|
Year Awarded: 2007
Project Leaders:
Rebecca Campbell, Psychology; Angie Kennedy, Social Work; Sue Coats and Renae Diegel, Turning Point, Inc; Joyce Siegel and Phyllis VanOrder, Sexual Assault Services of Calhoun County; John Hallacy, Calhoun County Prosecutor's Office; Eric Smith, Macomb County Prosecutor's Office
Project Description:
National data sources suggest that 6-9% of adolescents have been sexually assaulted, and most first-time victimizations occur between the ages of 12-17. To address the complex legal, medical, and mental health needs of sexual assault victims, Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) Programs and Sexual Assault Response Teams (SARTs) have emerged throughout the country to provide comprehensive, coordinated care to victims and their families. Evaluations of SANE-SART programs have found that they can be instrumental in helping adult victims through the complicated reporting and prosecution process, but this has not been studied with adolescent victims. With the support of this FACT grant, we will be working with the SANE-SART programs in Macomb and Calhoun counties to conduct a quantitative study that will document the services provided to adolescent victims by these interventions, and examine if and how these programs contribute to increased police reporting and prosecution rates. This information will be directly useful to our community partners because it will identify when, how, and why adolescent sexual assault cases sometimes "slip through the cracks" of the criminal justice system. These data will provide critical information to our partners on how SANE-SART programs can improve their outreach to adolescent sexual assault victims.
|
