• January 16-22, 2015
TRAUM A, from page 4
News
$800 to train each officer through Strand’s
program, but Mahuna says he is exploring
ways of extending a shorter and less-
expensive form of this training to the rest
of the bureau, hoping it might eventually
be worked into its annual weeklong
in-service training.
PPB spokesman Pete
Simpson says that,
right?”’ She says the implication is that the
survivor chose him, knew what he was
like, and therefore invited this.
“And unfortunately many survivors hold
those same beliefs,” Strawn Morris says.
“And then the cop comes along and
enforces that
same belief.”
“Amanda,” who
also asked that
1 traum a « I l a ' s mexaor? 1$
we not use her
a jigsaw p u s!® tlta fs
real name, didn’t
been throw n la te t i e air« The
feel as if she was
p « r l® places land a ll over
being heard after
the place," says Sgt« ite n a ld
multiple attempts
Mason« He says IF« up to th®
to involve law
d e te e tlw I® collect the pieces
enforcement in
the aftermath of
from the o io tla i as they are
an abusive
disseminated^ sorting out the
relationship she
im portant pieces that help
Sgt. Ronald
had ended. At one
re
w
a
l.th
e
story«
Mason
point she says her
ex-boyfriend
forced his way
“only a few people have
into her home,
been though the FETI Training and there
and fearing for her life, she called 9-1-1;
is still a long way to go before it would be
She says the two officers who responded
proposed as a standard for the entire
to her call seemed to be indifferent about
organization.”
her situation. At the time, she says, her
To date, only one Multnomah County
whole body was shaking and h er mind had
sheriff detective, who is also a member of
completely shut down.
PPB’s domestic violence team, has taken a
“I couldn’t advocate for myself or
class on FETI. But the sheriff’s office is
answer any of their questions,” she recalls.
reportedly considering using the principles
She says her ex-boyfriend “was sitting
she learned during the course she took
right there intimidating me, and right
with DVERT for the future training of its
before the police got there he was chasing
first responders and other uniformed
m e around the house threatening to kill
units.
m e.” .
According to court documents, that
scenario ended in the police asking her
ex-boyfriend to leave, which he did.
artha Strawn Morris, director of
After filing pre-restraining and pre
Multnomah County and city of
Portland’s Gateway Center for Domestic stalking orders, Amanda eventually sought
the help of the Gateway Center. It was
Violence, works closely with DVRU
there that she was connected with DVRU
officers in her work. First responders to
and FETI-trained Officer Dan Romanowski.
9-1-1 calls give survivors information about
She says he appeared to genuinely care
her center, and many times women will
about her situation. “I felt like he really
follow up with her
believed me,” she says. “He seemed to go
office the next day
out of his way to help me.”
to connect with
Once she adjusted from the shock of her
resources.
alleged attack, Becky also decided to press
Sometimes a police
charges. She went to the Gateway Center,
officer will meet a
where advocates connected her with an
survivor at the „
officer to start processing her case.
center to either
Markel says that since FETI’s adoption
write up a report
in the U.S. Army, victim complaints about
or to take down
how investigators handle their cases have
follow-up
drastically decreased. It took about four
Martha Strawn information.
Morris
Strawn Morris
years for FETI to become standard
practice in the military, and FETI
says she has
programs are currently being developed to
noticed a difference between the way
teach officers how to interview
officers in Portland’s domestic violence,
perpetrators too, because they often
unit interview a survivor and the way
patrolmen from East Precinct, who are
identify themselves as victims.
But law enforcement can be slower to
summoned when a DVRU officer isn’t
adopt new ways of doing things, says
available, interview a survivor.
“The DVRU is less likely to victim-blame Markel. He says it can be difficult for most
police officers to wrap their heads around
and is more sensitive to the dynamics of
domestic violence. They’re just better
a concept that puts the interview in the
trained on this particular topic. I’ve come
hands of the victim.
to believe, working with domestic violence
“It’s so ingrained in us, as law
survivors over the last four years, day in
enforcement, officials, that we have to be in
and day out, that victim blaming is the.
control of all our interviews,” Markel says.
violence units ahead of the curve.
default position for all of us. It’s not just
“But once they truly understand it and
But m ost of PPB’s 950 police officers
police officers,” Strawn Morris says. “I’ve
start to see it work, it becomes easier and
have not received this training, and they
heard patrol officers really emphasize the.
easier,”
are the officers who ultimately handle the
fact of (the survivor’s) intimate
bulk of the departm ent’s domestic violence
emily@ sireetroots.org
relationship - ‘Well, he was your boyfriend
cases. Mason says it would cost about
psychiatrists have been using since the
dawn of modern psychology into a program
that teaches criminal investigators how to
interview trauma victims. It’s called the
Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview,
or FETI. The technique can be broken
down into three basic steps designed to
enable the officer to collect as much
forensic psychophysiologicalevidence as
possible.
The first step is genuine empathy, as
Strand explains that victims should never
be treated as witnesses to their own
crime. The second step is this question:
Help me understand what you are able to
remember about your experience.
And finally, shut up and listen.
As Mason explains it, a trauma victim’s
memory is “like a jigsaw puzzle that’s been
thrown into the air. The puzzle pieces land
all over the place.” He says it’s up to the |
detective to collect the pieces from the
victim as they are disseminated, sorting
out the important pieces that help reveal
the story.
“It’s taking a disjointed story and
translating it into a report that makes
sense,” he says. ’
Investigators in the U.S, Army have fully
adopted the FETI approach, and it’s
quickly taking hold in other branches of
the military as well. According to David
Markel, one of the nations foremost FETI
experts, it’s made a big difference in the
military.
“What we’re getting from our field
agents ip the military is thatj^iis planner ^ ~
of approach in interviewing victims of
trauma is having a phenomenally good
affect on how these cases are
investigated,” says Markel. “It’s also
having a great effect on how they’re
prosecuted and how they’re perceived by
other soldiers and other military
personnel. We’re actually getting fewer
complaints from victims about how they
are treated by investigators because this is
a much more empathetic approach.”
According to S g t Peter Mahuna, who
leads PPB’s Sex Crimes Unit and has
already taken a course on FETI, exhibiting
signs of the neurobiology of trauma can
make a victim appear more believable.
Markel says these signs can then aid the
prosecution, serving as
psychophysiological evidence that the
victim actually experienced a violent
attack.
Markel served as a lead investigator at
the Lafayette Police Department in
Colorado for 18 years and worked as a law-
enforcement training consultant before he
began working with Strand to train Army
investigators on the FETI technique. Now
that it’s been implemented in the military,
he’s turning his attention toward training
civilian law enforcement and has taught
investigators in Ashland how to conduct
this style of interview. He says officers
who have received this type of training
make up a very small percept of law
enforcement across the county, putting
officers in PPB’s sex crimes.and domestic
M
Page
‘Options’ program a new
approach to sexual assault
he police department in Ashland
has implemented an innovative
new approach to handling sexual
assault cases. The You Have Options
■
program puts decisions about how to
move forward with an investigation into
the hands of the victim. The program's
creator, Detective Carrie Hull, says that
since its adoption in 2013, the number
of sexual assaults reported each year
has more than doubled. The
department has also seen a drastic
increase in positive interactions with
law enforcement, Hull says.
'The techniques that we use are not
complicated and they are not new to
law enforcement We just have
formalized them so survivors
understand that these actually are
options at the police departments that
offer them,” Hull says.
She says the real difference
between this program’s approach and
the traditional way of conducting an
investigation is time. When a person’s
home is burglarized, the residents may
be traumatized, but they want the
burglar caught and want police to
move forward with an investigation
right away, she says. They may feel
bad about leaving their front door
unlocked, but the police are not likely
to chastise them for that mistake. But
with a sexual assault case, says Hull,
the victim is more likely to tnternaiize
mistakes he or she made, and is going
to need a lot more time to process that
decision. For that reason, she says the
Ashland Police Department is ready to
listen when the victim is ready to talk.
The program also gives victims the
option to stay anonymous, have
someone else file the report for them,
decide whether or not investigators will
contact the person who assaulted them
and include them in other decisions
about the investigation.
‘There are evidentiary problems that
can come from that,” Hull says, ‘but
the alternative is, if they never come in,
we’re never going to get to a place
where we are potentially turning a case
over to a DA where those evidentiary
considerations will come in.”
In 2014, Sgt. Peter Mahuna, head of
PPB’s Sex Crimes Unit, attended a
weeklong training on the You Have
Options program, A main component
of the program is the Forensic
Experiential Interview (FETI). Mahuna
says he likes the program and may
implement aspects of it. He says it
would be difficult for a department the
size of Portland’s to sign on officially
considering that to be a recognized
member, all 1,100 people who work in
the bureau, including nonsworn staff,
would have to undergo the training.
- E m ily Green