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Looking Back, Moving Forward: A Guidebook for Communities Responding to Sexual Assault

NCJ Number
146546
Date Published
1993
Length
400 pages
Annotation
This manual provides information and guidelines intended to aid communities in creating a comprehensive, interagency, and community response plan that enhances the treatment of sexual assault victims and encourages greater reporting of these serious criminal assaults.
Abstract
The guidelines were developed with the input from a multidisciplinary group of 36 national experts as well as the project's co-sponsors: the National Victim Center, the American Prosecutors Research Institute, and Police Foundation. In addition, the Sexual Assault Interagency Council in Snohomish County (Wash.) reviewed and tested the manual's final draft by developing a community sexual assault response protocol. Individual sections focus on the establishment of an effective interagency council, the development of an interagency protocol, victim-centered approaches to law enforcement, prosecution as a component of victim-centered case management, the role of victim service providers, victim medical services, and implementation issues. Figures, checklists, sample documents, and appended chart, discussions of rape-related post-traumatic stress disorder, HIV/AIDS and victims, and reports about rape in the United States