THE GAZETTE
Wednesday, September 4, 2013 b
VOLUNTEERS
Continued from Page A-1 or the hospital about a victim of rape or sexual assault coming forward, the on-duty volunteer will be paged. The volunteer is sometimes given information such as the victim’s name, address, phone number, age or a brief description of what happened. “When that pager goes off, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Jean Arthur, who has volunteered with the program for about 14 months. “Your heart drops. If you were about to fall asleep, you’re wide awake,” said Jeannette Feldner of Wheaton, who has been a volunteer since 2007. Ron Cohen, a volunteer from Potomac, said he constantly watches the clock when he is on call. When they are paged, the volunteers often report to Shady Grove Hospital, the hospital that staffs nurses trained in giving forensic exams. The volunteers said it is their job to make the victim as comfortable as possible during the process that can be hours long. Sometimes victims have family and friends with them, and sometimes they come alone. It is the job of the volunteer to be an advocate for the victim, to be a sounding
VICTIMS
Continued from Page A-1 Program, she decided to enroll. The program, she says, “was really a security blanket for us.” When she had trouble getting her driver’s license renewed because of the discrepancy between her proxy address and her actual address, someone from the Annapolis-based Address Confidentiality Program office met her at an MVA office in Montgomery County. “She took me by the hand and led me up there and explained to them what the situation was,” Leah recalled. “They do a heroic job with the funding they have.” About 800 Maryland women are enrolled in the program that provides participants with a
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board should they want to talk, or to be a crutch should the victim just need someone by his or her side. Volunteers provide a clean change of clothes when the victim’s clothing is taken for evidence. The victims can be as young as 5 years old, so volunteers also carry items for younger victims and the families of victims, including stuffed animals and coloring books with crayons. “These people are going through a traumatic experience and it’s so reassuring for them to know that there’s someone to be with them through the entire process,” said Sandra Whitaker of Damascus, who has been with the program for more than three years. “Some of them may have gotten into the situation because they had too much to drink or somebody slipped them something,” Cohen said. “They’re befuddled. ... You just try to be there for them.” Therapist Ginger Ebner said the volunteers are important because they serve as a point of reference for the victim and the victim’s family. In addition to being “their everything,” as Arthur said, the volunteers also provide victims with resources, including contact information to set up a one-on-one session with a trained therapist.
The program is available to all Montgomery County residents and any person who is victimized in Montgomery County. Should victims seek it out, the first therapy session with the program is free. Victims will not be turned away based on their legal status or their inability to pay. “Clients that get support immediately after their trauma have less negative symptoms which is why these [volunteers] are so helpful when they’re not right there on the scene of the crime but provide that immediate support,” Ebner said. “Victims heal faster, recover faster when they feel believed and they feel safe, and that’s what our volunteers do.” The volunteers work a sixhour shift about twice a week, or whenever they are available. There are 33 volunteers in the program now, though supervisory therapist Ellen Wachter — who is also the program’s volunteer supervisor — said they are looking for more because that number is low. Volunteers go through a 32-hour training program that weeds out the people who may be too sensitive or just not fit for the program, Whitaker said. Volunteers get a chance to work on their counseling skills, tour the hospital, meet with the police department’s major crimes
and family crimes departments and do a series of role playing to prepare for a crisis intervention. During 2012, sexual assault volunteers donated 11,610 hours staffing the 24/7 crisis response, providing crisis intervention in 130 separate outreaches and ongoing services to 241 persons in need of crisis services following a sexual assault. Training is ongoing for volunteers, who meet monthly to talk about what they did in situations to learn from one another. These meetings are also a time when the volunteers are able to find out from therapists whether a victim they helped has come in for counseling or if an arrest was made in a case they worked. Volunteers are not allowed to have contact with the victims after they leave the hospital. In addition to sexual assault outreach volunteers, the program also has volunteer court companions who provide support to victims and their families as cases proceed through the criminal justice system. Volunteers also provide resources at health fairs around the area. Feldner, who is both a sexual assault outreach volunteer and a court companion, said the most helpful thing she has been taught as a volunteer is to be non-judgemental.
“We’re just there with them, we’re not deciding if their story is right or not,” she said. Some cases can be tough on the volunteers because victims can go through a whole range of emotions — from being angry at an assailant they knew to bursting into tears. Feldner said she had a case where she was helping a victim, but also helped the victim’s family through the process. It wasn’t until she got into her car at the end of the outreach when it hit her. “I got in my car and I just busted out crying because it was a really tough one,” Felder said. Oftentimes, volunteers will feel a connection to the victims who remind them of someone they know, such as a child or grandchild. The volunteers are each assigned a supervisor to report to, who they call after helping a victim to check in and file a report. Those supervisors are available any time the volunteers need them. While the experience can be stressful, volunteers need to have the empathy and patience to help victims, while also being able to compartmentalize his or her feelings to take on that next outreach. “We do have to leave our personalities outside of the hospital or police station to put on that brave face or to not feed
into the emotion that’s going on,” Whitaker said. The volunteers said they have been on an outreach where a family member or friend who brought the victim to the hospital and confessed they had been through a similar experience. “They’ve just told you something they’ve never told anybody,” Arthur said. “It’s bottling up and hindering their progress, and once they’ve gotten it out, they can continue to get therapy.” Sometimes victims will feel guilty for what has happened to them. Ebner said volunteers and therapists have to remind the victims of the law. “It doesn’t matter if you’re an exotic dancer, the law says at the point of penetration or being touched against your will the law was broken,” Ebner said. “Bad choices doesn’t mean you deserved this.” Cohen said he thought volunteering with the program would be a good thing to do during retirement, which has turned out to be “an unbelievably rewarding experience.” “I decided to do it because I have a sister, a wife, two daughters and three granddaughters, and I thought if anything — perish the thought — should ever happen to them like this, I want somebody like me there for them,” Cohen said.
substitute address and free mailforwarding services. This makes it more difficult for an abuser to find a victim who has moved away. “It’s very hands-on and close-knit,” said Peter Fosselman, the Kensington mayor who also is deputy secretary of state. His office administers the program, which has a budget of $65,391. “There are only two people who can access the [participants’] information, and it’s kept locked up and secured.” To qualify, applicants must demonstrate evidence of domestic violence, such as records from the police, a domestic violence program or a religious, medical or other professional. In Montgomery County, police reported 1,054 domestic violence crimes in 2011. Nationwide, about one in four women
experience domestic violence during her lifetime, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Maryland started the Safe at Home Address Confidentiality Program in 2006 and has served 1,200 people. Thirty-five states have similar programs in place. Beth Volk, the director of Maryland’s program, recalls one participant who credited the services with helping her live a normal life again. The woman said she finally felt safe enough to walk around the neighborhood and watch TV at a normal volume because she wasn’t always listening for the sounds of an intruder. Participants stay enrolled for up to four years and may re-enroll as many times as necessary. According to Volk, at least half re-enroll.
But Leah was not one of them. While she says the program is an essential tool for people like her, it could also be “cumbersome.” A few times, she missed events at her children’s school because she received the invitations too late. She also couldn’t vote in Montgomery County because her driver’s license showed an Annapolis address and she was technically registered to vote in Anne Arundel County. “I had to vote by absentee ballot in the presidential election, and I’ve had trouble getting my voter registration changed back to Montgomery County” since leaving the program, she said. Another issue she had was her actual address still appearing on the Internet, which she
recognizes the Address Confidentiality Program had no control over. “I did find my [actual] address on the Internet all the time on pages like Intelius and White Pages. I constantly had to contact these organizations to tell them to take my address down,” she said. She contacted White Pages, who told her that even if they did remove her information, they couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t appear somewhere else. “Things so far had been OK. My children had grown up a bit, and I felt like when they were younger I needed to protect them more,” she says of not re-enrolling in the Address Confidentiality Program. “And we talked about how the whole thing had started to offer us a false sense of security. We knew
that anyone could find our address on the Internet, so it was like, ‘Who are we kidding?’” Despite some setbacks, Montgomery County Sheriff Darren Popkin said the Address Confidentiality Program is a necessary part of a larger network of resources available to domestic violence victims in the county. These include the Betty Ann Krahnke women’s shelter, the Abused Persons Program and the Family Justice Center. “Just getting a protective order is a great step, but it’s part of a larger plan to protect [domestic violence victims’] safety,” Popkin said. For more information on the Safe at Home Address Confidentiality Program, visit http:// www.sos.state.md.us/ACP/ SafeAtHome.aspx.
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