The Hanover Police Department will train its staff and other members of the community this summer in the “You Have Options Program,” a sexual assault reporting program that aims to increase the number of sexual assault cases reported through a survivor-focused approach.
The You Have Options Program establishes uniform law enforcement options for sexual assault reporting and best practice law enforcement strategies to assist in the identification and documentation of sexual offenders.
The training has three goals, captain of the Hanover detective division Eric Bates said. The first is to increase the reporting of sexual assaults and break down the barriers that prevent people from reporting, which are frequently emotional. The second is to identify the assailants of sexual assault so they can be prosecuted, and the third is to reduce the incidence of sexual assault on the whole.
“The program is victim centered, but offender focused,” Hanover police chief Charlie Dennis said. “It is focusing on serial sexual predators.”
Over 95 percent of sexual offenses are committed by a sexual predator, Dennis said. By providing victims with options, the Hanover Police Department eventually hopes to increase reporting, by which they can gain more information about serial sexual predators.
Bates has been trained in the program’s protocol and will be officiating the police department training, in addition to that of College staff including Safety and Security officers, deans, independent investigators that work with the College judiciary process, firefighters and local advocacy agencies such as WISE.
The course he is putting together will take approximately eight hours to complete. The police department hopes to continue training the community through more classes at a later point. The class will be held on the College’s campus, since there are classroom spaces available for large groups of people.
Bates said many of the Hanover Police Department’s practices already fall in line with the training, although they are not yet officially certified, which is the final goal.
“Out of 20 [You Have Options] elements, there are 15 to 17 I feel confident we have already implemented,” Bates said.
These elements include working hand-in-hand with local advocacy groups, encouraging survivors to have a representative guide them through the process, making sure survivors knows their options and never pushing survivors to go forward with prosecution if it is not their goal.
He said he hopes the department will have an easy transition implementing the program because of its existing practices.
Bates said that the most challenging obstacle to successful implementation is training the public. He said that since the jury pool for criminal sexual assault cases comes from all of Grafton County, not just Hanover, it is important that the larger community has the same background and knowledge.
“We are starting our training internally and then breaking off into different community groups,” Dennis said.
Bates said even if other parts of the community do not become officially certified, it is good that they will still have the same knowledge and be on the same page.
Grafton County attorney Lara Saffo and her office have also been working to increase knowledge about sexual assault in the community. They participate in as many sexual assault related events in the county as possible, she said, such as the first Summit on Sexual Assault, held on campus last July. They also participate in the Upper Valley’s sexual assault research team.
The Hanover Police first heard about the training when Dennis attended the College’s Summit on Sexual assault last summer. Dennis asked speaker and forensic expert on sexual assault David Lisak what the best sexual assault training program was out there was. Lisak directed him to You Have Options.
The idea for the program originated in Ashland, Oregon, around 2009, when detective Carrie Hull decided that there needed to be change made in how police interact with sexual assault cases, especially since they are underreported. She collaborated with partners in the community to research why survivors do not report crimes and why they sometimes drop investigations partway through the process. They also looked at best practices for police while interviewing victims and conducting operations, assistant director of student support and intervention for confidential advising at Southern Oregon University Angela Fleischer, a founding board member of the program, said.
Ultimately, they found that survivors do not want to be catapulted into the judicial process before they understand more about it, and that they want more choices, she said.
Fleischer, who previously managed victim services to youth in the county, was part of the community team who conducted research for the eventual program. At Southern Oregon University, the community program and another on-campus program geared towards college campus administrators called Campus Choice have teamed up to significantly increase the amount of sexual assaults reported in the community, she said.
“If students trust their system, they will report,” Fleischer said.
Fleischer thinks it is important that in college towns, there is both a campus judicial process as well as a legal one handled by the police department.
“Both campus and law enforcement do victims a disservice by not working together,” she said. “There is so much growth by the two entities working together.”
Bates recognizes the need for coordination as well. He said since the College has a very high influence in Hanover, communicating with the College is important to handle cases as effectively as possible. Dennis added that more than 90 percent sexual assault cases reported in Hanover are Dartmouth-related.
Judicial affairs director Leigh Remy said she is impressed by the cooperation between the Hanover Police Department and the county attorney’s office in tackling this issue.
“They are incredibly dedicated to the victim-centered approach,” she said. “They are committed to making sure men and women have info so can make a choice themselves.”
For example, they make sure survivors have accurate information on the importance of evidence collection even without a police report, what it is like to participate in a police report and on what it is like to serve as a witness in a criminal trial.
Bates has worked with different resources and individuals at the College, such as with Remy and with Title IX coordinator and Clery Act compliance officer Heather Lindkvist so that if a student does come forward, they can be offered the option to meet Bates in person and discuss potential routes forwards with him. Many students have accepted this offer, Remy said.
She said that a group from the community meets regularly to talk about other ways the College can cooperate with the greater community in this process. If a person has already been interviewed by the Hanover Police, for example, the College can use that interview transcript with the permission of the survivor, so that he or she does not have to report their experiences twice.
Remy said that the You Have Options Program is not just about how the police will respond, but “marshaling a community response that is both coordinated and consistent,” she said.
“You don’t want wildly different viewpoints, training and information,” she said.