Newswise — Out of her own experience of being raped as a child, victimized by her own father, Marilyn van Derbur has devoted her life to making the public aware of how devastating and pervasive sexual crimes against children are. The former Miss America addressed the 10th Annual International Conference on Family Violence in San Diego, CA today, calling for greater commitment to identification and apprehension of perpetrators of sexual crimes.
Having spoken in more than 200 cities, and corresponded with more than 5,000 victims of sexual abuse, van Derbur tells many of their stories.
"Women who have been traumatized by rape put themselves into the stirrups and allow their bodies to be invaded again for one reason " to gather DNA to bring the rapist to justice. But, what they are not told is that the police are going to toss that rape kit on a pile and it will be forgotten," said van Derbur. "It costs about $500 to process a rape kit for DNA, but there's no money in the budget for it."
"We are fighting a war in Iraq, but here at home we don't have the money to process kits that would identify 10,000 rapists."
Nationwide there is a backlog of 540,000 DNA samples in criminal cases, 169,000 for sex crimes. Ms. Van Derbur cites a case in Denver where a rapist who could have been identified by DNA evidence broke into a home near where she lives and raped a 67-year-old grandmother and two 11-year-old twin girls. She also cites nationwide statistics that show that only 2% of women ever see their rapist punished, and that a rapist commits 8-16 crimes before ever being caught.
The damage done by this violence, much of it to children, is long-lasting, said van Derbur, who wrote a book about her own experiences and resulting disassociation as the result of incest by her father for several years from ages 5 to 18.
"Like red dye poured into a can of white paint, rape will color every aspect of their [victims'] lives," she said.
Van Derbur and Actress and Academy Award Nominee Angela Shelton, a former fashion model and filmmaker, received media awareness awards during the 10th International Conference on Family Violence in recognition of their advocacy on behalf of women and children victimized by sexual violence.
Shelton is creator of "Searching for Angela," a documentary in which she sought women with same name across the US and found that more than half of them had been raped, beaten or molested.
"I began the film as a joke, but it changed my life," said Shelton. During the Los Angeles screenwriter's strike, when she couldn't write scripts (and most of her friends got rich creating reality shows), Shelton spent her life savings and staked her home on the documentary. Even before the film was finished, it landed her on the Oprah show and prompted more than 50,000 women to email her.
Van Derbur's book has also prompted an outpouring from women. The therapist who presented the award to Ms. Van Derbur related how her client, Lisa, who had been sexually assaulted and tortured by her brother, reached out to Van Derbur when the therapist was on vacation. When Lisa could not sleep at night, van Derbur stayed in contact daily and offered to sit at the foot of her bed to offer protection. Later, in gratitude, Lisa wrote to van Derbur, saying, "I can't believe it. After all that has happened, I am so lucky to have such a stun-gun, pepper-spray toting maverick in my corner. You are the coolest beauty queen ever."
Both women received standing ovations from the crowd at the Town & Country Hotel in San Diego, where more than 1100 people gathered for the conference.
Sponsored by Alliant International University and the San Diego-based Family Violence and Sexual Assault Institute, the conference is one of the largest international gatherings on abuse and trauma and this year added special sessions to discuss trauma and preparedness for events such as Hurricane Katrina..
Attendees at the conference include researchers, academics, mental health workers and those on the front lines of trauma and abuse, working with child abuse, domestic violence, elder abuse and neglect, and trauma resulting from disasters. They came from places as far away as Norway, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Israel, Brazil, England, Argentina and Samoa.
For More InformationFamily Violence and Sexual Assault Institute: http://www.fvsai.org, (858) 623-2777 x403
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