February 2017 Meeting Minutes:

YVI February 2017

Call to Order: 3:10pm

Present: Karen, Barb, Jonathan, Shawn, Mike, Lika

Old Business:

1) Tabled for further discussion at a later time:

Intervention & Prevention of children not in school dying or seriously compromised in health - DSH is not always efficient, and is too small to come up with a uniform plan to take proper action.

2) Study for the purpose of making educational curriculum

A) Trauma Informed Care – in process for use within prison system

B) Childhood abuse trauma causing brain disorder

Both are available to be studied, though the Trauma Informed Care may take someone going to prison system to see if we can get a hold of what they have, to modify it for the court system to be able to teach the attorneys and judges to learn about how childhood trauma is what brought them into the court system, as opposed to being a common or cold criminal.

The childhood trauma causing brain disorders has several resources online to study, and to bring to therapists, school counselors, shelters, etc. for better education on how to deal with these issues.

If we have people in DHS, DFC, teachers, etc. please get a hold of me, so we can set up a meeting to ensure that we have a wide enough group to be able to study and make the educational curriculum. Barb has offered to volunteer to be the editor of this curriculum, when it is up for availability.

3) Petition (state level) to ensure stiffer punishments and in-house therapy for 1st time offenders to have to take AND to be deemed low risk by the group leader before being released back into the community. Special accommodations include victims of female perpetrators.

Please see the current wording in a separate document, and give your ideas to better wording to make it worthy of making into a petition, ASAP.

New Business:

1) International Women’s Day will not be a YVI event.

Adjournment: 4:25pm

Issue 1: Need Volunteers for Study:

Trauma Informed Care – A packet for therapists, counselors, & general public:

Studies show that childhood trauma leads to brain anomalies, where proper development is hindered, altered, etc. and how therapists and group leaders can assess if a person has had abuse issues. It is used in prisons, to determine the root of prisoner behaviors.

Trauma informed care is grounded in and directed by a thorough understanding of the neurological, biological, psychological, and social effects of trauma and the prevalence of these experiences in persons who seek and receive mental health services.

Here is an article from a psychologist about how trauma affects behavior, trust issues, and how human relationships are also negatively affected into adulthood, so, the thing of being told, “You’re an adult, now”, is of absolutely no use, what so ever. It can take years to overcome a single trauma, depending on how bad the PTSD sets in.

We need to assign people to a group, to look more into this, to come up with an education packet to give to the legal system before incarceration, as we can learn from the Menendez brothers who killed their father for beating their mother, and threatening to kill her. They were tried as cold hearted killers, when it was trauma from domestic violence. Since the prison system already is putting this into place, and the lawyers, especially DA’s and Public Defenders, judges, and civilian therapy places that need to learn this process. 

If anyone knows any teachers who can help develop this, it would be great, but, we can put this together by brainstorming, but, everyone needs to be willing to do their part to learn about how this relates and how it will affect people. This needs attention.

Petition Needs Edits:

We, the undersigned citizens of Wisconsin, understands that sexual abuse by a teacher is damaging, and is just as if not more damaging to teenage boys, since the maturity and understanding of this type of relationship has negative consequences since it is assumed that all boys want sex from teachers. There are also few supports in place for the male children to get support, therapy, and long term help to get through the situation.

Even at that, those who perpetrate female children already do not get stiff enough sentencing, as described by those of us who work with sexual assault survivors, where a man was charged with a sexual assault on a child back in 2005, and in 2013, sexually assaulted his 4 year old son. He served 1.5 years, went to live with a friend in 2015, and sexually assaulted his friend’s 5 and 6 year old children. These children were threatened, forced to use sex toys on themselves and each other, then forced perform sex acts with him and with each other He was set to serve a life sentence, and only served 2 years, and his most recent victim is a 16 year old girl, who he strangled her during the rape, and is looking at 9 counts of felony charges. Although he was ordered to stay away from all minor children, since he took both male and female victims, he violated this grossly.

This is why we demand that upon the first arrest for sexual assaults on children must go through a 2-3 year in house therapy action for sex offenders to be let out into the public, upon being deemed low risk (not safe) by those in charge of the programs. If they do not complete this program in house, there is a great probability that they will not do it on their own, just to assault more child victims. This is NOT acceptable!