Posted on

Intimate Partner Violence Foundations: Not Just a Box to Check: Building Trust and Rapport

This webinar is part of a 10-episode podcast-style series focused on the foundational elements of prosecuting intimate partner violence cases (IPV). In each episode, AEquitas Attorney Advisor Jane Anderson engages in conversations with other AEquitas staff, former prosecutors with years of experience prosecuting IPV. 

In this episode, Jane and Attorney Advisor Patti Powers discuss how to assess victims’ needs and provide meaningful access to appropriate services, communicate effectively with victims at all stages of a case, and improve victim disclosures. They highlight what building trust and rapport with victims may look like, challenges prosecutors may face when establishing relationships with victims, and strategies to overcome these challenges.

At the conclusion of this presentation, viewers will be better able to:

  • Build trust and rapport with victims;
  • Enhance prosecutions through improved victim disclosures; and
  • Demonstrate that the criminal justice system is a safe place for victims

Additional resources related to this episode:

Posted on

Intimate Partner Violence Foundations: Collaboration is Key: Working with Victim Service Professionals

This webinar is part of a 10-episode podcast-style series focused on the foundational elements of prosecuting intimate partner violence cases (IPV).  In each episode, AEquitas Attorney Advisor Jane Anderson engages in conversations with other AEquitas staff, former prosecutors with years of experience prosecuting IPV. 

In this episode, Jane and Attorney Advisor Patti Powers discuss the importance of working closely with victim service professionals in intimate partner violence cases. They explore how prosecutors and victim service professionals can work collaboratively to ease common tension points while protecting victim privacy and ensuring that survivors have meaningful access to services.

At the conclusion of this presentation, viewers will be better able to:

  • Identify opportunities to enhance collaboration;
  • Communicate to build trust between victim services professionals and prosecutors; and
  • Leverage collaborative relationships to enhance victim safety and participation.

Additional resources related to this episode:

Posted on

Intimate Partner Violence Foundations: Collaboration is Key: Working with Law Enforcement

This webinar is part of a 10-episode podcast-style series focused on the foundational elements of prosecuting intimate partner violence cases (IPV). In each episode, AEquitas Attorney Advisor Jane Anderson engages in conversations with other AEquitas staff, former prosecutors with years of experience prosecuting IPV. 

In this episode, Jane and Attorney Advisor Jon Kurland discuss the importance of working closely with law enforcement to build and successfully prosecute IPV cases. They identify opportunities for enhanced collaboration, discuss methods for building evidence-based investigations and prosecutions, and emphasize how collaboration can help prosecutors comply with discovery and due process requirements.

At the conclusion of this presentation, viewers will be better able to:

  • Identify opportunities to enhance collaboration;
  • Communicate to build trust between law enforcement and prosecutors; and
  • Leverage collaborative relationships to enhance victim safety and participation.

Additional resources related to this episode:

Posted on

Intimate Partner Violence Foundations: Recognizing and Minimizing Barriers to Justice

This webinar is part of a 10-episode podcast-style series focused on the foundational elements of prosecuting intimate partner violence cases (IPV).  In each episode, AEquitas Attorney Advisor Jane Anderson engages in conversations with other AEquitas staff, former prosecutors with years of experience prosecuting IPV. 

In this episode, Jane and Attorney Advisor Patti Powers discuss strategies for holding offenders accountable while prioritizing victims’ safety, privacy, and autonomy. The discussion highlights the different types of trauma a victim may experience, how an offender’s use of power and control can affect a victim’s ability to participate in the criminal justice process, methods for increasing victim participation, and strategies for holding the offender accountable when the victim is unable to participate.

At the conclusion of this presentation, viewers will be better able to:

  • Identify how offenders inflict and compound trauma;
  • Maximize victim participation by minimizing barriers; and
  • Balance offender accountability with being victim-centered.

Additional resources related to this episode:

Posted on

Intimate Partner Violence Foundations: The Power and Control Wheel: Spoke by Spoke

This webinar is part of a 10-episode podcast-style series focused on the foundational elements of prosecuting intimate partner violence cases (IPV). In each episode, AEquitas Attorney Advisor Jane Anderson engages in conversations with other AEquitas staff, former prosecutors with years of experience prosecuting IPV.

In this episode, Jane and Attorney Advisor John Wilkinson discuss common dynamics of power in control in cases of intimate partner violence. John and Jane break down each spoke of the Power and Control Wheel to highlight how an understanding of these dynamics can guide victim interviews, support bail arguments, provide context for 404(b) motions, and help explain victim responses to juries.

At the conclusion of this episode, viewers will be better able to:

• Use the Power and Control Wheel to identify offender tactics;

• Present evidence of offender tactics; and

• Collaborate with allied professionals to develop appropriate safety plans.

Additional resources related to this episode:

The Sasha Center Model: Black Women’s Triangulation of Rape – http://sashacenter.org

Posted on

Coercive ‘Love’: The Intersection between Intimate Partner Violence and Human Trafficking

Human traffickers control their victims through force, fraud, and coercion. In the case of intimate partner sex trafficking, these methods of control are uniquely manipulative and difficult to identify. Understanding the historical and circumstantial factors that lead to vulnerabilities exploited by traffickers in these relationships allows law enforcement and prosecutors to more successfully address and minimize harm to victims while effectively investigating and prosecuting human trafficking cases.

This presentation describes how, in addition to violence and threats, traffickers exploit feelings of love and loyalty to maintain power over their victims and perpetrate sex trafficking and related crimes. The presenters discuss the importance of identifying victims of intimate partner human trafficking to ensure victim safety and provide access to services and support, while at the same time articulating offender conduct to ensure they are held accountable for their actions.

Posted on

First, Do No Harm: Facilitating a Trauma-Informed Response

Trauma is a direct result of the abuse and exploitation that offenders inflict on victims of intimate partner violence and sexual assault. This acute trauma, often compounded with historical trauma, impacts survivor’s ability to fully participate in the criminal justice process. As a result, a collaborative, trauma-informed response that takes historical context into consideration is essential to ensuring survivor access to justice while improving community safety.

This presentation describes various forms of trauma that victims may experience throughout their lives and as a result of an offender’s victimization. Presenters define cultural humility as a key element of a successful trauma-informed response that improves our individual, collective, and systematic responses to survivors. Additionally, the presenters provide strategies to identify, document, and introduce evidence of trauma to improve case outcomes and community safety by holding offenders accountable.

At the conclusion of this training, participants will be better able to:

• Identify signs and symptoms of trauma, and implement trauma-informed practices

• Enhance victim safety, privacy, autonomy, and participation through collaboration with allied professionals

• Practice cultural humility while preparing cases to proceed, regardless of a victim’s ability to participate in the process

Posted on

Confronting Racial Bias Against Black and African American Victims in the Prosecution of Sexual Violence, Domestic Violence, Stalking, and Human Trafficking

The history of racial discrimination against Black Americans in the United States created structural barriers and inequalities that Black women continue to face as victims of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, stalking, and human trafficking.. The article offers examples of how racial bias has shaped the criminal justice response to these crimes and provides prosecutors with tangible tools for eradicating biases against Black victims. Confronting-Racial-Bias-Against-Black-and-African-American-Victims

Posted on

Just Exits: Achieving Justice: The Prosecutor’s Role

The criminal justice system can serve as both an on-ramp to and an off-ramp from sex trafficking and exploitation. As gatekeepers within the criminal justice system, prosecutors are uniquely positioned to identify sexually exploited women and girls, make fair charging decisions, facilitate criminal record relief, and link survivors with services and support. In these ways, prosecutors can clear the way to a different life path and achieve justice for survivors. 

The presenters bring their lived and professional experience to this presentation, which emphasizes prosecutors’ duties to achieve justice over convictions and to proactively remedy wrongful convictions. Presenters discuss strategies for engaging survivors, avoiding wrongful criminalization, and providing access to just criminal record relief.

Posted on

Just Exits: Assessing Culpability: Context Before Conviction

Human traffickers assert force, fraud, and coercion against victims in order to profit from commercial sex or forced labor or services. Offenders use a variety of tactics designed to ensure that victims will do what they are told without resistance, questioning, or disclosure to law enforcement. This physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual control too often allows traffickers to escape accountability.  This presentation is designed to improve responses to trafficking and exploitation while ensuring that victims are not inappropriately charged with crimes they are forced to commit.

 

Collaboration is key to any response to trafficking and exploitation, but imperative where the complexity of victim-offender dynamics is not easily understood or revealed.  This presentation provides law enforcement and prosecutors with strategies to uncover the reality of the victim’s involvement in the trafficking organization or within the exploitation dynamic. Presenters provide a framework for assessing the culpability of individuals who may initially be identified as both victims and defendants. They also provide suggestions to assist prosecutors in making ethical and appropriate immunity and charging decisions as well as designing appropriate dispositions.