250+ on-demand webinars to choose from!
When Victims of Crime Become Defendants: Should Context Matter?
What does justice look like when a victim of a crime becomes a defendant? This session will inspire every kind of professional to consider context in their response in these cases. Incarcerated women experience staggering rates of sexual assault and domestic violence across the life span leading up to the offenses for which they are charged or convicted.
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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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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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Digital Violence: Understanding Trauma-informed Methods of Care
What is digital violence and what does it look like when we're reliant on technology to stay connected? This session will help service providers better understand digital violence and the trauma impact on those who have experienced it. Trauma from digital violence often goes unrecognized due to providers lack of assessment and understanding. This training helps to identify tech facilitated abuse and understand it within the lens of gender-based violence. The mental health impact of being abused through digital methods and platforms can have devastating effects on a person’s global functioning, including their ability to communicate through technology. For those who have suffered online abuse, connecting through digital methods can reactivate trauma symptoms and destabilize them in personal and professional settings.
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“Fight, Flight, Freeze” to “Survival Mode” and “Reflexes and Habits”
The phrase “fight or flight” is still commonly used to describe how people react while being sexually assaulted, yet it fails and harms many sexual assault survivors on a daily basis. In reality, many victims of sexual assault don’t fight or flee. Adding “freeze” as a third possible response, which has become common, doesn’t fix the problem, for two reasons: First, any phrase that starts with “fight or flight” doesn’t reflect the reality for many survivors and leaves them feeling like their response was abnormal or wrong. Second, many survivor behaviors during sexual assault don’t fit under “fight,” “flight” or “freeze” because they’re habit-based behaviors, in which they aren’t “frozen” but rather behaving politely and submissively.
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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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The Future of Victim Services- 2021 and Beyond
One in five people have been the victim of crime over the past ten years, but less than one in three report receiving help. Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) report receiving help from police in less than 20% of cases, and primarily turn to loved ones, health care providers and community-based services. Recent research confirms the long lasting emotional, physical, and financial struggles crime victims endure long past the crime event.
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Part 1: Effective Victim Interviewing: Helping Victims Retrieve and Disclose Memories
Part 1 includes clips from videotaped interviews with sexual assault victims, conducted by an investigator following best practices, including accompaniment by a victim advocate. With dramatic twists and turns, these interviews demonstrate the transformative effect of a good interview conducted by a skilled and compassionate investigator, with discussion centering on recommended practices.
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Transforming Secondary Trauma: Providing Support When Empathy Runs Out
In this digital age, where mobile technology plays an omnipresent role in our lives, it is particularly important for victim service professionals to set appropriate boundaries and exercise self-care. For anyone in a helping profession, working with victims/survivors of violence can take a significant toll on their professional and personal well-being. With the added stress and anxiety of a worldwide pandemic, it’s more important than ever to find ways for service providers to take care of themselves and minimize harm, both to themselves as well as their clients.
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Part 2: Effective Victim Interviewing: Helping Victims Retrieve and Disclose Memories
For victims who report sexual assault, intimate partner violence, stalking, and other traumatic incidents, the purpose of an investigative interview is to help them: (1) retrieve details of the traumatic event from memory, and (2) disclose those details to the investigator. Yet all too often sexual assault victims have faced unjustified suspicion that their report is a false allegation. Building on Part 1 in this 2-part series of workshops offered by veteran law enforcement investigators, Part 2 focuses on examining the concrete strategies and techniques involved in: (a) conducting an initial interview and preliminary investigation, (b) planning, preparing, and conducting an in-depth victim interview, (c) documenting victim statements and other investigative findings, and (d) following up with additional interviews and an evolving investigation.
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