I am a passionate advocate who seeks to change how our justice system responds to sexual assault. The US justice system's abject failure in bringing sexual assault offenders to justice is intolerable to me. I am studying where the underlying problems and the possible solutions exist in order to transform it. We have already made progress in enacting reforms over the last twenty years. These include nationwide funding initiatives to process the multi-year backlog of millions of sexual assault kits, critical support for rape victims and training for police investigators on best practices in interviewing rape victims. Although these initiatives have yielded many positive effects, it has not touched America's abysmal conviction rate on sexual assault. Less than one percent of all sexual assaults have resulted in convictions. To say it in another way, ninety-nine percent of all sexual assault offenders walk away without punishment. Undeterred, some of these will go on to rape again, and again and again, devastating the lives of their victims and their families. The trauma of sexual assault has a profound impact on victims' emotional and financial wellbeing. Many lose their jobs or drop out of academic pursuits in the aftermath of an assault. If we consider alone the lost wages that millions of victims incur after an assault, it's easy to see the heavy toll of sexual assault not just on individuals but the US economy as a whole. What areas of the justice system are broken? Our failure to catch and punish sexual offenders begins with our failure to competently investigate them in the first place. Research outcomes based data voluntarily provided by large and small police precincts nationwide underscored a systemic issue: police investigations into sexual assault were poorly conducted and sometimes entirely absent. The US has essentially decriminalized a horrible crime by neglecting to enforce laws meant to protect the public from sexual predators. How can this happen? We are a nation that devalues women: gender inequality and rape culture are deeply embedded within our institutions and American society as a whole. Further complicating this issue are the thousands of independent police precincts and district attorneys involved along side the impact of large state and federal government bureaucracies. But by analyzing this complex web of interactive players we can also identify our successes. I wish to collaborate with like minded researchers, advocates and organizations so that one day sexual assault survivors get the justice they deserve.
Listed skills include Psychotherapy, Mental Health, Cbt, Motivational Interviewing, and 43 others.
