New victims services group needs volunteers
She was 17 and shaking, afraid of what was ahead of her, not knowing how any of it worked, not having a hand to hold or to guide her.
“I remember being terrified of what was going on,” Racheal Gonzales said of those harrowing days in 1987 when she took the witness stand in an Albuquerque courtroom and testified that her father had repeatedly raped her at knifepoint, beginning when she was 10. “I was afraid to ask any questions. No one ever sat in the courtroom with me. No one was there to tell me, hey, don’t worry, you’ll get
through this.”
After her father was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison, no one was there to tell her when he was freed after serving about half of that time under state good time laws.
“I learned all that the hard way,” she said. “I learned all that myself.”
So perhaps it should be no surprise that, when newly elected District Attorney Raúl Torrez began talking about a program he had in mind to improve the way his office deals with victims of violent crime, Gonzales was the first to sign up to volunteer.
“I’m excited,” she said of the new Victims Services Alliance, which Torrez announced during a news conference Wednesday on the steps of Bernalillo County Courthouse. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to bring together people with hundreds of years of experience combined to give this community what it needs.”
The Second Judicial District, which encompasses Bernalillo County, has employed victim advocates since 1984 when a tireless and compassionate office worker named Sandy Dietz launched the Victim Impact Program, the first of its kind in New Mexico.
Dietz had no model to follow, no training manual, only a desire to treat those whose lives were devastated by violence with dignity and support.
But as the years have rolled along, the program has struggled without enough staff in a district that has seen reductions in budgets and increases in the numbers of murders, rapes, domestic violence and other violent crimes.
The new Victims Services Alliance will supplement the office’s paid staff with screened and trained volunteers, many of whom already work with victims.
The program is patterned after the lauded Pima County Attorney’s Victim Services Division, established in 1975 in Tucson, Ariz. It was the first in the nation to provide comprehensive assistance to crime victims and today offers more than 25 staff plus 120 volunteers who are on call 24 hours a day to guide victims from crime scene to courtroom.
Among advocacy groups in Bernalillo County that have signed on to be part of the new alliance are Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Resource Center for Victims of Violent Death. Both already deploy seasoned advocates to connect with victims and their families to help them navigate the system and support them throughout.
Under the Alliance, these advocates will be given space in the DA’s office to work more closely with the prosecution team and take the load off paid advocates, all while offering their own years of experience and compassion.
Gonzales is not connected to any of the local advocacy groups, but she has the requisite experience and compassion to help victims. Because she was one. If her name sounds familiar, it’s because she has appeared several times in this column, bravely recounting how she survived her years of sexual assault, then worked toward making it less likely that others would be re-victimized like her after their perpetrator is tried, convicted and freed again.
Racheal’s Law, which became law in 2016, allows no-contact orders to be granted for any length of time, including permanently, as part of a rapist’s sentencing or after the offender’s release from prison. It also keeps survivors from having to face their abusers again by permitting them to be represented by attorneys rather than be present themselves at hearings on the orders.
Becoming a volunteer, she said, helps her continue to help other victims, especially young victims of sexual assault.
“I understand the feelings of those children going through that trauma,” she said. “I have walked in those shoes.”
With Gonzales and others like her involved in this new and needed endeavor, perhaps more of those victims will no longer have to walk alone.