[B]OLTON – When Dr. Kimberly Lonsway was asked what she most wanted participants to remember from an all-day training on investigating sexual assault cases, she had a quick reply.
“Approach sexual assault disclosures with an attitude of, ‘start by believing,’” said Lonsway, a psychologist and national sexual assault expert.
About 100 people, including prosecutors, police investigators and victim advocates from across Vermont, attended the training session Friday held at Bolton Valley.
Lonsway is the founding board member and current research director for End Violence Against Women International. The nonprofit organization works to improve criminal justice responses to sexual assault.
The organization is also responsible for the #startbybelieving public awareness campaign, which seeks to create a supportive environment for victims to come forward, disclose their assaults, and report if they so choose.
“There are a million things we can do to change how we respond to sexual assault,” Lonsway said Friday, “but if I could pick one it would be that every single one of us makes a personal commitment to start believing when someone tells us they have been sexually assaulted.”
The training Friday touched on topics including alternative reporting options for sexual assault survivors and reducing gender bias in responses to reports of sexual assault.
It also stressed the importance of evidence collection and retention of records. Community collaborations involving law enforcement, advocacy organizations and health care providers can also be a factor in improving the system.
Lonsway said at the session that it’s important that agencies have in place policies, training and a culture that says every report of sexual assault will be taking seriously, and best investigative practices will be followed.
“Much of what we’re focusing on here,” she said, “is just ensuring that those investigations get conducted regardless of who the victim is, who the suspect is, and what the assault looked like.”
The training was funded through the U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women S.T.O.P. (Services, Training, Officers, Prosecutors) grant administered by the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services.”
Cara Cookson, public policy director at the CCVS, said the training had long been planned, but the topic proved timely given the national debate over sexual assault spurred by the recent confirmation hearings of now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“This training is important because we know that sexual assault is one of the most underreported crimes among adults,” Cookson said. “How we engage survivors in services, how we encourage them to report, how we conduct investigations, makes a huge difference in terms of whether survivors are willing to come forward and it also impacts the quality of the investigation.”
When agencies create an environment where survivors feel comfortable telling their story, they get better information, she said. It’s a matter of posing the right questions in the right way, Cookson said.
“If someone shows up and reports that someone committed a burglary, nobody asks, ‘Are you sure someone broke in? Did someone really steal $500 from under your mattress? How much were you drinking when someone stole that $500?’” she said.
Marc Metayer is the grants program manager of the state’s 12 special investigation units, which investigate cases of child abuse and sex offenses.
“We’ve done a lot of work in Vermont to try to bring this type of training in,” Matayer said Friday. “It increases the awareness of the dynamic of sexual assault.”
He added, ”Most of the victims that we deal with are child victims. Our approach with child victims is virtually identical to what we are hearing about today. Our goal is to actually broaden that to adults who we provide services to.”
Caledonia County State’s Attorney Lisa Warren also attended Friday, and spoke of the importance of such training sessions.
“I think part of our mission is not only to educate ourselves, but also the community,” she said.
“It’s part of our mission not only to prosecute or to investigate, but to take this information and go out into the community with it and educate.”
