Crime victims’ rights advocate

Dee Dee Kouns, a longtime crime victims’ rights advocate whose work changed the state constitution and contributed to the passage of Measure 11, died Thursday. She was 89. Kouns died from an apparent heart attack in her Charbonneau home, her son Kevin Kouns said.

Kouns and her husband Bob founded Crime Victims United in 1983 after their 26-year-old daughter was murdered. During decades of advocacy, they fought to revise criminal law and the state constitution to enshrine rights for victims of violent crimes. They also supported the passage of Measure 11, which established mandatory minimum sentences for violent crimes and required juveniles above the age of 15 be tried as adults for those crimes.

By the time Dee Dee and Bob Kouns retired in 1997, they were known as the parents of the victims’ right movement in Oregon, said Crime Victims United President Steve Doell.

“We had no crime victims’ rights until the Kouns came along,” he said.

In 1986, they pushed for a measure that would put victims’ rights during criminal trials into state law. The initiative, Measure 10, barred excluding crime victims from the courtroom during a trial and established their roles in trial scheduling, sentencing and parole.

In 1994, the Kouns supported the passage of Measure 11, which created some of the longest mandatory minimum sentences in the country.