200 on-demand webinars to choose from!
“Our Response Just Wasn’t Good Enough:” Overhauling our Criminal Justice Response to Sexual Assault
In 2016, we knew there was something missing in the criminal justice response to sexual assault victims in Ramsey County, Minnesota. We were polite in our interactions with victims and we took victims’ wishes into account. We regularly took cases to trial and won many of them, but reporting rates were low and not increasing. Many victims dropped out of the process, and we didn’t always understand why. As Ramsey County Attorney John Choi described, “I knew deep down that our response just wasn’t good enough. Survivors weren’t getting the help they needed. We weren’t achieving justice for many victims.” That all began to change when Ramsey County embarked on a 6-year journey which resulted in sweeping changes to our criminal justice response.
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Investigating and Prosecuting Sexual Assault by Intoxication
This presentation will address the issues investigators, prosecutors, victim advocates, and medical personal often encounter in alcohol-facilitated sexual assaults. Hurdles in these cases typically include the consent defense, perceptions about “he said/she said” cases, and victims suffering from memory loss, as well as challenges related to victim shame, embarrassment, and lack of trust in law enforcement.
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Ten Steps to Consider When Conducting a Criminal Sexual Assault Investigation
This presentation will focus on lessons learned from a 25-year law enforcement career which has placed the presenter in a variety of communities. Whether inner-city Atlanta, Georgia, the St. Regis Mohawk Indian Reservation, or on a college campus, sound trauma-informed investigative principles around gender-based violence and sexual assault should apply equally to all.
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Speak Volumes Without Uttering a Word – The Use of Pronouns in Your Communications to Open Doors
Using pronouns in our written and spoken words is a step towards ingratiating law enforcement to not just the LGBTQ+ community, but to others in society who may never have felt comfortable approaching law enforcement. It may open a door to justice they never thought of going through.
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Sexually Assaulted, Disbelieved, Prosecuted and Acquitted: Lessons from Virginia
Imagine that someone in your community is sexually assaulted and tells the police. Initially the investigator appears to take them seriously, but the case stalls. The victim interview turns into an interrogation, and police pressure the victim to retract their allegations. Desperate to end this ordeal, the victim recants. But to their surprise, the investigator and prosecutor use the recantation to charge them with false reporting.
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Through the Looking Glass: Creating Change by Leveraging Your Own Leadership
Agency after agency diminishes passion and engagement by failing to take advantage of the connection and capabilities of their staff and those around them. “This is how we have always done it,” becomes the fallback mantra as our organizations remain stagnant; too busy supervising to remember how to lead. This creates an atmosphere that is resistant to change and prevents the true growth of the justice system, negating the needs of the victims the system serves. In such environments, people begin to feel like bystanders to their careers and circumstances, losing hope that a better way of doing things might even be possible. This presentation connects all the disciplines in the room under one umbrella of hope that guides the responsibility, possibility, and the passionate inevitability of change.
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Justice Begins with a Trauma-Informed Approach: Reflections and Visions
Victims and survivors of sexual assault measure “justice” in many ways. There are evolving community expectations and demands for trauma-informed approaches to victims and survivors. This has led to new professional standards for trauma-informed care in our response, investigation, and prosecution of sexual assault cases, and more importantly, for victims and survivors; “Justice begins with a trauma-informed approach.”
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Traditional Law Enforcement Interrogation Methods Versus the Trauma-informed Interview Process
Traditional interview and interrogation methods have been used for years to the detriment of survivors of sexual violence, including the way questions were asked and how a victim’s answers were scrutinized using deception detection techniques. However, over the last several years, progressive law enforcement agencies have come to realize why a trauma-informed response to survivors of sexual assault is a significant improvement. This is especially true in how law enforcement has begun using a trauma-informed interviewing process for survivors. What if we extended these same trauma-informed techniques to victims of other crimes, witnesses, and even suspects?
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DNA and Sexual Assault Kits: A Great Forensic Tool
When sexual assault victims/survivors consent to a forensic sexual assault examination, they fully expect that the completed Sexual Assault Kit (SAK) will be submitted by law enforcement to a crime lab to be tested. Sadly, that is not always the case.
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A Simple Multidisciplinary Approach to Strangulation that Doubled both Forensic Medical Examinations and Reports to Law Enforcement
The Tulsa Police Department coordinated a multi-agency community approach to address the consequences of the violent act of strangulation and promote the availability of medical examinations for patients.