A Well-Deserved Day of Awareness and Expression
Mar 15th
One of Endhtebacklog.org’s policy focuses is on ensuring healing and justice for survivors of sexual assault. There’s a lot of people behind this effort and we have tremendous respect for the work of those who help others cope with trauma. This work is not always easy. Today Chris Vargo, Joyful Heart’s New York Manager of Programs shares a bit about vicarious trauma and Joyful Heart’s Heal the Healers program.
Last month, the Joyful Heart Foundation brought individuals from two important worlds together to highlight a commonality between them: their shared risk for developing symptoms of what is known as vicarious trauma (VT).
The JHF Heal the Healers program views the community of individuals who have committed their lives to provide services to and seek justice for survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse as healers, and we believe our healers must take care of mind, body and spirit. For this particular workshop, we brought together criminalists from the largest Medical Examiner’s Office in the United States, the NYC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s (OCME) Forensic Biology Department and the New York County Assistant District’s Attorneys (ADAs).
Both of these teams are integral to the efforts to achieve justice for victims of crime and More >
Huffington Post Names Amy Ernst “Greatest Woman of the Day”
Mar 11th
In January, we ran our first Global Dispatch, a recurring feature in which Joyful Heart Foundation showcases the stories of those working around the world to ensure justice and healing for survivors of sexual assault. The first Global Dispatch came from Amy Ernst, a volunteer in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country she says is often referred to as “the worst place on earth to be a woman,” where rape is frequently used as a weapon of war. Despite the violence in the region, Amy says she finds hope in the way women create a community of family, strength, love and laughter.
Yesterday, The Huffington Post highlighted Amy in its “Greatest Woman of the Day” column, which is an ongoing series in honor of Women’s History Month. As the column states, the work Amy does with the local non-profit COPERMA would make most people turn away, but she is “determined to confront the issue of rape where the survivors [need] the most help.” It’s great to see HuffPo acknowledge Amy’s efforts and bring greater attention to the situation in the Congo. If you’d like to read more about, follow her blog.
(COPERMA volunteer works with rape survivors in Democratic Republic of the Congo)
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NYCAASA’s 2011 Lydia Martinez Collaboration Awards
Mar 11th
Dear Hearts,
Joyful Heart was proud to sponsor the Lydia Martinez Celebration of Excellence, hosted by the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault (NYCAASA) on Monday.
Photography by: David Mattingly. From Left to Right: NYCAASA Executive Director Harriet Lessel with the Recipients of the 2011 Lydia Martinez Collaboration Awards Glenda Guzman, Eric Rosenbaum, Deesha Narichania, Maegan Corcoran and Richard Ortiz.
The Lydia Martinez Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration Awards were presented to five recipients in honor of the late First Grade Detective C. Lydia Martinez, a remarkable Special Victims Detective in New York City. I had the privilege of meeting Lydia and the strength, compassion and light that emanated from her were incredible. On Monday, her colleagues and friends, many of whom filled the room in which we were sitting, spoke about the indelible effect she had on their lives, the lives of the survivors she served and on the city’s collective response to sexual assault by law enforcement, prosecutors, advocates and medical personnel.
We were there on Monday to remember her legacy and celebrate work of those who follow in her footsteps: volunteer advocate Maegan Corcoran, Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner and Coordinator Glenda Guzman, Wyckoff Heights Medical Center Violence Intervention and Treatment Program Coordinator Deesha More >
Interview with Linda Fairstein: Part 3
Mar 7th
This is last installment of my three-part interview with bestselling crime novelist, former Sex Crimes Unit chief prosecutor of the New York County District Attorney and advocate for rape kit reform, Linda Fairstein. Be sure to read the other two installments here and here.
Sarah Tofte: Back to the question of your career path and how you came to be a writer. What is it that gives you the ability to imagine the world to be different than it currently is?
Linda Fairstein: People always assume because I’ve done this work for so long that I must be a dark person. I’m very much an optimist, and I’m very upbeat. My work primarily is not with offenders and the bad guys and the perpetrators, it’s with people who’ve experienced the worst trauma you can have in a criminal setting. To be part of that solution in the early days and to this minute of being able to give them something, to know that there was a way to restore their dignity and to do it with compassion, that was what kept me there for a very long term.
Now when I went to college, my dream was to write–to become a writer–and I went to a More >
Interview with Linda Fairstein: Part 2
Mar 7th
They say to write about what you know and Linda Fairstein, the former New York County District Attorney Special Victims Unit Chief Prosecutor certainly knows the subjects that she fills her pages with. In this part of our interview, continued from our post on Friday, Fairstein talks to me about the evolution of the rape kit, what it was like to be prosecuting cases as the science around DNA was beginning to take hold and her thoughts on the backlog of untested rape kits.
Sarah Tofte: So, I know that rape kits were around slightly before DNA testing became available.
Linda Fairstein: Yes.
ST: Could you talk a little bit about this? One thing I find very interesting in general about the backlog, which I’ll get to, is the amount of care that has gone into evolving the rape kits so that they keep up with technology, what we’re learning from the criminal justice system and what we need from it. Sometimes there’s a bit of a disconnect between how much care has gone into creating a process of integrity and quality of evidence, efficiency in collection and compassion and care for the victim and what happens after–for it to just then sit More >
