have to go through that same process, so that’s why if this concept of victim’s rights were to be more firmly implanted into our processes, as we are trying to do with the Constitutional Amendments and so on, that in and of itself would put it on our radar. We would recognize the victims in their role, and of course respect that. Historically, it’s the state versus the perpetrator, and that, of course, is one of the reasons why we have such a challenge when dealing with the perpetrator’s rights.

Len Sipes: And I always go back to the same concept – an individual who is about to be thrust into the criminal justice process, that is just beyond my comprehension. Thank God I have never been the victim of a crime. I have certainly known lots of people who have, and I’ve certainly tried to help walk them through the process, but to them it is just,the criminal justice system is this wall, and this wall is 150 feet high, nobody’s smiling, nobody’s holding their hand, nobody is giving them all the information they need. It’s just a wall, and they see that wall, and that’s got to effect that person’s decision as to whether or not to help law enforcement or to help prosecute the case because all they see is this gigantic wall, and that’s why we have victim service representatives or victim assistance representatives, where we can sit down with that individual, explain the entire process, and make sure that they’re very comfortable with what’s about to happen. But it can’t be just the victim representative on the part of law enforcement or the prosecutor’s office or parole and probation or corrections. It has to be everybody that’s going to come in contact with that victim. Everybody has got to understand that they could blow the whole thing simply by being insensitive, and 99 percent I think, and you correct me if I’m wrong, of what victims want is simply information about how the process unfolds and what’s going to happen now.

Will Marling: And you’re basically right. At maybe a higher level, they want to pursue a notion of justice, but at a personal level, there is this emotional impact of dealing with a system that is really not compassionate. It is simply a system. So does it have compassion of people in the system? Well, we hope so, and that’s what,some people seem to think that if you demonstrate compassion to a victim, you’re in some way imbalanced or inequitable in terms of your ability to render justice, but again, every victim in this situation is a victim, so you can just recognize that as a fact. Now we all struggle again with the emotional impact some people demonstrate, but if at every point the folks in the justice system would make a meaningful contribution to the forward movement of that victim, I personally believe, and I think we can be demonstrated by testimony of the victims, that it would move everything forward. It would mean a fair and just system, or a fairer and more just system, and a process that victims themselves could come away saying, you know, I understand the system itself is not compassionate, but I appreciated the sensitivity and the pursuit of justice in the course of my victimization, and that to me is a meaningful thing.

Len Sipes: But Chief Justice Barajas did bring up, I think, a very important point that the judiciary still needs to guarantee the rights of the crime victim. The judiciary used to sit back and be separate from the rest of the criminal justice system, and I understand that sense of impartiality. I understand that need, that legal need to separate themselves. They’re not part of the prosecution, they’re not part of the arrest process – they’re simply there as to be fair arbitrators of the facts and the law, and that’s their job. I understand the detachment, but nevertheless, you can have that legal detachment and at the same time be extraordinarily sensitive to the rights of the victim. I think that’s what the judge was saying, and so I don’t want to let the judiciary completely off the hook, regardless of the job the rest of us do in terms of victim services. When that victim gets to court, that judge should still ensure that that victim, that his or her rights are taken care of and the judge should ask. He said, why can’t the judge ask from the bench? What’s there legally to stop the judge from asking from the bench about the rights of the victim? So I still think that’s a great idea, and this is one of the reasons why I think that it was pretty neat for a former Chief Justice, Richard Barajas, from Texas Court of Appeals in El Paso, Texas, to come onto the radio program for the first 15 minutes and explain that concept.

Will Marling: That’s exactly right. Now, I think what happens is, some people would argue that you have to pit rights against rights, so if you give more rights to victims, actually you’re taking away from the rights of the accused, but that’s really not the case because they can run parallel. If it’s an understanding, just like the judge was saying, if you get up and say, we want to affirm the rights of the accused, we want to affirm the rights of the victims and move forward to protect the rights of both parties in this endeavor, wow, that’s a powerful way to handle this. But if you do think that it’s a take-away, if I give you more rights I’m taking more rights away from this other party, then that’s a problem. But no victim really, I don’t think, wants the wrong person accused of a crime. They really don’t because that means that the person who truly did it is still out there and has not been held accountable.

Len Sipes: They simply want justice for themselves and they want justice for their families and justice for their communities and justice for the rest of the criminal justice system. Well, you’ve got the final word. We need to wrap up. Will Marling, the Executive Director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, one of the most respected, I guess, advocacy groups within criminal justice circles, been around for decades and decades. I really appreciate you being on, and Richard Barajas the Chief Justice, Senior Status, Texas Court of Appeals in El Paso, Texas. Chief Barajas is now doing a college program at Cathedral High School at El Paso, Texas, and so we really appreciate him coming on today. The website for the National Organization for Victim Assistance is www.trynova.org. www.trynova.org. Feel free to get in touch with them via the website. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We are up to 230,000 requests on a monthly basis for the radio and television shows, for the podcasts, for the transcripts, and for the blog, and we really appreciate all of your comments. We appreciate even some of your criticisms and suggestions in terms of new shows. Feel free to get back in touch with me via Leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or follow me via Twitter, that’s twitter.com/lensipes, and please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

- Audio ends -

Terms: court, judicial, victim, victim rights, crime victim, judge, NOVA

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Courts, Criminal Justice, Interviews with Policy Makers, Victim's Services

Domestic Violence-Family Justice Centers-DC Public Safety-NCJA

May 18, 2010 By Len 2 Comments

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2009/12/domestic-violence-family-justice-centers-dc-public-safety-ncja/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

- Audio begins -

Leonard Sipes: From our microphones in downtown Washington, DC, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. We have an extraordinarily interesting program today. We are back talking about domestic violence. It is one of the more comprehensive programs in the state of Washington and throughout the country. This whole concept of family justice centers – it’s not just an issue of a crisis center, it’s not just not an issue of it being a hotline, it’s just not a shelter as to where battered women can go with their kids, it’s everything. All the services are packed into one particular center. This program is being brought to you by the National Criminal Justice Association. Those of you who listen on a regular basis to this show are familiar with the fact that they bring a wide series of programs to DC Public Safety, and we are certainly appreciative of that. Before we get into the gist of our program, I do want to remind everybody that we’re up to 230,000 requests on a monthly basis for DC Public Safety radio, television, blog, and transcripts. We are just, again, continue to be overwhelmed, flattered, and sometimes a little miffed when you have criticisms, but we don’t care – we’ll take everything. We truly will. You can either go to the website and comment there, which is what a lot of people do or most people do, it’s media M-E-D-I-A.csoca C-S-O-S-A.gov. You can contact me directly by e-mail, that’s, Leonard L-E-O-N-A-R-D.sipes S-I-P not T, S-I-P as in peculiar P-E-S @C-S-O-S-A.gov or you can follow me via Twitter, it’s twitter.com/lensipes. Our guests today are going to be Susan Adams and Jackie Smith. Susan is the Director and Jackie is the Grants Manager. The program itself is the Crystal Judson Family Center in Tacoma, Washington, and as I said at the beginning of the program, it is not just a singular approach to the issue of domestic violence. It embodies this concept called family justice centers, where the entire criminal justice system and the entire social services system comes together in a clean, well managed building, where women are victims, according to our statistics, 85 to 90 percent of the time, where women and their children can come and get the services they need and escape an abusive situation. And with that nice, long introduction, Susan Adams the Director and Jackie Smith the center’s Grant Manager, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Susan Adams: Thank you very much.

Leonard Sipes: Susan Adams, Director, give me a sense as to the Crystal Judson Family Justice Center.

Susan Adams: Well, the Crystal Judson Family Justice Center is, as you described, is a comprehensive service center for victims of domestic violence and their children born out of an idea that in a time of crisis, and prior to the development of family justice centers, a victim might have to go to 10, 12, 15 different places to get the help they need, and on a good day that’s hard for most of us, and when you’re in crisis, you’ve been abused, you’ve got young children and there are lot of other barriers, it’s almost impossible, and so we wonder why victims have challenges with getting the help that they need. It’s because our systems have not been set up to benefit victims. They’ve been set up to benefit ourselves, ourselves being the service agencies, at our convenience. The family justice center flips that, and says we want to do this in a way that works for victims, that supports them in helping them in their road to being survivors, and that our needs as service agencies are secondary. So we collaborate with criminal justice agencies, prosecutors, police, criminal justice advocates, and then social service agencies, chaplains, civil / legal advocates, financial workers from the Department of Social and Health Services, child support workers. We have access to a myriad of different agencies and supports from shelter to safety planning, domestic violence education, and the beautiful thing is the victim walks through one door and they access it all in one place, a place where their kids can play, a place where they can eat lunch, a place they can feel safe and welcomed and honored, and it’s for their convenience in the way that works best for them.

Leonard Sipes: In a way that works best for them. What does that say about the rest of the country that doesn’t provide this level of comprehensiveness? I would imagine that there are a lot of jurisdictions throughout the country that basically do what they can do. I have been to domestic violence shelters, more than just a couple, and it seems to me that when I walk into the building, it is there to offer a safe haven. Now, she’s going to get advice and she’s going to talk to an attorney and she’s going to talk to a social worker, but it strikes me that a lot of the domestic violence shelters or places, I don’t know a better way of putting it, throughout the country have limits in terms of what it is they could or should be doing. Am I right or wrong?

Susan Adams: Well, right. Shelters typically have limited numbers of beds and space available for clients, so you’re right – shelters can be an amazing safe haven for victims who want shelter. Not every victim wants to go to a shelter. Many victims aren’t ready to make a step to go to a shelter, or they’re looking for different avenues and they have different resources, so what they need is more generalized, comprehensive services, not just shelters. I would say that while we’re the only family justice center in the state of Washington, there are 55 family justice centers throughout the country and more are popping up every day. This is national movement directed by the National Family Justice Center Alliance, and we’re seeing this more and more. Even agencies that aren’t calling themselves family justice centers are looking at ways to collaborate and do a better job of offering services in a way that is convenient. It’s just like a grocery store that offers a wide variety of things in one place. Why doesn’t a victim of domestic violence deserve just as much as someone who’s a shopper at Kroger’s store?

Leonard Sipes: Well, you’re not going to hear me disagree with that. I remember we were talking before recording the program, that my first encounter with domestic violence was as a cadet in the Maryland State Police, and that’s 40 years ago, that’s scary to say, but eventually going on to be a trooper for a short amount of time before going onto college, and I remember going up to a home and it was a domestic violence case, and it was a man who beat his wife with a frying pan. It was just the saddest thing you’ve ever seen in your life, and it took me to my core, as a human being, as to questioning the whole validity of marriage or whatever. I don’t care how you feel or what the provocation was, you just don’t hit anybody. I know you don’t hit anybody, but certainly you don’t beat them to near death, and walking into that situation and the woman refused to prosecute. Now this was back in the ’70s, where without the woman prosecuting, you ran into a big of a jam in court, so what we ended up doing was charging him for assaulting us. I won’t tell you what it is we did to get him to assault us, but that was the charge, and so at least we had him for that. We couldn’t pull off the domestic violence charge or what I considered to be an aggravated assault, which is enough right there, to me if not attempted murder, at least we had him for that and that was unquestionable and we’ll let the attorneys work out the rest of it. That, to me, is domestic violence. That, to me, is not the kind and gentle domestic violence that you see on television. It is horrific in nature, and we’re not even getting into the psychological bondage, we’re not even getting into new research from the Bureau of Justice Statistics that suggests that half of these incidents are witnessed by children, and the impact that it has on children. So domestic violence, I don’t need to convince everybody that it’s a bad thing – I’m suggesting that it is one of the worst things that can happen in the lives of human beings, so that’s putting a bunch of softball questions to the two of you, but either one of you, do you want to respond?

Susan Adams: I just want to throw one thing in there because I agree with you. You don’t have to convince anybody that domestic violence is a bad thing, but a part of what the problem is in our society is while people recognize it’s a bad thing, we don’t go the next layer below that and talk about why it is that it continues to be something that is a perpetual problem in our country, and it’s because our focus is in the wrong place. When you talk about domestic violence, and even the story you were telling there, you didn’t do this, but I can guarantee that your listeners might say, well, gee, why didn’t she prosecute? And immediate focus goes onto her and why she doesn’t do certain things, and that tends to be people’s natural reaction, either that, or that would never happen to me or that would never happen to my child or my daughter. So we are focusing on victim behavior instead of on abuser behavior, and we’re judging why this is happening based on what the victim has chosen to do, and we need to delve deeper and step back from that judgmental piece about victims and say there are lots of reasons why they may have done those things. But when we as a society and a court system, civil justice system and the family law system, there is still such a focus on why did the victim do such and such? She must be crazy. That’s where we really breakdown in our ability to move forward and eradicate this problem, and I’m sure Jackie has some other comments as well.

Jackie Smith: Right. One of my comments is focusing on the children, as well, and the impact of trauma in witnessing domestic violence on children. I facilitate a group called Stepping Stones, which works with children and moms who have been impacted by domestic violence, and the long-term effects of trauma are very detrimental. It affects them in school, it affects their ability to focus, it affects their ability to manage their emotions, because so often the children are focused on the abuser’s behavior in the home and tip-toeing and stepping around and being very aware of how the abuser feels or how he opens the door or how he walks into the house, and they change their behaviors based off of his. So that’s something that we really need to focus on as a society, too, because if we’re going to break the cycle of violence, we really have to focus on resources for children. That’s why the family justice center exists as it does in terms of having a playroom, having advocates who can go in there and talk to the children and be supportive people in their lives, and also model some positive behavior.

Leonard Sipes: There are many criminologists in this country who have come to the conclusion many years ago, that we say, why crime? Why crime in America? What are the true issues? What’s the heart and soul behind crime in America, and there are a lot of criminologists who basically will say, simply, child abuse. That individuals grow up in homes, where either they have raised themselves since the age of eight or they grew up in homes that are filled with violence, and in many cases, domestic violence. How many offenders have told me throughout my career that they witness acts of violence directed toward their mother? Time after time after time. So again, I just never know how to describe this set of circumstances, because the words ‘domestic violence’ don’t do it for me. I don’t know what words would, but they just never seem strong enough to really get people to understand that this may be the heart and soul or part of the heart and soul behind the crime problem to begin with. One of the things you all were telling me before the program is that in 2009, and we’re recording this in November of 2009, so we still have another month to go, 3,243 people in the Tacoma, Washington, area, now again, you’re not limited to Tacoma, Washington, but probably most of your folks are from the metropolitan area, but 3,243 came to the center in 2009. That’s a lot of people.

Susan Adams: It is a lot of people, and the statistic I’ll add that we didn’t discuss before, was that doesn’t include the kids that have walked through the door – 977 kids have come along with those adults, as well as 711 other friends and family members. It’s a broad, broad base of folks and our clients are actually many more than just that number of kids – those are kids that have come through the door. We also track how many family members they have total that are living in the home, so as Jackie said, this has such a huge impact on so many people and on our society, and if we don’t address that, we’re looking at continuing this cycle for too long.

Leonard Sipes: The criminal justice system, back in the ’70s, we were accused of, and in the ’80s and in the ’90s and in the new century, the criminal justice system, we haven’t been that great of a team member in terms of victim’s services or domestic violence, and that’s simply because it’s not that we’re insensitive to the issue, I think we’ve got so much that’s on our plate, and being pulled in so many different directions, that it’s hard to really focus on one particular problem over another. But I think what you will say, is we have improved our service delivery to victims of domestic violence, and it sounds like you’ve got the entire criminal justice system willing to interact with you and come to the center to be a part of that comprehensive approach to victim’s services, correct?

Susan Adams: Absolutely. I started out my career as a deputy prosecutor in the county prosecuting attorney’s office. Back in the early ’90s when I was hired, I found sort of similar to what your first experiences were, we didn’t have any training with domestic violence, it was very frustrating, and we really, again, focused on the victim. Gee, she doesn’t want to prosecute, well we have about a million other cases to prosecute, so we’re just going to move onto those. There was just not a lot of training or insight given. Law school at that time didn’t teach anybody about how to deal with these cases, and in any event, we’ve come a long way from that time, thankfully. We have fantastic domestic violence coordinated units. The prosecutors and the sheriff’s department have been working together for almost 15 years now, co-located, cooperating and working together to effectively prosecute cases. Training has improved greatly, and so we’ve definitely come a long way. Do we still have a ways to go? Always. I think it’s, especially with law enforcement and prosecutors, just like you say, they are pushed in many different directions, they’ve got a huge caseload and now we’re dealing with massive budget cuts and doing more with less, so it’s that continued training, but the collaboration helps. Having us all here together and relying on one another’s expertise really then, even in times of economic downturn and doing more with less, we are able to, because we become greater than the sum of our parts when we’re working together.

Leonard Sipes: And you have, beyond law enforcement, you have a wide array of individuals providing social services, correct?

Susan Adams: Correct, and I’d like to add to that a little bit more too, because we have clients who come in, who are in the criminal justice system, who maybe don’t want to be, but here they have the opportunity to speak to the prosecuting attorney. The prosecuting attorneys will come over to this side and talk to the victims about their case, and about realistic repercussions of if you choose not to cooperate, this is what’s going to happen. If you chose to cooperate, this is the outcome that you’re looking at, so that way they can really make educated decisions in terms of do they want to go along with prosecution? Do they want assistance with prosecution, or is that detrimental to their family? And being able to have a face-to-face conversation with a prosecuting attorney who is compassionate and knowledgeable is huge. It’s a very, very difference experience from what victims perceive the criminal justice system to be. At the same time, we have victims who want to talk to a sheriff or to a police detective, and the detective will come here to this side of the office, sit in a comfortable room, and take a statement from a client, and it’s a huge difference because they’re dressed in lay clothes and it’s very comfortable, and the advocate can sit with them and support them through the process. I think through that collaboration, the criminal justice system has an idea of what it’s like to be a community advocate, and we understand their role, and I think a big barrier that we’ve been able to overcome is understanding the different roles that we have and the different goals and objectives we have, and how do we put that down to serving the victim?

Leonard Sipes: We’re halfway through the program. I want to reintroduce our guests today, Susan Adams, the Director of the center and Jackie Smith, the center’s Grants Manager. We’re talking about the Crystal Judson Family Justice Center in Tacoma, Washington, a comprehensive one-stop shop, if you will, in terms of serving victims of domestic violence, part of a concept called family justice centers, which is just growing throughout the United States. They served 3,243 victims in 2009 alone, and we’re only 11 months through 2009, plus hundreds and hundreds of children. We do want to remind everybody that this is a show of the National Criminal Justice Association. They produce these shows, they bring us wonderful guests and wonderful topics, in terms of what really works in the criminal justice system in the United States. The website address for the National Criminal Justice System is www.ncja.org, www.ncja.org, and in terms of a place of help, it is www.aplaceofhelp.org, and that’s the Crystal Judson Family Justice Center, www.aplaceofhelp.org.

All right ladies, where do we go to from here? It is clear that you run a nice, clean, modern, comprehensive, one-stop shop for victims of domestic violence. Can we get into the larger issues of domestic violence because one of the things that always has amazed me, especially considering there are so many criminologists as I said before, who do believe that domestic violence / child abuse and neglect is the heart and soul of why we have the crime problem that we do in the United States. What are your observations about domestic violence? The response sounds like it’s gotten better, but does society understand what it is we’re talking about here? Do we all understand how complex and how difficult and how damaging this issue that we refer to as domestic violence, do they really understand how tragic it is?

Susan Adams: Unfortunately not. I don’t feel that our society is even near to where we need to be in terms of understanding the dynamics and really the root causes of domestic violence. I often think of my daughter, who is young. She is nine years old, and at school, she will be told that a boy hits her because he likes her, and so this is how our girls are being socialized in terms of violence equals liking. And if I didn’t go back and say, well, no, that’s not okay, who would tell her otherwise? As parents, oftentimes that’s the norm, that’s what we tell our families as we’re growing up, is you hit her because you like her. And there is this need for power and control that often stems from these types of behaviors, these interactions that begin in youth, and it’s also through observing domestic violence in the home settings because there are these average childhood experiences that children have either growing up in a home where they’re experiencing neglect, possibly because it’s a single parent and she’s not able to be home to take care of her child, so they’re latch-key kids. You have kids who are growing up in abuse home where they are witnessing and/or experiencing physical violence, emotional abuse, and so all this creates psychological damage and damage from the traumas they’re experiencing, which as we know, as kids grow up, they take these experiences and interact negatively in society.

Leonard Sipes: Part of it is,I was sitting in a radio station one time, getting ready to do a live radio interview for a religious station, and it’s interesting that the station housed both a rap station and a religious station in the same building, under the same network. I’m sitting there, and they were not just playing the rap songs, they had the words to the lyrics, what we refer to as a character generator – you see the words to the lyrics as the song was progressing – and I sat there for about 20 minutes waiting for my interview and I was watching the words, and to say that what I saw was sexist / dysfunctional / oh my God, is today’s understatement. There’s a certain point where you say to yourself, do we have a society that is pro domestic violence?

Susan Adams: I don’t know if it’s pro domestic violence, but we’re so incredibly desensitized again to what it is, and we’re so willing to say, oh, that’s just a piece of music or that’s just entertainment when you’re talking about the wrestling. I happened to watch an old movie a few weeks ago, the Urban Cowboy with John Travolta and Deborah Winger, and I remember watching that show as a teenager and thinking, oh, this is a really good movie. I’m watching it now as an adult and Deborah Winger was raped in this movie, she’s beaten up by her husband, and that is not even an essential part of the show. It’s just part of the storyline, but no one ever addresses that gee, this poor woman is abused, and that’s just one example. It’s just woven so much into our culture in music and entertainment, that it just becomes desensitized. I really do believe that there is a feeling among folks that haven’t potentially been victims of domestic violence that in order to sort of separate themselves from it, that it’s this whole idea that oh, it couldn’t happen to me. That happens to other people, and we just want to turn ourselves away and say that’s just an ugly thing that happens to certain people but not me, and we know for a fact that that’s not true. We see it cut across all sections of society, but there’s that protection mechanism that we see a lot. I see it when I go out and speak to groups, and folks that just say, yeah, I understand, but that’s not something that happens in my neighborhood. That doesn’t happen in my community, and until we really dispel that notion and re-sensitize ourselves, we’ve got a long way to go.

Leonard Sipes: The negative messages are in virtually every part of society. It just doesn’t seem to matter, whether it’s television or whether it’s a movie or whether it’s music, that whole concept of it’s okay to use your bulk to intimidate, gosh, I’m going to get in a lot of trouble here, the little woman, that’s their words not mine, it becomes,you just sit there and you say to yourself, did I just see that? Why isn’t there a national uproar every other day about the things that we hear and see and witness? There just doesn’t seem to be a national sense of outrage that,again, my perception of domestic violence goes all the way back, and I’ve experienced other cases of domestic violence, but I will never forget being 18 years old, being out there with the Maryland State Troopers, and going to that house and seeing that woman unbelievably beaten up, and was told at that point by that trooper and other troopers that what you saw tonight is really not unusual. As you flip that over to a television show or to a radio show or to a movie, there seems to be a huge disconnect.

Susan Adams: I agree completely, and I think it goes back to what Jackie was talking about, that we need to be addressing a lot of these issues at a much younger age, and we here at the family justice center have a teen outreach advocate that goes out into the schools and does education, domestic violence education, with young people because that’s where we really need to start focusing our attention and not waiting until they’re 18, 19, 20 years old. We need to be talking to kids that are 9, 10, 11 years old, that are now using technology and many other things, and again, with this power and control where girls think, oh, he loves me so much, that’s why he texted me 2000 times yesterday. We need to be educating and talking about it. I think overall as a society, we should be outraged and unfortunately that’s not the case, but what we are doing that I think is better than we were doing even 10 years ago, is that we’re talking about it. We’re on your radio show, we are on the radar of a lot of conversations that we weren’t even 10 years ago, so it’s a slower process than it should be, but at least we are starting to get people talking about it. We’re getting religious groups asking us to come to their churches and their church groups to talk about what we do, and as communities, we are responsible for getting out there and talking about this to anybody who will listen, getting that awareness and then hopefully creating that outrage that you’re talking about.

Leonard Sipes: Now the danger of taking it as far as I’ve taken it is, the flip side of that is that there are many instances where it is progressive, it happens over the course of years, it is psychological as well as it’s physical, it is emotional as well as it’s physical, and it’s progressive in nature. Most of the cases that I’ve witnessed didn’t start off with a beating. They started off with ordinarily a man, and I don’t want to be politically correct about this – 85 percent, 90 percent of the victims of domestic violence are women – it can be and oftentimes is progressive to the point where the female victim says to herself, oh my heavens, what’s just happened? When she sits down and realizes that the set of circumstances that she’s in is not,she’s having a hard time comprehending where she is, and sometimes it’s startling to sit there and say to yourself, oh my heavens, I’m a victim of domestic violence.

Susan Adams: Right. Oftentimes what we like to do is actually make a timeline with clients on their relationship, and we talk about the beginning of the relationship in terms of how romantic it was and how he swept her off her feet and said the right things and told her she was perfect, and then she felt oftentimes like she had to adhere to this standard of being perfect, and when she failed being perfect, it was her fault for not being perfect. It was her fault for not knowing what to do, how to do it, so she changed her behaviors to try to achieve that level of perfection. And oftentimes none of us are perfect and none of us can expect to be perfect, and so it creates this sense of responsibility, on her part oftentimes, for his behavior and his out lashes. And so when we look at the relationship on a timeline, we find that maybe the first year or maybe the first two years were good, and then something happened. Then the next time was six months, then it was three months, and pretty soon they find themselves in a cycle where everything is very chaotic and they’re trying to tip-toe around and make things okay in the home, and they’re not able to regardless of what they do. That’s when they find themselves feeling like they’re spinning, is what I often hear, and it’s hard to get out because you’re so focused on other things that really thinking about your own reality is very difficult. So that’s where an agency like the family justice center comes in, and is able to provide some education or insight in terms of what’s happening in your relationship.

Leonard Sipes: The half hour program has gone by like wildfire. We only have about 30 seconds left of radio time. Is there a way that we can sum up what is the most important take-away for individuals listening to this program to understand? Not only about the Crystal Judson Family Center in Tacoma, Washington, but about domestic violence in general?

Susan Adams: I would just say that domestic violence impacts all of us, whether it is directly as victims or as co-workers, church members, family members, and to be informed – understand what it is. Peel away the layers. It’s not just a bad thing; it’s destroying the fabric of our society. If you become aware and become an advocate on behalf of victims and on behalf of those trying to survive, you’re taking a step as a community member to make our country a better place.

Leonard Sipes: Oh, I think that’s one of the best summations I’ve ever heard in my life because I do believe so much that it does go to the very fabric of our society, and very damaging. Ladies and gentlemen, you have been listening to Susan Adams, the Director, and Jackie Smith, the center’s Grant Manager, and they both represent the Crystal Judson Family Justice Center in Tacoma, Washington. I’ve really enjoyed the time with you ladies. If people want to get back in touch with you, it’s www.aplaceofhelp.org, www.aplaceofhelp.org. The program today was brought to you by the National Criminal Justice Association. We really are appreciative of the wonderful programs that they bring to DC Public Safety. You can reach the National Criminal Justice Association at www.ncja.org, www.ncja.org. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We are up to 230,000 requests on a monthly basis for our radio and television show, blog and transcripts. You can reach us at media.csosa.gov and you can reach me directly by e-mail leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or you can follow me on twitter.com/lensipes. I want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

- Audio ends -

Terms: Crystal Judson Family Justice Center, Tacoma, domestic violence, family justice centers.

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Criminal Justice, Domestic Violence, Interviews with Staff, Victim's Services, What Works

Crime Victim Rights-DC Public Safety-NOVA

May 17, 2010 By Len Leave a Comment

Welcome to DC Public Safety-radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2009/06/crime-victim-rights-dc-public-safety-nova/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

- Audio begins -

Len Sipes: From our microphones in Washington, D.C., this is D.C. Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. At our microphones today is Will Marling. He is the executive director for the National Organization for Victim Assistance. Also along with him is Janette Atkins. She is the administrator of the Green County Prosecutor’s Office in Xenia, Ohio, and to Will and to Janette, welcome to D.C. public safety.

Will Marling: Thank you, Len.

Janette Atkins: Thank you, Len.

Len Sipes: I think the big thing that is on everybody’s minds is this sense of victimization, victims’ issues. We promise, we say that we’re improving, we say that we’re going to be better in terms of victims of crime, and the average person listening to this program will declare that to be, oh, I don’t know, bureaucratic speak from a bureaucrat of all people, and I certainly am one, and I think there’s a basic mistrust that people have of the criminal justice system in terms of its ability to be sensitive to victims of crime. Will, you want to start with that?

Will Marling: Yeah, I can speak to that a little bit, and let me give a little bit of history just for your listeners, so we understand maybe the big picture first historically. I won’t go back too far, but you know, ultimately, the justice system is the state vs. the perpetrator, and when you have that kind of context, you immediately discover that, historically anyway, there is no place for the victim, unless that victim is a witness in the process of the state vs. the perpetrator. Well, we didn’t realize the implications of that, I think, in many ways, you don’t realize it until you become a victim and find yourself actually on the outside of the system looking in, you know, in a group of people who are discussing your victimization or the murder of your loved one, so it’s a strange perspective that people discover historically where victims actually aren’t technically a part of that system even though, really, justice is about victims. So we’ve been working for the past 25 years directly and officially, and far longer than that unofficially in some ways, to change that perspective, so that involves victims’ rights, for instance, and 33 out of 50 states now have a constitutional statement regarding the rights of victims, and those revolve around, you know, similar things to any proceedings, the right to information, the right to a speedy trial, and this kind of thing.

Len Sipes: And there’s also federal legislation, right Will?

Will Marling: That is Federal. That’s exactly right, through the victims of crime act, 1984, and then crime victims rights that came after that. We’ve had other legislation at a federal level. So that’s kind of the big picture, and we’ve been working at that, and even issues like the victim impact statement, which some people now are aware of where a victim in the course of proceedings, particularly in the aftermath of a judgment can state the impact of this crime upon their lives or their loved ones’ lives. All of that is relatively recent in terms of the justice system. So the justice system actually was never designed to be sensitive to anybody. It’s a system of laws, the rule of law, and unfortunately, victims who are impacted by this stuff significantly, physically, emotionally, financially, they discover that it’s not sensitive to them, and it sometimes create secondary victimization.

Len Sipes: Janette Atkins, I had occasion to assist, unfortunately, a neighbor who, their home had been broken into, and weeks had gone by without being contacted, and that person was about to engage the criminal justice system, and did so with this abiding dread. They were saying, “Leonard, can you help me figure all this out?” And I said, “Why don’t you contact the victims’ advocate at the county police department and discuss it with him or her? That would be a good place to start.” And his response was, “Well, that’s just going to tick off the cops, and nobody’s going to take it seriously if I’m complaining about not being contacted.” Again, this immediate sense of fear of working with the criminal justice system, that even though the victims’ movement, I think it’s been around for 30 or 40 years, there’s still this overall sense of reluctance of contacting us within the criminal justice system? Do you think it’s right or wrong?

Janette Atkins: I think that that perception that people have, Leonard, is absolutely true, particularly if people have not had a friend or a loved one or themselves been a victim of crime, and they’re finding themselves in that position for the first time, particularly in the larger, more urban areas, I believe that there is a general distrust, and an idea that nobody’s really going to help me, or I’m going to upset someone in the system, when in fact, I was listening to what Will was saying, I was thinking back to being in this business since 1982, and Will’s absolutely right. 25-30 years have passed, and even further back for some of the grassroots crisis centers and domestic violence shelters that were put into place before many of the system-based victims’ assistance programs like you just mentioned, police-based victims’ assistance programs, and back then, I think, it is absolutely true. Your neighbor’s perception was I will anger the police if I make a complaint to anybody that no one has contacted me about the burglary of my home, and I do think that things have changed dramatically, even since I’ve been in this business for about 27 years now, and the unfortunate thing is, for a burglary victim in a very large urban area, they are not going to get the same service than someone who has had a loved one murdered or may have been sexually assaulted, or their child abducted, they’re not going to get the same type of service that they would if they were in a smaller, rural area where there’s a little bit more hands-on victims’ assistance for all types.

Len Sipes: There’s a profound difference in terms of how an urban criminal justice system responds to individuals and how a suburban or rural criminal justice system responds to victims, but before we get into that, let me give out a couple contact numbers. The number for the National Organization for Victim Assistance is 1-800-TRY-NOVA, the website is www.trynova.org. Let me re-introduce the participants, Will Marling, the director of NOVA, and Janette Atkins, she’s an administrator with the Green County Prosecutor’s office in Xenia, Ohio, and before getting further into the program, I’d like to thank everybody for listening to D.C. Public Safety, we are now over 2 million requests for the program, very close to 150,000 requests on a monthly basis. We appreciate all of your letters, all of your phone calls, all of your emails, and all of your twitters. So you can contact me directly at Leonard, L-E-O-N-A-R-D, dot-sipes, S-I-P-E-S, @csosa.gov. I work for the Criminal Justice system in Washington, D.C. for the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, a federal criminal justice agency, or get in touch with me by twitter, and that is http://www.twitter.com/lensipes. So we go back to that larger issue of fear, Will Marling, in terms of contacting those of us in the criminal justice system. When I started off as a Maryland State Trooper decades and decades ago when I was first introduced to the criminal justice system, I was formally trained that the victim and the witness were supposed to be left out of the criminal justice system to ensure the impartiality of the process, that if the victim and the witness was specifically designed to be a cog that you would insert into the process as needed, nothing more.

Will Marling: Right. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And the problem is that people still treat victims that way, even though with law enforcement, we’re constantly doing training with law enforcement to remind them that a cooperative witness is a good witness. It’s a much better witness than an uncooperative one, and just the process of, while some people might not feel compassion, even for victims, they should, even with that, just from a practical standpoint, working with these folks who are providing evidence for the case they were trying to prosecute, it’s just crucial, and recognizing the traumatic situation they’re in can be significant to helping them provide the evidence that you need. So it’s really important to recognize the role of victims, either as just the victim, or as a victim witness.

Len Sipes: The time as a police officer, and I spent a total of 6 years in law enforcement. You can’t come across a rape victim, you can’t come across somebody who is assaulted and somebody badly beaten, you can’t come across people who suffer through that victimization with their child or suffer through the victimization with a loved one without feeling a profound sense of attachment to that individual. They are going through one of the worst moments of their lives, and all they’re looking for, I think, is a little bit of common decency and respect from those of us in the criminal justice system, and Janette, I tell people all the time, we’re not that distant as you think we are, it’s simply a matter of contacting the right person in the right organization if you feel that you’re getting the runaround, if you feel that you’re not getting the cooperation that you need, that there are victims’ advocates, and prosecutors’ offices, there are victims’ advocates, and my organization, which is a parole and probation agency, there are victims’ advocates at the law enforcement level, that we exist to serve your needs, but still, people have this abiding fear of dealing with any bureaucracy. Janette?

Janette Atkins: That is very true, and I think that’s one of the ways that NOVA comes into play, because when I worked there, and as a volunteer for them for years, one of the things that we found, and I’m sure Will still finds today, is that people call NOVA who are at the end of their rope. They are the very people you’re describing that are feeling like no one is listening, they don’t know who to call or talk to, and everybody that they talk to puts them off to someone else or tells them, I’m sorry, we can’t help you, and NOVA’s role is to hook them up with the exact people you’re describing: the victim advocates, the people with knowledge about the criminal justice system, it could be a detective that’s investigating the case, or a uniformed officer, or a local victim advocate that can answer all their questions for what’s happening with their case and why. And I think the unfortunate thing we see is that, because, as I mentioned earlier, in the urban areas, they are so overwhelmed with their case loads, they are not doing the proactive approach of outreach to people, they’re waiting for those people to call them, if they can find them.

Len Sipes: When you’re running from call to call to call, and you just don’t have the time to take to sit down and deal with the family.

Will Marling: That’s right.

Janette Atkins: Unfortunately. And that comes with financial constraints, as you know, working in a city that is experiencing the same thing I am here in a more rural area in Ohio. Budget cuts are happening, staff layoffs occur, that’s where I think volunteers come in, and a lot of programs aren’t using volunteers effectively to do that outreach, or to provide that actual person that can call and talk to someone, or to give them information, and that’s where the disconnect happens, and then an organization like NOVA steps in, or someone can call an 800 number and be connected, many of the people that, I’m sure Will and the staff take calls from don’t even know a victims’ assistance program exists in their community.

Len Sipes: Will, I want to clarify something. Now is there federal legislation for federal crimes, and 35 out of the 50 states have constitutional amendments that protect victims’ rights? Do I have that correct, or do I have that wrong?

Will Marling: That’s right. There is federal legislation that addresses federal victims’ rights specifically, and then 33 out of 50 states to date have constitutional amendments that include victims’ rights.

Len Sipes: So the people hearing this throughout the country, or for that matter, throughout the world, because 20% of our audience is international, but people hearing this throughout the country as well as the District of Columbia metropolitan area, they probably have a better than even shot of being lawfully protected by their own state’s constitution as to basic rights, correct?

Will Marling: That’s exactly right. And of course, there’s legislation, even in the other states that would affirm services for victims and other things, so even without the constitutional amendment issue, they still could have accessibility to services and also advocacy. One of the challenges we face is the issue of enforcement, and if I could just give you an example, we had a call recently, a woman who had basically been raped, and she was looking forward to her day in court, they had caught the perpetrator, they accused, she received her subpoena, and the subpoena said, you’re to show up at 9:00 at the court, you’re going to be a victim witness, basically, because it’s basically her statement against the perpetrator, the evidence. Her, she showed up at 10 to 9 at the courtroom, and nobody was there, and this is just recent, and so she started inquiring what’s going on. “Well, the trial was at 8:30, and you weren’t here, so basically, we had to dismiss the case.” You see, everybody else had a subpoena for 8:30, she had a 9:00 subpoena.

Len Sipes: And that would make me so outrageously angry, and so mistrustful of the entire criminal justice system, that is almost inexcusable. We in the bureaucracy are so used to saying, “Look, it’s a big bureaucracy, it’s bustling, we handle hundreds of thousands of cases every year, mistakes are going to be made,” and they are. Within any bureaucracy, those sorts of mistakes are going to be made. But, if I’m that victim, and if I’m a family member of that victim, or if I’m the husband of that victim, or if I’m the brother of that victim, I’m going to be outraged by what happened.

Will Marling: Here’s what she said, and I quote, she said, “Emotionally and physically, I’m drained. Every time I even think about this tragedy, it sends me into a seizure. So I’m willing to put it behind me and go on with my life, what I have left, but I’m basically giving up. I can’t deal with this any longer,” so that’s a miscarriage of justice, in my view.

Len Sipes: Either one of you can comment on this one. When we, I’m looking at close to 40 years perspective of being in the criminal justice system, and I remember so vividly, I was a police officer working directly with individuals who were victimized, and understanding fully that this is not what we read in the paper. This is not what we brush off in the morning, this is a huge event in the lives of that individual, a huge event in the lives of the family, a huge event in the lives of everybody associated with that individual, and you know, the taste that leaves in your mouth forevermore is one of mistrust of the criminal justice system, you’re not willing to interact with the criminal justice system, and in many cases, the fear and the anger that goes along with that victimization, and it doesn’t have to be a violent victimization for that to happen, the fear and the anger lingers for the people directly connected to that individual, not for days, not for months, but for years. Without the criminal justice system coming to the aid of those individuals, that sends a fear and a mistrust lingers, it’s what causes people to move from urban areas, it’s what causes people not to invest in urban areas, it causes our schools to suffer, our businesses to suffer, so this is just not one individual fighting the bureaucracy, this is what happens when you’re victimized by crime, that’s bad enough, but especially when the criminal justice system doesn’t come to your emotional and factual aid, and I think that has a huge and devastating impact on our larger society.

Will Marling: There’s no question, and I would say this is the beauty of the victim advocacy network that we do have in our country. It’s why I myself am proud to be aligned with these folks, because they have obviously a difficult job, because they’re dealing with people traumatized continually, they’re dealing continually with people traumatized by crime, but also they provide that buffer, because if you can actually interface with the justice system with somebody who understands you and can get information and help for you, that can recalibrate your expectations, which sometimes is the issue. People think the justice system is out for them. Victims do. The justice system is only out for the rule of law. That’s all it’s there for, and that’s what frustrates people. It makes perfectly good sense that somebody should be convicted of a crime, in their mind, because they were violated. But there are, there’s a bigger picture to that, and we respect that. At the same time, if they can interface with a victim advocate who can assist them, that can change everything, because that can get them to resources and help they need, help them understand what’s transpired. Many times, we take our expectations into something, and those expectations were never accurate in the first place. They’re formed by TV and other things.

Len Sipes: Well, that’s just it, that’s part of the problem, because individuals see CSI on television, and they watch the endless number of crime related shows on television, and what happens on television, ladies and gentlemen, is not even close to being reality. This is why I cannot watch these shows, I cannot watch CSI, because the reality and what happens on television are two different things entirely, but I think managing expectations on the part of individuals, because the criminal justice system is a system of due process. That due process is not the victim’s due process, that due process is the accused due process, and that’s the backbone of our criminal justice system, so I would imagine, when I was trained by the Maryland State Police, decades and decades ago, that sense of the victim as being somebody that you simply plug in as necessary almost makes sense. I mean, due process is due process. 90%, 95% of what’s been written about our criminal justice system in terms of trying individuals accused of crime is due process and how you apply due process.

Will Marling: Well, and if you think about the big picture, if you violate due process working in law enforcement, and I worked in law enforcement in a previous life, and if you violate that against an accused, you basically wreck that case. If you violate due process against the victim, there’s significant harm done, but not necessary to the case.

Len Sipes: Well, nobody is going to, I suppose, theoretically at least, nobody is going to endanger your job by violating the victim’s due process, although now that we have a constitutional amendment in 33 of the 50 states and a federal constitutional amendment, that has changed, but it just strikes me that the emphasis still, to this day, is on the rights of the accused, and if you do not follow due process, if you screw up in terms of the application of the search warrant, or how you talk to that individual, whether or not it’s an in-custodial interrogation, or just a street interrogation, and whether or not you read his Miranda rights or not read his Miranda rights, whether or not you provide an attorney or not provide an attorney, those are all questions that we within the criminal justice system have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. So even today, 90% of our discussion is based upon that, and 10% of the discussion probably is, oh, we should do right by the victim. We should do right by the witness.

Will Marling: That’s right.

Janette Atkins: Leonard, I think there’s a phenomenon though, that I’ve watched evolve in the years that I’ve been doing this work as a victim advocate with television, and I agree with you, absolutely, that what people are watching on television in the CSI shows and those type of criminal justice related programs is not accurate. However, we’re seeing a phenomenon in cases like Caley Anthony, Natalie Holloway, Jessica Lunsford, I’m thinking of these children who were kidnapped, raped, the attention goes to them from the media from these tabloid shows, from the Court TV shows, and suddenly, the nation is now watching cases that you, back as a Maryland State Trooper dealt with isolated within your jurisdiction, and maybe the people in the local area heard about it in the newspaper and the television news, but the world didn’t, and now the world is watching.

Len Sipes: Well, that’s a good point.

Janette Atkins: Jessica Lunsford, in a little trailer park in Florida.

Len Sipes: That’s a good point, that more and more these national, especially the cable shows, are taking on cases of interest from the victim’s perspective and pursuing it from the victim’s perspective. I agree. I’m not quite sure that I’m all that happy about the fact that they seem to be focusing on specific people, or every day, day-in day-out in our cities throughout this country, specifically African American, especially lower income African Americans are not paid any attention to, because the great bulk of the victimization is within our urban areas, and in many cases within the African American community, but that’s another story for another day. The larger issue here is that we seem to be growing little bit by little bit through a constitutional amendment or state constitutional amendments, or by media interest, or by just the pure human interest on the part of law enforcement personnel, we seem to be inching to a greater sense that the victim needs to be honored – not honored, respected in terms of their role within the criminal justice system, and the victim needs to be protected.

Will Marling: Yeah. And Leonard, if I could speak to one issue too that I thought of, sometimes it’s contrasted between defendants’ rights and victims’ rights, and so there’s this kind of lore that’s put out there, and I’m not sure who, maybe defense attorneys or others, who say, “Well, if we enhance victims’ rights, then we’re going to diminished the accused rights,” and the fact is, it’s not true. You can have both. You can respect the rights of victims, and also respect the rights of the accused, due process, and so on, but what we need to do is emphasize the enforcement of those rights as well, and some are working hard to do that. You know, the example I gave you represents the fact, you can have all kinds of constitutional amendments, but if nobody’s protecting and enforcing those rights, then this poor woman, she has no place to turn.

Len Sipes: I did a program on victim assistance, and specifically within the Washington D.C. area, and I turned to the people who were advocates from the prosecutor’s office, and from my agency, and I said, “How many times do you have to remind those of us in the criminal justice system, the bureaucrats, that a constitutional amendment does exist?” It’s not a matter of do we or don’t we, we are required by law to provide these services to victims and to respect victims in terms of every process of the adjudicative process. Every part of the adjudicative process.

Will Marling: That’s exactly right.

Janette Atkins: [overlapping voices 24:58] victims that are actually getting counsel and actually looking for somebody to do something when those rights are violated, and Will’s absolutely right, many of the constitutional amendments, and even the state statutes, there’s no real consequence if they are violated, but we were just now seeing victims who, there are attorneys out there who will represent their interests.

Len Sipes: And I don’t, and before ending the program, because we’re into our final 5 minutes of the program, I do want to emphasize that things have changed significantly. I don’t want anybody listening to this program to be scared from contacting the criminal justice system. I want them to contact the criminal justice system, and if they feel that they’re not getting their due sense of respect, that there’s somebody, specifically the victims advocates within every law enforcement agency in this country, practically, there’s somebody there who will take their case, take their point of view, and advocate for them, correct?

Will Marling: Yes, that’s correct.

Janette Atkins: Yes, in many law enforcement programs, and then also prosecutors or DA’s offices, states’ attorneys’ offices, even in the municipal or city programs, there are many, many victims’ assistance programs, and that’s where I would start if I was them. I don’t want to leave people, your listeners, that there is a horrible void in this country when it comes to victims’ assistance, and people are not getting the services, and they can’t trust the criminal justice system, because I have seen it evolve over almost 30 years, and it is much, much better than it used to be, and there are, victims’ assistance programs are much more common now than when I started in this field. You are hard pressed to find one, particularly a system based program. So you’re absolutely right, Leonard, in saying that people should not be afraid, they should call, if they don’t know who to call, they can start with NOVA, and NOVA will guide them to their local resources.

Len Sipes: 1-800-TRY-NOVA, 1-800-TRY-NOVA, or the website, www-dot try, T-R-Y N-O-V-A, dot-org, that would be the place that they would turn to, so I’m feeling guilty. There’s part of me that has a historical point of view that’s always been outraged in terms of how victims of crime are treated, but there’s also a side of me that says things have improved dramatically, and there are people within every bureaucracy that are empowered to go to bat for them, and empowered to fight for them if they feel that they have been mistreated.

Will Marling: Yep, you’re exactly right. I’m glad you have the perspective that you have, it’s an informed perspective, and you know, it’s something we’re trying to make people aware of. We sometimes do advocate directly for people with law enforcement for people, if they have a problem, I can call, I know how to talk the language a bit, and so those kind of things, we can do for people.

Len Sipes: And I think a call from NOVA is impressive enough. I mean, the National Organization for Victim Assistance has been around for how many years, Will?

Will Marling: Well, since 1975, actually.

Len Sipes: 1975, and you’ve been around the block, you’ve been established, you know how to work with the criminal justice system, but the criminal justice system, nobody likes to get a call from NOVA, because we all know who you are, and nobody is, because when you hear that NOVA is on the line, you say, “Uh oh, who has mistreated who?” Right, Janette?

Janette Atkins: That’s very true! And people can get the peer pressure from a national organization, or a state attorney general’s office, for example, or it always helps if the victim is just totally exhausted and not getting the assistance he or she needs, the news media can really help them as well. People, our elected officials don’t want to have the news media knocking on their door either.

Len Sipes: I remember talking to a woman one time who went to her state senator, and her state senator stopped whatever she was doing, picked up that phone, and called that chief of police for that jurisdiction and simply said, “I never, ever, ever want to hear something like this happening to my constituents again, and I want to meet with you personally on this issue, and I want this case taken care of!” And guess what? It was, pretty quickly. So there are ways that people can employ leverage to get what they need in the criminal justice system, but again, I do want to emphasize that there are individuals within every law enforcement agency in the country, just about, who are there to protect you, and you do have a constitutional right to make sure that your rights are respected, and there is a federal constitutional amendment to make sure that you do have access to services and get the respect from the criminal justice system. So with that in mind, I just wanted to say thank you today to our guests, Will Marling, the executive director for the National Organization of Victim Assistance at 1-800-TRY-NOVA, 1-800-TRY-NOVA, the website is www.trynova.org. We’ve also had at our microphones today, Janette Atkins, she is the administrator, the Green County Prosecutor’s Office in Xenia, Ohio, and to both of you, in the final seconds we have left, anything that I’ve left out?

Will Marling: I don’t think so. You’ve covered quite a bit. We really appreciate you.

Janette Atkins: Yes, it’s been a pleasure. We appreciate you bringing this kind of information to your listeners.

Will Marling: Absolutely.

Janette Atkins: The key is that this is the first of six programs we’re going to be doing with the National Association of Victim Assistance over the next year, and we’re going to be looking at victims’ issues in, I think, minute detail to see how we in the criminal justice system can improve. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. This is D.C. Public Safety. You can contact me, Leonard Sipes, at Leonard Sipes, L-E-O-N-A-R-D dot S-I-P-E-S, @csosa.gov. Please have yourselves a very pleasant day.

- Audio ends -

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