The National Center for Victims of Crime has launched VictimLaw, a comprehensive, online database of state, federal, and tribal victims' rights laws, developed with funding from the Office for Victims of Crime. VictimLaw is a unique and groundbreaking resource, offering user-friendly access to more than 15,000 victims' rights statutes (state and federal), tribal laws, constitutional amendments, court rules, and administrative code provisions. Future additions to the database will include state attorney general opinions and summaries of court decisions related to victims' rights. VictimLaw will be updated regularly and is available free-of-charge.{When we speak. we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.}Some people think it must be easy for a woman to leave a relationship where domestic violence is happening a woman can just get up and go. The trueth is it is much harder to leave an abusive relationship than a non abusive one. Many women do leave or try to leave, but it can be a difficult and lonely process. Leaving may not make a woman safer.Copy and Paste Code to your myspace or websites for the above picture.
Lynn Shiner Manager Pennsylvania Crime Victim Compensation ProgramOn Christmas morning 1994, Lynn Shiner drove to the home of her ex-husband to pick up her two children, 8-year-old David and 10-year-old Jennifer. She arrived to find all three dead. Her ex-husband had taken his own life after stabbing his son and daughter. Following their burials, Ms. Shiner learned that shortly before the murders her ex-husband had been arrested for stalking a female disc jockey. Fearing for her own safety and for the safety of his children, the woman asked police to notify Ms. Shiner of his actions, but no one did. Unaware of his behavior, Ms. Shiner complied with the custody order granting him visitation with the children on Christmas Eve. Four weeks after the murders, Ms. Shiner worked with the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Widener University School of Law to design a bill that could have protected her children. The "Jen and Dave Law," enacted in 1996, grants a parent who is involved in a custody case the right to access information about criminal charges filed against the other parent.(About a quarter of stalking victims obtain restraining orders; in two-thirds of these cases, the restraining order is violated. About half of all stalking cases are reported to the police; a quarter of these result in an arrest.Remember that a restraining order is just a piece of paper. It cannot protect you. In fact, the restraining order is just a tool police use to show intent by the perpetrator. Obviously, the police will not be there when the perpetrator violates. Only after.In many, many instances, restraining orders only make a bad situation worse. From the stalker’s point of view, restraining orders are humiliating; the victim has just announced to the world that she wants nothing to do with him: She has stepped-up the rejection. Because of this, many perpetrators feel they must step-up the pursuit. Or they just get mad and plan to get even. There have been far too many cases of stalking victims found murdered after they had obtained restraining orders; one victim’s estranged husband knifed the order to her chest.There are two types of stalkers that are most unlikely to respond to restraining orders: those former intimate-partner stalkers who are very invested in the relationship and delusional stalkers.) ___________________________________________ (In early April this year a man walked into an office of the University of Washington and killed his ex-girlfriend and then shot himself. She had been stalked by the guy for over a year. She filed one report to the police for a restraining order which was useless because nobody could find him. She wrote an email to her office coworkers, "I have a stalking issue," she wrote. A stalking issue? The young woman could only describe in the gentlest terms that she was probably going to be murdered. This is political correctness gone suicidal. What prevented her from writing, "Dear Coworkers, some guy is trying to kill me, and I won't let him and you're going to help me because I don't want to die." We know the reason. The same one that made people tip-toe around the killer at Virginia Tech. Everything must remain normal until the slaughter.The Virginia Tech killer did a number of things before his rampage that could have been dealt with. If the account is true, he took pictures of girls in the classroom, up their skirts. As far as normality would permit they were allowed to be "offended." What would have happened if one of the girls had gone over to him slapped him in the face, grabbed his camera and stomped it to pieces? Her angry reaction would have been deemed not normal. I guarantee it. He had also been stalking 2 girls on campus prior to the killings. He was told by the court system to seek mental health help. DID HE?____HELP CHANGE STALKING LAWS TO KEEP THE VICTIMS SAFER..)
