You are listening to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center Just Rural Podcast Series that highlights innovative programs and success stories from rural communities across the United States. This is Cyndi Simpson, Rural Project Specialist with the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. This interview was recorded on Thursday, June 10th, 2010 with Ms. Elizabeth Nieves, the Sexual Assault Response Team coordinator at Family Violence and Rape Crisis Services of Pittsboro, North Carolina. Family Violence and Rape Crisis Services is a Rural Grantee agency of The Office on Violence Against Women. In this interview Ms. Nieves tells the story of organizing a sexual assault response team. Please share with us a story about your program. Well I am the Sexual Assault Response team coordinator for Chatham County North Carolina. I am recently hired to that position as of February of this year and I am extremely excited to share the program that – what we’ve accomplished so far and something that I think is very innovative and out of the box that we’ve began doing. Following our first SART meeting which was very, very, very successful we were able to get all of the key players at the table and get them there really ready to not just listen to what I had to say, but to really engage and become a part of something that was going to make a difference in our community. Who were some of those key players in your community? We had both of the chiefs of police. We have two chiefs in our county, so we had both police chiefs. We had the sheriff of the county. We had all of the key investigators under those men. We also had the district attorney present. We had a judicial official there. We had people from other programs that deal with child sexual assault and I'm probably leaving somebody out, but we had a lot of really great people there. Did you have medical or nurses then? We had SANE there as well, yes. Great and so that was your first meeting and what happened at that meeting? At that meeting we really talked a lot about why there was a need in our community for a program like this, why did we need a SART in our community and for the most part it was always sort of understood that we needed one, but I think that what really came alive in that meeting was we don’t just need one. We absolutely have to make a committed effort. It’s not going to just magically appear. We’ve got to create it. We’ve got to make it happen and we’ve got to be – each one of us take the responsibility for doing that part that we can do, that we play in the community and so it was really that coming together of minds to understand that every single person at that table had not just responsibility, but a key role to play in creating a successful SART in our community and so it was really exciting to come into the county as a new person, into my position as a new person and my agency as a new person and then to see that kind of just community involvement right away was really rewarding. It was extremely rewarding. Great and what happened after that first meeting? I am so glad you asked me Cyndi. I was on my way home from the meeting and I received a call from one of the police chiefs that was at the meeting and he said: “Elizabeth, I am so excited. I know I'm calling you right away, but I am so excited. You really got me thinking. My mind is just going crazy with all these ideas and I want to meet with you to talk about some of the ideas that I have.” So of course I was really, really excited to know immediately what he had in mind and I scheduled an appointment with him the next day. At that meeting he just basically shared his heart and he shared that he had heard things in – and this is a man who’s been involved in law enforcement his entire career and he is now the chief of police. There is several years before he’ll potentially retire and so he said, “I've spent my whole career in law enforcement and you told me things in that meeting that I’d never quite heard that way before.” So your SART meeting, your initial meeting had – it sounds like it had an educational aspect to it that information was shared as well. Absolutely, absolutely, in a – not so much in a just throwing it out there, but in a very interactive kind of way, asking questions and trying to get them to share their experience because at that table there is just so many years of combined experience and wisdom, so it was putting information out there, but asking for them to share and respond at the same time and I think that was really the key to everybody becoming so engaged in the process is that they felt like yeah, what I have to say, what I've experienced, what I know because of my experience really is a critical part of this becoming a successful entity in our community. And so when you met with the chief what happened? He shared very honestly that he wanted to be a chief who made a difference in his community and made a difference in his department. He shared that before he retired he wanted to know that he had really made the community a safer place for women and he admitted that there was a huge deficit, not just in his department, but in our county and he invited me. He said: “Elizabeth, I'm going to open my doors. I invite you in. You’re the one who knows how we should be responding.” And he said, “I don’t know if we’re doing a good job or not, but I'm inviting you to come in and do whatever kind of training and whatever kind of testing you need to do to find out how we’re really responding to the needs of sexually abused women, sexually assaulted women in our community and where we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing fix us, get us where we need to be.” And he said: “I'm just giving you full authority. I’m behind you. Do what you want to do.” Which was pretty astounding to hear this because as you know law enforcement officers tend to be very protective and there has historically been sort of a gap between advocates and law enforcement and I saw this as such an opportunity to bridge that gap and with such – not just – I wasn’t pushing my way in. I was – the door was open and the red carpet was rolled out. It was really exciting for me. So we immediately started working on a plan and the plan was that I would go in as a victim and in some cases I was undercover and not known to the officers that I was – that they were being tested. In other cases I was known. It depended on the situation, but all the officers knew, all they did know, even the ones that knew that it was in some form of fashion a training exercise they still did not know the nature of the training, what it was about, the subject matter at all, so I was a victim that was unknown to them and the subject matter was unknown. All they knew was that is somebody who needs to talk to a police officer right now and so I was – I had four scenarios I created based on my experiences with victims and I went in completely in character, in costume and the police officer would come in and begin to interview me and there was this cute little hidden camera that was videotaping everything that was happening that they didn’t know was there and we had some very interesting experiences. And so where are you now? You’ve been doing some of that. What is next for that part of your efforts and what is next for the SART team as a whole? Well the training that was sort of round one. With this particular police department we’ve interviewed, for lack of a better word, interview slash tested all of the officers in his department, but we’re going to follow up with a more comprehensive. At the time of those interviews as we reviewed the videotapes with the officers we talked about what – where were you uncomfortable in this, where did you feel like you wanted to respond in a certain way, but you didn’t have the words, so we really evaluated not just their performance, but their feelings through the whole thing, what did this make you feel, what did you want to say to this victim but you didn’t feel like you could say because you just didn’t know the right thing to say or know the words to say, so I gave them some of that immediate feedback that they could take into the field immediately and then round two is going to be that we follow up with a more formal full-day or two days of training about a whole comprehensive cultural understanding and that whole thing and just really understanding from a victim’s perspective what is it that the victim needs in order to feel like they’re in a safe place to share with this law enforcement officer and helping the law enforcement officer understand how critical that first connection is for the victim and how that can determine whether they continue to go forward or turn around and run as fast as they can and so that’s – and they also, the police department issued a challenge to the other police department in the county and the sheriff’s department and before I left to come to this conference I was informed that the sheriff was ready for me to sit down with him and start planning out the training for his whole sheriff’s department. That is awesome. So what about the SART as a whole? Where is the SART going? We’ve had our second meeting of the SART. We have our foundation in place. We have our leadership structure in place. We have still the same level of passion and intensity in place and I'm really just excited about – this has been a huge thing and it’s taken a lot that from – this is not something that we can say – we’re not just saying two years from of time, but in my mind it’s so important because it’s the foundational thing that means now we have this goal that we’ll be able to respond to victims this way. Law enforcement officers in my county are, as of right now, becoming more competent in how they respond to victims, which means that this is not something that’s in the future. This is happening right now. There has already been an immediate change and benefit to having this SART in our community and so we’re just – we have lots more plans, but most of them are sort of longer range and will take some time to implement. Well thank you very much. Thank you very much. That was excellent. This project was supported by grant number 2009-TA-AX-K042, awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, the findings, conclusions and recommendations expressed in this program are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women. For more information on our Rural Project visit www.nsvrc.org.