Male voiceover: Anybody can be a victim of a violent crime.
Female voiceover: Not feeling valued by institutions that are supposed to be serving you, like the police department, the criminal justice system, the education system, perpetuates a sense of hopelessness.
Male voiceover: It’s extremely important to get out and spread the word that there is help. There’s hope, there’s support.
Female voiceover: Each and every one of us can do things every day in our relationships, in our families, in our workplace. It takes all of us together—not just one agency, one shelter, one program. We need a continuum of services so that we can meet victims wherever they are.
John A. Rich, M.D., M.P.H., Director, Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice, Drexel University School of Public Health: In Philadelphia, trauma was really at the center of what was happening in the lives of victims of violence. We have focused on the issue of trauma as it relates to urban violence, particularly for young people of color.
Theodore (Ted) J. Corbin, M.D., M.P.P., Director, Healing Hurt People, Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice: Trauma-informed care is really recognizing how chronic stress, exposure to violence, has an impact on a person’s behavior. All of those things feed back into that cycle of violence. Healing Hurt People is a hospital-based violence intervention program. The young people that we work with, they’ve been shot, stabbed or assaulted. We have worked to identify some of the gaps in victim services for the young people. And the sad part about it is that our young people don’t really know all of the resources that are available to them.
John Rich: Many of these young people have been viewed as "bad" rather than having been injured by trauma. We’re taking a broader perspective and seeing these young people in the same way that we would see anyone else who’s been a victim of violence.
Patti Giggans, M.A., Executive Director, Peace Over Violence: I love Los Angeles! We are a vibrant, vibrant community. We are survivor-centric. What we try to do is, as a leadership organization, create environments so that people can talk about the roots of violence and engage with one another.
Yvette Lozano, Director of Intervention Services, Peace Over Violence: When we’re working with domestic violence survivors, understanding that if a person’s reporting for the first time, if a survivor’s holding back, not being forthcoming with a lot of the details, it’s not that they’re lying. It’s that they’ve been through a traumatic experience.
Patti Giggans: A group of deaf women came to our organization because they were concerned about privacy. We started a program that dealt with sexual and domestic violence for the deaf community and people with disabilities—very much targeted for them, aimed at their needs.
Yvette Lozano: We’re here to provide those options and resources, so that survivor then has that power within themselves to move forward and start their healing process.
Patrick E. Smith, L.P.C., Program Director, Project LAST, Children’s Bureau of New Orleans: From every disaster comes a silver lining. And I think Hurricane Katrina was an opportunity for New Orleans to get some things right.
Paulette Carter, M.P.H., L.C.S.W., President and CEO, Children’s Bureau of New Orleans: New Orleans, unfortunately, has this history of education systems that didn’t really address those needs of kids who are chronically exposed to—to community violence.
Patrick Smith: We get children and families who have experienced homicides, children who have been victims of abuse—sexual abuse. And if they don’t get any type of support or treatment for the trauma, it will continue to impact them throughout their lives.
Mary Claire Landry, L.C.S.W., M.B.A., Executive Director, New Orleans Family Justice Center: We do a tremendous amount of outreach to every entry point that we think that survivors will be going to, to let them know that services are available for them. The important thing is that you get those systems—police, the city, the mayor, the prosecutor, your non-profits—to really understand that we have to have an integrated response.
Patrick Smith: The partnerships are vital, so we can meet the needs of an entire community, so we can grow together.
Parul Mehta Patel, Psy.D., Director of Client Services, SAHARA: It’s the building of the trust and the belief that we are going to walk that walk with them. Through word of mouth, a reputation is just created, and SAHARA is viewed in the community as one of those organizations that never says, "No." Recent immigrants experience a vast difference between the culture that they are used to and the culture in this country. That frustration sometimes gets expressed as anger and, ultimately, violence. They can target easily their spouses and their families because there probably won’t be a complaint.
Hemali Shah, J.D., Staff Attorney, SAHARA: When English is not a first language, the system just becomes that much more difficult to navigate. Telling their story to someone that’s genuinely listening and not questioning them or they don’t have to prove themselves—that’s very empowering. We are listening not only with our ears but with our hearts. Without that, there would be a lot of victims that stay silent.
John Rich: Empowering victims means acknowledging them and their humanity.
Patti Giggans: As humans, we are social beings and we do best when we are in healthy families, healthy communities.
Female voiceover: Working together, we have a collective impact. When you’re empowering victims, you’re giving them hope. Hope in themselves, and hope in their future.
