Upcoming Radio Show – Crime Victims Who Survived and Triumphed (Part 1)

Interviews with:

* Art Hanson, Nation of Neighbors (www.nationofneighbors.com)
* Vicki Polin, The Awareness Center, International Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse and Assault (www.theawarenesscenter.org)
* Polly Franks, the Franks Foundation (www.franksfoundation.org)
* Lavoyed Hudgins, Public Service Employees Association (www.psea.com)

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*Air Date: December 24, 2009 @8pm eastern*
Also Available On Demand @ VoiceAmerica.com
http://tinyurl.com/PreventCrime

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: SUSAN BARTELSTONE, 718-225-9284

Crime Victims who’ve overcome and thrived
and are now helping others do the same.

NEW YORK-December 21, 2009: It’s hard to think about crime and violence during this month of peace and renewal; but hang in there with me because I’m going to introduce you to four courageous people who want to tell you their stories. These are people who’ve been victims of terrible crimes, like home invasion, sexual assault, the abuse of a child or the murder of a parent, but went on to heal and are now helping others do the same.

So get comfortable in your chair, grab something warm to drink, and stick with me for a while.

First up, you’ll hear from Art Hanson, who, after having his home burglarized, started a neighborhood watch program and develop ed online tools to help communities fight crime — which he gives away for free.

Next, meet Vicki Polin, a child abuse and sexual assault survivor. As a result, she became a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor specializing in sexual trauma and has been helping others for more than 25 years. She founded The Awareness Center of the International Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse; Assault, which helps Jewish survivors of sexual violence and those who support them.

Then I’ve got Polly Franks, the mother of two daughters who were molested by a neighbor. She became a private investigator for the sole purpose of bringing him to justice — and he’s now serving life. And, she did it all while wheelchair bound. She founded the Franks Foundation to help victims of childhood sexual abuse.

And last, you’ll hear from Lavoyed Hudgins who became a caring police officer after witnessing the murder of this father during a botched robbery. Instead of being bitter, he’s tried to help kids in trouble before they became killers.

Let my guests inspire you like they’ve inspired me on this special, special night.

The Martinsburg Journal (Martinsburg, WV) was kind enough to give us a mention yesterday.  I wanted to respond to a couple of reader comments about the article but was limited by the Journal’s 1000 character limit.

Anonymity

Our goal is not to provide users absolute anonymity or shield them from direct interaction with law enforcement. In fact, that would be counterproductive. Any good working relationship depends on mutual trust and it’s impossible to establish trust when one party is anonymous. That said, the internet does offer a certain degree of anonymity (though not absolute, as mentioned by the previous posters) and that means we have to decide if we trust a user posting an anonymous report on Nation of Neighbors enough to pass that report on to our members and law enforcement. Our report screening algorithm does just that.

We do offer a certain degree of anonymity in regard to other community members. We want members – and ‘anonymous’ users – to be able to report crime or suspicious activity without fearing reprisal so we don’t publish identifying information with reports – either to members or to the general public. We also don’t save IP data with reports and we randomize or offset the location as shown on our maps by a distance determined by report type and local density. We have had many instances where a report was sent directly to local law enforcement but never published because of the sensitive nature of what was reported or because the report could have hampered an ongoing or potential investigation.

NoN vs. 1984

Much of the infrequent criticism we receive involves a reference to Big Brother.

The watching done by ‘Big Brother’ in George Orwell’s 1984 is done to enforce conformity and silence political dissent. We’ve worked very hard to keep politics and mundane ‘my neighbor’s grass is too long’ issues out of Watch Jefferson County and we’ll continue to do so with Nation of Neighbors.