Grant Funded Program for Victims of Violent Crime Services Among Underserved Populations Capstone Project

Logistics in Aviation

Services for the victims for populations that is underserved

Once one recognizes that children, young people and grownup victims of marital violence, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor as well as stalking living in the countryside have to face certain unique hurdles to receiving help and other challenges which are not so often encountered in urban regions, designing grant funded programs for this underserved population becomes easier. The problem however can be compounded by factors like geographical isolation, economic structure, specifically strong social as well as cultural pressures, and unavailability of available services in the countryside - all of which create major problems for those who want to get assistance as well as services to put an end to the violence affecting them. All these factors also make it hard for the criminal justice system to examine and impeach cases involving domestic violation, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor, and stalking. Furthermore, socio-cultural, financial, as well as geographical hurdles are making it hard for victim service providers and related social services pros to recognize and help the victims of such wrongdoings (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

This Rural Program deals with a few provisions of the Violence against Women Act, which Congress passed in the year 1994 and reauthorized in the Violence against Women Act of 2000 as well as 2005. The Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2004 (VAWA, 2005) extended the ambit of the Rural Marital violence, Relationship violence, Sexual misdemeanor and Stalking Assistance Program (Rural Program) to also include sexual misdemeanor and stalking, and made changes to suitability standards and the statutory purpose areas so that the program could be properly executed (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

The main aim of the Rural Program is ensure that crime victim services are properly delivered to populations that are underserved. This will only be possible when safety of children, young people and adult victims of marital violence, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor, and stalking is enhanced by supporting projects that are specially designed to meet the needs as well as prevent crimes in rural jurisdictions. The Rural Program concentrates on encouraging ground-breaking solutions to overcome the issue of marital violence, relationship violence, sexual misdemeanor, and stalking crimes and to also make sure that safety of victims is the main concern in delivering services to sufferers and their offspring created by the rural nature of individual communities. The Rural Program also tests victim advocates, police force officials, pre-trial assistance workers, prosecutors, judges as well as various court workers, probation as well as parole officers, Child Protective Service along with Adult Assistance Workers, and faith - as well as community-centered leaders to work together to solve these issues (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

C.

Narrative of the Program

Statement of the Problem

Underserved Populations - People of Color, Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning (LGBTQQ) Communities

West Virginia is mainly a state that has a big rural area and low population (1, 815, 354 people in 2000) of which five percent are colored people and homosexual households account for ten percent of the overall population. The rural communities in West Virginia have few opportunities to connect with specialized services. Furthermore, because of racism as well as heterosexism, it is hard to access social services which then limit resources as well as protection. The Women of Color Network Facts and Stats Collection says that colored women are not able to gain access to conventional services because they are afraid of rejection from the community, and they also do not trust law enforcement are also skeptical and distrustful of marital violence services which are neither ethnically nor linguistically capable. For many colored women, elevated poverty rates, insufficient education, partial job resources, language barriers, and fear of deportation are obstacles to looking for assistance and support services (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community is many times not recognized enough, despite the fact that statistics show it is just as widespread and austere as for heterosexuals. When faced with a system that is many times very oppressive and hostile towards whom are not "straight," survivors of marital violence and victims in LGBTQQ partnerships often report that they are scared of telling people about their sexual orientation or about their relationships. Furthermore, those who are brave enough to report violence in homosexual relationships often face discrimination, prejudice, and bias from law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges and advocates to whom LGBTQQ victims ask for assistance (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).Survivors of marital violence who have children

Marital violence can have a profound effect on families, communities and the society as a whole. Those who batter their victims use various tactics to control the victim and their offspring within the family and they also use systems that have been designed to safeguard and provide accountability to sufferers. In any household which has a victim with children and who are made to endure marital violence, the environment is perfect for the batterer to maintain control, intimidate and successfully pacify the victim's efforts to get away from the batterer. It is common for the batterer to make use of custody as a medium to harass and resort to legal retaliation. In fact, just twenty-six percent of batterers are held accountable by submitting to supervised visitation (Kernic et al., 2005).

The problem is that unofficial visits make it easy for the batterer to concentrate their efforts to control the victim and inflict more violence (Sheeran and Hampton, 1999). When children of marital violence victims are exposed to a batterer, it can have a detrimental effect like having to put up with physical injuries or even death. They can also suffer from psychological deficiency, physical or emotional negligence and their childhood progression will also be retarded. By recognizing the impact that batterers have on marital violence victim's children, the child protection system has shown that it has taken notice of this issue. The child protection system framework is in fact concentrating on providing protection to children against obnoxious parents and this means that both the victims and batterers are equally responsible for the harm done to the children. This however does compromise the safety of battered mothers because they have to struggle to obey with child protection mandates which mainly ask the grownup sufferer to control the batterer's violent conduct or give up their children. Although WV has done much to change the child protection system's structure to take up partnership with grownup sufferers and to make batterers own up for their acts (through new policy and statutes creating co-petitioning and battered parent adjudication), ongoing cooperative efforts are still required to institutionalize this change from putting the blame on grownup sufferers to providing support and protection to them. A battered mother has to face additional and complicated safety concerns which are very complicated. Survivors as well as sufferers have to put up a defense against allegations by batterer of false reporting and parental estrangement when endeavoring to protect the children of marital violence victims in family court custody/visitation proceedings. At the same time, they also need to respond to "failure to protect" allegations leveled by the child protection system. Different disciplines take up complicated issues on a daily basis, but they do not always cooperate with each other, and sometimes also work in opposition to each other disciplines, which are trying to protect family members (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

Relationship violence

35 states in the U.S. allow relationship violence victims to ask for protection irrespective of what kind of relationship they are in. West Virginia is one of these 35 states but it is not among the 19 states that allow sufferers below the age of 18 to ask the court to provide them with protection without a parent, legal or appointed guardian representing them. Since young sufferers often do not tell anyone about violence committed against them, many of them continue to be part of a perilous association (Division of Criminal Justice Services, 2009).

At present, the extent to which relationship violence affects people in West Virginia is not known mainly because there is no specific data available to provide accurate statistics.

Target Population

The target population gets help, thanks to Rural Grant funding, in the following ways:

They are given ethnically subtle training and are taking part in community forums on race as well as sexual inclination for marital violence advocates along with the general public;

Marital violence and community-centered organizations that offer informed and appropriate services to marginalized communities are identified and recognized, especially in regard to colored communities and LGBTQQ organizations;

Community outreach and public awareness is provided on ethnically different populations;

Policies and practices that put the safety of sufferers of marital violence with children at risk are being improved and recognized;

Training and information is provided to rural teams, civil as well as criminal legal systems along with community-based providers on state policy/practice….....