Connections                                           May 2013

 

Prevention Program Updates

Nancy Greenman, ORSATF Prevention Program Coordinator 

Olive's new babysitter!

An apple a day...  I've recently returned from visiting family in New York, where we are planning for my father's 102^nd birthday in June.  In addition to that apple, his daily Rx for longevity includes one New York Times crossword puzzle and taking all things in moderation.  I've got the apple covered, but am still working on the other two...

Supporting school districts to prevent and respond to teen dating violence.  May is Youth Sexual Health Awareness Month, and the Sexual Health Work Group's* focus is in support of Oregon's new Healthy Teen Relationship Act (HTRA) that requires all school districts to implement policy, staff and student training to recognize, respond to and prevent teen dating violence.  The Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence (OCADSV) has worked with stakeholders to create a "Toolkit" to support this work. On June 13, from 10-11:30, SHWG will present a webinar for Oregon domestic and sexual violence program advocates who are interested in working with their local school districts and schools to help implement the HTRA.  The webinar will review the HTRA, walk through the "HTRA Toolkit", and provide information, resources and strategies.  Watch for the invitation and join us!

*SHWG is a committee of the Prevention & Education Subcommittee, convened to bring together sexual violence prevention and sexual health promotion.

Talking about Prevention.  The Prevention and Education Subcommittee (PEC), is writing a series of position papers to articulate our vision for prevention in Oregon.  Topics include the Use of Social Media in SV Prevention, the Intersections of Oppression and SV, a Vision of Sexual Health, and an overview of SV Primary Prevention.  As part of this process, PEC has been meeting with other SATF Subcommittees, to look at how prevention integrates with and informs the broader SATF work - an energizing and informative experience!

1. developing resources to assist DV/SA community advocacy agencies 

    with integrating men into their programming;

2. constructing topic-specific literature pertaining to engaging men for 

    distribution; and

3. promoting healthy relationships to boys and men. This is the jumping-off 

    point for a number of new developments in our efforts to engage 

    men in prevention, so be on the lookout for more announcements in the

    coming months!

Ah! A new trainee!

One in three Native American and Alaska Native women have been the victims of rape in her lifetime according to research completed by Amnesty International and reported in Maze of Injustice.  Native American and Alaska Native women are more likely to experience sexual assault and rape at a rate of 2.5 times more than any other woman in the US.  These statistics, although shocking and horrifying, only being to describe the problem of sexual violence in Native communities. 

In fall of 2011, The Task Force embarked on a project in conjunction with Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board to address sexual assault in tribes in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.  Our project provides training to medical professionals for Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner training and Sexual Assault Response & Resource Circle training.  In our trainings, we discuss aspects essential to the understanding the prevalence of sexual violence in Native communities including historical trauma, the history of sacredness of women, and the barriers that face Native victims in Native communities.  Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart, PhD defines "historical trauma" as "the collective emotional and psychological injury, both over the life span and across generations, resulting from a cataclysmic history of genocide."  The Indigenous people of the US experience both a physical genocide and a cultural genocide by the US government. 

The United States federal government recognizes over 550 tribes, and there are more Indigenous peoples who have been stripped of their sovereignty never to regain it.  Of these people, there is great diversity. Across many of the tribes, previous to the entrance of white Europeans, violence against women was not a widespread problem and there was quick and serious accountability for offenders.  Women experienced a sense of safety, were respected, and many tribes were matrilineal with women holding authority and control over marriage.  For example, in the Sun'aq Tribe, children took their mother's name.  Husband and wife were considered partners that respond and balanced each other₁.  Wives of the Sioux Tribe could leave their husbands or make them leave the lodge if he beat her.  He could never marry again, lead a war party, hung, own a paper, and his name would no longer be spoken₂.  After the entrance of the white European, a campaign of genocide, displacement, and forced assimilation led to many of the issues that we see in tribal communities including high levels of diabetes, alcoholism, and sexual violence.  The lack of power the US has afforded tribes to hold offenders accountable has made the issue of sexual violence worse.  We attempt to address these issues and more in our SANE and SARRC trainings.  There is so much more to these topics that I can begin to describe in this article, so if you are interested in more information, resources, or referrals, please don't hesitate to contact me!

1Balzar, Roma., James, Genevieve., and Liz LaPrairie, eds. 1994. Full Circle: Coming Back To Where We Came From. Unpublished.

²Anderson, Kim. 2000. A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood. Pg. 94. Toronto: Sumach Press.  

And little Olive grew up and became a nurse and went to Aunt Robin's SANE training.

Practice Pearls!!!

-      Swab dryers: I know there were some questions that had come up regarding swab dryers and the possibilities of cross contamination.  Swab dryers are GREAT!  The key to the use of them is YOUR standard of practice, as with any other area of your nursing practice.  Make it your standard of practice to wipe down the swab dryer with a bleach wipe before and after use.  If you make this your standard of care/practice, you can always confidently testify that you know there was no cross contamination because of your standard of practice in cleaning.

-         Aggressive Handling:  I recently sent out some information on the list serve regarding swabbing for aggressive handling.  IF you did not see that email here is a recap.  If you are caring for a patient who experienced 'prolonged aggressive handling' like strangulation or whose wrists were held down, the crime lab now has the ability to perform DNA testing for 'touch' DNA.  Please do not be misled by the term 'touch' DNA.  There needs to be prolonged (at least 20-30 seconds), aggressive (not a gentle touch but handling in which skin cells from the perpetrator rub off on the patient).  It must also be less than 24 hours since the aggressive handling, and the patient must have not bathed.  There should be one wet swab followed by one dry swab of the entire area that was exposed to the aggressive handling.

-         ALS/Wood's lamp; if you have a negative ALS exam, and the patient TELLS you there was oral or seminal contact on their body, PLEASE get one wet, followed by one dry swab of the area(s) indicated by the victim where contact occurred.  Indicate on the envelope where you place the swabs 'salivary contact indicated by patient' or whatever the fluid was that contact the patient.

-          PLEASE REMEMBER! These patients are experiencing trauma (I am referring to mental and emotional trauma as well as the physical).  It is our due diligence to reduce this trauma as much as possible.  Please make sure that we are assuring that the patient knows all of the options for reporting and evidence collection and their wishes are being fully fulfilled.  For example: if we respond to a call and the victim has told you that they only want a medical exam without reporting or evidence collection; we need to fully respect that this is what they want and not ASSUME that really they want a Jane Doe/Anonymous exam.  Avoid any miscommunication and please take time to explore this with the patient.

If you have any questions regarding reporting options and/or evidence collection options please contact me or call the Task Force office.

Where's the baby you say??  Just try and get your turn!!

Over the past few months, the Task Force has undergone numerous changes, and our use of technology has been no exception. While most of the developments in this realm are behind the scenes and probably won't affect folks outside of our office, a few are worth mentioning (hopefully without bogging you down in tech minutiae). Feel free to email me or call the office if you have any feedback, questions or concerns.

Subcommittee mailing lists

Website improvements

The primary goal of this round of website improvements was to make oregonsatf.org easier and more intuitive to navigate. As a result, we moved some content around but retained the general look and feel. If you have any pages from our website bookmarked on your computer, you might want to update them.

Additionally, we have created "shortcut addresses" that point to our more popular pages. This provides shorter URLs that automatically redirect the user to a designated page on our website, instead of having to type in an elaborate web address or wade through submenus. For example, to view the Victim Response Subcommittee's webpage, open a web browser, type "oregonsatf.org/vrc" (without the quotes, of course) in the address bar, and press [Enter]. For a full list of our website's shortcut addresses, visit http://oregonsatf.org/shortcuts.

Meeting RSVP webform

We are implementing a pilot project for collecting RSVPs for the upcoming Task Force meeting on June 27^th. Instead of replying to the mass email announcement, we are asking members to submit their RSVP at our website. We will send out more information as the meeting date nears. 

 Task Force "Baby" News

Annika Baldwin, ORSATF Program Specialist

Open mouth, insert plug!

    Judy Hays, Task Force Membership Specialist 

Criminal Justice Subcommittee (CJC) 

We had an active couple of months and welcomed three members.  Our purpose statement was revised and we have updated our values and beliefs statement.  We reviewed the non-stranger sexual assault response and investigation curriculum for law enforcement.  Next meeting we will be updating and brainstorming more items for our work plan. 

Legislative and Public Policy Subcommittee (LPPC) 

The Legislative Public Policy Committee has been watching and facilitating the progress of the Task Force's priority bill, HB 2779 - the Sexual Assault Protective Order (SAPO).   Other versions of the SAPO have been introduced in previous legislative sessions.  For various reasons ranging from financial to political, it has not passed.  However, we are hopeful that this year's version of the bill will be successful.  The bill successfully passed out of the House Judiciary Committee in March.  It does have a minimal fiscal impact, mainly one time costs of changing the Oregon Judicial Department's computer systems to ensure the orders are uniformly entered and accessible throughout the state.   Since there is a cost to implementing the bill, it has been sent to the Public Safety Subcommittee of Ways and Means Committee where it awaits a hearing.  There are larger budget conversations happening right now, so until those are resolved we will have to wait to see if the bill can make it over this next hurdle and continue on to be passed.   Thank you to all of the current and past LPPC and SATF members and staff who have advocated on behalf of this important bill.  Let's hope this is the year that Oregon joins 19 other states across the country in having a Sexual Assault Protective Order!

The LPP has also been tracking and discussing numerous other bills that include issues related to sexual assault.   The SATF will post some of these bills on the SATF website at the conclusion of the session.  Please contact Cynthia if you want more information about what is happening this legislative session.   

With the help of intern Ariane Kunze, the subcommittee continues to work on updating the Oregon Voices DVD under the new title of Oregon Survivor Voices. We are drafting our workplan for 2013 and have started the discussion around developing our values and belief statements.  We hope to have future conversations about PREA and explore ways in which advocates can effectively interact with institutions in response to victims of sexual assault.