Shattering Silences by Christopher Johnston

Author:Christopher Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510727588
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2018-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Coalescing Forces:

The Fall 2016 SAK Task Force

Summit with Cleveland and

Memphis

THE CONFERENCE PACKET for the 2016 Detroit Sexual Assault Kit Summit—a white folder featuring the seal of Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy—is jam-packed with information about the agenda of a half-dozen plenary and more than twenty breakout sessions, speaker bios, and a sixty-page booklet published by the Joyful Heart Foundation entitled Navigating Notification: A Guide to Re-engaging Sexual Assault Survivors Affected by the Untested Rape Kit Backlog.

The three-day event is housed in the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center and the Courtyard by Marriott Detroit Downtown across the street, the hotels connected by a second-floor pedestrian walkway. With its soaring seventy-three-story central cylinder, the futuristic, mirrored glass and steel Renaissance Center’s cluster of corporate buildings is the most frequently cited landmark by Detroiters giving directions downtown.

As striking as its architectural exterior is, however, the circular, symmetrical interiors, while attractive and comfortable, are at once bemusing and perplexing to navigate. Thus, the folder also contains maps that resemble the axonometric floor plans of Darth Vader’s Death Star. Wisely, the hotel assigns direction-givers who point people toward the elevators to the conference rooms and other key locations.

Despite any navigational challenges, Prosecutor Worthy’s team has organized a truly impressive schedule of panels and experts for this distinguished collection of investigators, prosecutors, sexual assault nurse examiners, sexual assault forensic examiners, rape crisis and victim advocates, psychologists, therapists, and educators in attendance.

Rick Bell, who heads the Cuyahoga County SAKTF, tells me the first summit held in Cleveland in 2014 had about fifty people from the three partnered cities—Cleveland, Detroit, and Memphis—in attendance. The Memphis summit the following year had roughly one hundred people and several more cities that had joined the SAKI project coterie.

The 2016 summit counts roughly three hundred attendees from more than thirty cities, so the movement is growing fairly quickly. More than thirty cities have applied for and received SAKI grants. Some have received financial support from the district attorney of New York (DANY) funding or other sources supporting the new victim-centered approaches to rape and sexual assault cases and the aggressive law enforcement and prosecutorial efforts to leverage DNA evidence collected and extracted from sexual assault kits.

At the welcome reception on Sunday night, September 25, 2016, in the Granite City Food & Brewery on the Renaissance Center’s first floor, Bell tells me and others that he hopes the next summit will be out west, in Seattle, perhaps, or Portland. We’re talking with Tina Orwall, Washington state representative, who had Bell come out to testify to promote one of her bills to combat sexual violence statewide.

Around 8:30 a.m. on Monday, we begin with two special guests from Washington, DC: Kristina Rose, then–senior policy advisor on violence against women issues in Vice President Joe Biden’s office (now Rose is the executive director of End Violence Against Women International), and Caroline “Carrie” Bettinger-López, White House advisor on violence against women and senior advisor to VP Biden.

Rose calls Worthy “indomitable” and “fearless.” No argument there.

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