By Seth Romsa
Staff Writer
New equipment and training coming for sexual abuse cases
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WORLAND – A grant has been awarded to the Washakie County Victim/Witness Coordinator Office for a new camera specialized to help show more physical evidence with sexual abuse cases.
According to Washakie County Victim/Witness Coordinator Bob Vines, the Department of Justice Office of Violence against Women Grant of just under $62,000, will be for the new camera equipment and for the training of 16 individuals to learn how to use the equipment and software.
Most likely the training and equipment will arrive in January, but Vines will not have a specific timetable until it is determined how to spend the grant money after a conference in the coming weeks.
This new special camera, a piece of Secure Digital Forensic Imaging (SDFI) equipment, will be able to identify bruising and damage underneath the skin that is not visible to the naked eye.
“We fully intend that this will increase our conviction rates, specifically in domestic violence,” Vines said. “In my understanding, we are the third community in the state to have this … and having it here will be important for this corner of the state so that victims do not have to travel to Gillette or Natrona County to be examined in the middle of the night.”
According to Vines, the Worland Police Department, Washakie Medical Center and Cloud Peak Counseling are important partners in this new endeavor with the new equipment.
Along with the ability to help see bruising and strangulation and being able to help strangulation, sexual assault and child abuse cases, the equipment will allow investigations to see bodily fluids that are typically hard to notice with normal equipment.
This equipment will help future cases come up with more solid evidence in cases, to help negate the argument of “he said, she said” in these particular cases.
“These are the three most types of crimes that this equipment will affect the most,” Vines said. “I believe if we had this equipment in recent years, then a couple of cases may have gone a different way.”
CHILDREN’S GRANT
The Washakie County Child Protection Team, for which Vines is a member, also was approved for a second year of funding from the Wyoming Children’s Trust Fund.
Entering in to the second year of the WCTF Grant, Vines is looking to help set up a program to help recognize children with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE).
The first year of the grant was spent towards spreading awareness of what programs the county and schools were looking at in order to get the word out about ACE. The awareness project included the Big Horn Basin Children’s Summit that was held last June 12 and 13 at the Worland Community Center and Worland Middle School.
This summit was attended by 142 people from around the state, and laid the groundwork for year two of the grant.
Vines was happy to say that Jeanna Butterfield and Healthy Frontiers will partner with the Child Protection Team to provide equine-assisted psychotherapy (EAP) for children with high ACEs.
The goal for this second year is to identify the kids within the Worland community that would benefit from the services that are being put in place with year two of the grant.
The third year of this grant will be focused on sustainability of the program, and ensuring that it will be able to provide EAP to the children who need this help because of ACEs, children will primarily be referred through the Department of Family Services, as well as through counselors who believe the children will need the equine-assisted psychotherapy.
