Shantelle Gaynor, Director of Relationship Violence Services is gave a briefing on Relationship Violence Services. They have four programs which are the Crime Victim Advocate Program, Just Response, Prevention Division, and Rural Programs. For the CVA, they are holding steady. There were no major increases or decreases. In the last quarter they saw 423 new cases, 140 per month. They had 490 follow-up contacts. City cases 66%, county 22%, 12% are other. The Break-down between civil advocacy and criminal advocacy, 60% are walk-in and referrals. 40% are helping victims of crime through criminal justice system. 33% of the cases are related to domestic violence and assault. 38% of the cases are stalking harassment and violation of orders of protection. 1% were cases of child abuse, and 11% are all other crimes. There were 16 cases of strangulation. They are tracking this and hey will send a team to advanced training on strangulation in the coming months.
Bryan von Lossberg asked about if they track the number of times firearms are used. Shantelle said they track assault with a weapon, but they do not have specifically firearms, but they can work on it.
Shantelle said the Violence Against Women Act at the federal level is still stalled. There is money flowing from the previous Violence Against Women Act. With the new act, they are looking at strengthening gun laws. The NRA has come out against it. The funding is fine now but the federal funding for grants is getting less and less assured. It is a big question out of their hands.
Shantelle has started serving on the criminal justice coordinating committee. She is bringing the victim’s services portion. She was able to go to Houston as part of a conference put on by the McArthur foundation. It is a dynamic group with a great mission. There were two things related to domestic violence. The first thing is that women who are incarcerated, 80% report that they have been victims of violence. Criminal activity is one thing we would expect to see. Treatments need to be tailored to trauma-informed care. The second thing is that pre-trail screening that leads to pre-trial supervision does not have a good tool. They found that judges in particular want to see more information. Domestic violence looks different than other crimes. She will be talking to technical assistance providers to see if they have recommendations on better screening tools.
Julie Merritt asked about a screening tool. Are they looking at the possibility that that person is going to commit another offense? Shantelle said it is taken from their criminal history and does not pull information from the victim. There is no good way to get that information without putting the victim at risk of being blamed.
Heidi West asked about stalking and how that is communicated. Shantelle said people might report several things at the same time. When someone is focused on a particular issue, that is the primary issue they deal with. . They do assist stalking victims with safety tools. It is a challenging crime to collect evidence and challenging to prosecute.
Michelle Cares asked about the conference in Houston and the Safety and Justice Conference is important to the Partners Reintegration Group, and she feels that group should be talking about some of these issues. Shantelle will touch bases with Michelle to get the information out.
Jenny Daniel, Coordinator for Just Response spoke. She is looking at the big picture system and getting feedback from the system. They are gearing up for new funding and securing funding for system gaps. They secured grant funds to support 80 hours per week of call time for First Step, the YWCA Sexual Assault volunteer advocate stipends, 2 shifts per day, 24 forensic exams for law enforcement, and co-location of advocates with law enforcement. They participated in the City Club panel on Missoula’s response to sexual assault. They did 208 Lethality Assessment Program (LAP) calls and conducted 4 educational panels for 100 violent offenders. There is a full-day conference on creating trauma-informed courts. They are focused on the strangulation conference. They want to make sure the folks on the ground know what they are looking for and are familiar with the law.
Michelle asked which courts participated in the trauma informed courts conference. A few judges from Missoula County, but a lot from Mineral County, and a lot of the court clerks came.
Stacie Anderson asked about funding and that the funding seems to be shrinking. There is a disconnect. Shantelle talked about the funding and the ongoing issue. Funding grew up in social justice movements. Because it grew out of this movement, funding grew up in the same way and is based on people showing up and saying this is needed, but it is not embedded in the system. Intimate partner violence affects health and mental health. The funding mechanism has not kept up. This area is one of the few that relies on grants, and they do not have local funding mechanisms. They augment but do not cover. Short of building the funding over time, she does not know how they would get there. Jenny also said they are working on developing local experts and trying to use them to train other people.
Kelly McGuire, Prevention Division Manager and manager of the Rural Program. She talked about funding. The last year they secured 4 grants for 250,000.00. They secured the Culture of Health Leaders grant which is $95,000.00 for 3 years and $35,000 in project funds. Brenna secured funds from rape prevention Education Program at DPHHS to fund a community needs assessment. Eric secured funds from the Optimal Health for Montana Youth Program. They are doing well but over the long scheme, funding will be a challenge. They are trying to gather the data they need to be competitive for applying for grants and collaborating with members of the community.
They will be teaching in the next month. They are working on youth engagement. High school students will be working with them. It is a model that is coming up to get youth involved in preventing violence.
Michelle asked about the youth they are working with and what the demographic is. Jenny said Erica is working on relationships with other service providers. Rather than having five different groups trying to access the same groups, they are trying to coordinate the effort and focus on centering on marginalized youth.
Stacie asked about the teaching. She wants to know if these are pilot programs. Jenny said they are programs they have been doing. The goal is to have all schools teaching the same information. They are working with school districts to create curriculum and training for teachers.
Gwen Jones asked about sex trafficking and getting into the schools. Jenny has provided a curriculum to the Human Trafficking Task Force. She feels that teaching healthy relationships and consent, all those things do prevent sex trafficking. Those tools give them the ability to identify red flags that come with sex trafficking.
Heather Harp asked how much time they get to spend with the students. Jenny said they teach health classes. In middle school it is 5 classes, and high school it is 2 classes. Erica will be working on youth engagement to get more time spent with youth. Heather does not feel that is enough time to make a dent in making a difference in other people’s lives and she will advocate for more.
Heidi West said at the Montana League of Cities and Towns there was a presentation about preventing child sexual abuse from MMIA. They are starting a relationship with an organization called Presidium. She feels it may be something they could leverage to have more capacity. They are a national organization that works on setting up programs that prevent child sexual abuse.
Mirtha Becerra asked about them providing training for the teachers. Other communities said there are peer to peer relationships in other communities. Jenny felt it was something that could come out of the youth engagement project.
Julie Merritt said there is another organization and that is the flagship program and wants to know if there is contact with them. Jenny said there has been training with them.
Brenna Merrill, Coordinator for Make Your Move Council spoke. They are committed to ending sexual violence.
They went to a national conference and presented. Their session was standing room only. The presentation was based on consent. They have been expanding on bringing this to the national level and how to talk about it in a more real way.
There is a national organization called Prevent Connect, who is the go to providers for sexual violence prevention education. Their bar program was one of the programs sponsored in a recent bar webinar. It was their workshop and two others that were spotlighted. To be the rural voice and leader nationally is great.
On the local level they were selected to talk about the consent marketing campaign at a concert, which is a venue they were not typically able to go.
They have been increasing their work with Nightlife. They have trained two bars. The staff is trained and they have been working with them to review policies. 8 total bars have been trained. The VFW has gotten trained twice. There is now a requirement to get the training for individuals who have a catering license.
Nightlife work is expanding and they are creating a curriculum for training individuals in the nightlife scene. They completed a nightlife survey and 250 responses. There is no data yet. They are hosting listening sessions with entertainers. They hope to begin workshops for those folks. The last thing is they are about to begin a needs assessment. Make Your Move wants to be able to map and look at the ways prevention is happening across the city.
Stacie Anderson asked about the bars being trained. What is the criteria for training specific bars? Brenna said she has done cold calls and presented pamphlets. Some bars are receptive, and some have not been. They have gotten referrals. They have done reaching out through the tavern association. It has been a long journey.
Heidi West mentioned there were great podcasts to listen to in regard to preventing sexual violence.
Bryan von Lossberg asked if Julie got the catering thing added-good to see that. The Badlander still has not done the training.