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Luncheon honors crime victims
BOARDMAN
Victims of crime need and deserve support, says Kelli Grace of the Crime Victim Section of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
Grace was the guest speaker for Help Hotline Crisis Center’s Victims’ Assistance Program’s luncheon in Honor of Victims of Crime on Wednesday. The annual luncheon takes place during National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, April 23 to 28.
Grace was a victim of sexual assault, which she called “ugly and violent” and longterm, beginning at age 10. She told her priest and school counselor and a policeman who came to her school to teach bicycle safety, but none of them helped her, she said.
Though it was a traumatizing experience, she said once she was free of her abuser when she was 13 and went on to marry and become a mother to further escape at 16, she realized she wanted to be an advocate for victims of crimes. At first she volunteered, then she began to hear about victims’ rights and watched as laws were passed to define them, and then became a paid professional with the Ohio Attorney General’s office 20 years ago.
“I’m so grateful to have seen victims’ rights develop,” she said. But the laws need to be strengthened.
“That’s my mission,” she said.
The national 1984 Victims of Crime Act created the Crime Victims Fund, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Justice. The fund, financed by fines and penalties paid by convicted federal offenders, will, under certain circumstances, pay victims of crimes for losses connected with the crime, such as wages and medical expenses, Grace said.
Youngstown Police Chief Rod Foley, keynote speaker, said he became aware as a detective and chief of detectives that the police needed to change their mind-set when dealing with victims from just information- gathering to at least being able to refer them to community services for help.
Foley, who became chief Sept. 1, 2011, said a committee representing a cross-section of the city’s residents was formed to look at the mission, core values and goals of the department.
He said he was happy with the results and said one of the top goals recommended for 2012 is to reach out and partner with community social-service organizations to help victims of crimes.
When police leave the site of a homicide, they leave a disaster behind for the family. Detectives now are trained to help the families get some basic services needed to help them get back on their feet, Foley said.
There also is a new police program that focuses on gang violence. Four of this year’s eight homicides have been gang-related, Foley said, just hours before the city recorded its ninth homicide around 5 p.m. on the North Side.
The goal is to get the most-violent gang members off the streets and try to get help for the less violent.
“We have social services available if they want out of the gangs. It would be foolish of us to not try,” Foley said.
But, he said, the police can’t do it alone.
“We need the help of the people in this room, representatives of social-services agencies, and grants from the Ohio Attorney General’s office to finance programs,” he said.