Guard victims’ rights

Another election season has come and gone. A voice which has yet to be heard in the form of a ballot initiative is that of a constitutional amendment for victims’ rights.

Victims/survivors deserve to have enforceable victims’ rights. Victims deserve to have their rights protected no less vigorously than a defendant’s. No one is asking for defendants to have “less” protection. Thirty-five other states have state constitutional amendments providing victims’ rights that have standing. In good ol’ Arkansas terms, standing means ” a dog in the hunt.”

Victims are often treated as a piece of evidence or a witness whose credibility gets to be questioned with little to no protections on how far those questions may reach. Victims are often the people unofficially “put on trial” since the rights to respect, dignity, and privacy lack constitutional enforcement. Many victims have lost their loved one(s) forever and many victims have lost their physical, financial, social, emotional, and spiritual lives as they knew them before the crime.

In the decade since being “victimized,” I have spent eight of those years voluntarily helping victims of crime. I need help. The victims of our state deserve to have their fellow citizens step forward by collecting signatures for a ballot initiative providing enforceable victims’ rights, or emailing their legislator asking for a ballot initiative providing enforceable victims’ rights.

Christmas season of 2019, I was on the phone with a dad whose son’s murder case never reached a trial due to the right to speedy trial being violated. Victims deserve the right to a speedy trial. May we all gather together to ask our elected officials and ourselves when the victims of Arkansas will deserve to have a “dog in the hunt” and be treated legally with respect and dignity.

LAURA ABBOTT Cabot

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http://www.arkansasonline.com/brummett