Women Advocacy & Policy Change

I am a Women's Advocate and member of Af3irm San Diego, a transnational feminist women’s organization which focuses on immigration, trafficking, prisoner advocacy, domestic violence and militarization in every form including police and military sexual assault. 

I am hoping to fund my own initiative towards research and education on positive re-entry programs for formerly incarcerated mothers and women as well as develop public policy for law enforcement accountability.

Why the need; 

Advocacy for Victims of Sexual Assault in the (IN)Justice system (from the Analysis of Successfully Investigating Acquaintance Sexual Assault : A National Training Manual for Law Enforcement from the The National Center for Women and Policing) 

In a recent study of the factors that influence a prosecutor's decision to charge in a sexual assault case, researchers validated what many experienced investigators already know - that charging decisions are primarily if not exclusively determined by the victim's perceived character and her behavior at the time of the assault.

Results of this study revealed that:

Prosecutors were over 5 times more likely to file charges if there were no questions about the victim's moral character.
They were also nearly 2.5 times more likely to charge if the victim did not engage in any risky behavior at the time of the assault.
Finally, prosecutors were almost 4 times as likely to file charges if the victim reported her sexual assault to police within one hour.
Clearly, prosecutors - like other members of the criminal justice system and the rest of society - base their judgments of sexual assault victims and cases on the stereotypes of "real rape" that were discussed in the previous chapter on dynamics.

In other words, the judgment of a rape case rests on the victim rather than the offender, based on her background and reputation, her relationship to the accused, and her behavior at the time of the incident.
In this particular study, none of the evidence factors or other measures of case seriousness affected the prosecutor's decision to charge or not.

Police Family Violence Fact Sheet (from the National Center for Women & Policing)

Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10% of families in the general population. A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24% , indicating that domestic violence is 2-4 times more common among police families than American families in general. A police department that has domestic violence offenders among its ranks will not effectively serve and protect victims in the community.Moreover, when officers know of domestic violence committed by their colleagues and seek to protect them by covering it up, they expose the department to civil liability.

Unique Vulnerability

Domestic violence is always a terrible crime, but victims of a police officer are particularly vulnerable because the officer who is abusing them:

Has a gun,
Knows the location of battered women's shelters, and
Knows how to manipulate the system to avoid penalty and/or shift Blame to the victim.
Victims often fear calling the police, because they know the case will be handled by officers who are colleagues and/or friends of their abuser. Victims of police family violence typically fear that the responding officers will side with their abuser and fail to properly investigate or document the crime.

Failure of Departmental Policies

These suspicions are well founded, as most departments across the country typically handle cases of police family violence informally, often without an official report, investigation, or even check of the victim's safety. This "informal" method is often in direct contradiction to legislative mandates and departmental policies regarding the appropriate response to domestic violence crimes. 

The most common discipline imposed for a sustained allegation of domestic violence was counseling.
Only 19% of the departments indicated that officers would be terminated after a second sustained allegation of domestic violence.
Although the International Association of Chiefs of Police have prepared a model policy on police officer-involved domestic violence, there is no evidence that police departments across the country are doing anything other than simply including the policy in their manuals.

Violent Police Officers Receive "Exceedingly Light Discipline"

The reality is that even officers who are found guilty of domestic violence are unlikely to be fired, arrested, or referred for prosecution, raising concern that those who are tasked with enforcing the law cannot effectively police themselves.

Women and Incarceration

Why the need...
From ACLU's "Women in Prison"
In the last 25 years, the number of women and girls caught in the criminal justice system has skyrocketed; many have been swept up in the "war on drugs" and subject to increasingly punitive sentencing policies for non-violent offenders. There are now more than 200,000 women behind bars and more than one million on probation and parole. Many of these women struggle with substance abuse, mental illness, and histories of physical and sexual abuse. Few get the services they need. The toll on women, girls, and their families is devastating.

From Center for American Progress' "Rethinking How to Address the Growing Female Prison Population"
The female prison population in the United States continues to grow at an alarming rate. Specifically, from 2000 through 2009, the number of women incarcerated in state or federal prisons rose by 21.6 percent, compared to just a 15.6 percent increase for men. While the number of incarcerated men still far exceeds the number of incarcerated women, which was 205,000 women overall in prison or jail in 2010, the growth of the female prison population has a distinct effect on families and communities that are torn apart as a result.
What’s more, sexual violence, drug dependence, and poverty are all strongly correlated with women’s incarceration, meaning that our society still chooses to punish instead of heal—we lock women up instead of providing services that could help them live healthy, secure, and productive lives. Moreover, women of color experience all of these factors at disproportionate rates, which means that they also have a greater likelihood of becoming entangled in the criminal justice system.
A recent report released by the Sentencing Project, however, finds that there has been a dramatic shift in racial disparities among women inmates over the past decade. While black women were incarcerated in state and federal prisons at six times the rate of white women in 2000, this ratio declined by 53 percent, or about 2.8-to-1, by 2009. The disparity between Hispanic and non-Hispanic white women declined by 16.7 percent over the same period.
There are likely many factors at play in this laudable shift in racial disparities among incarcerated women—including but not limited to changes in law enforcement and sentencing practices and policies, or the involvement of women in crime—but the same report suggests that the reduced number of drug incarcerations is the likely explanation for a significant portion of the trend. That fact alone should be lifted up—because African American women were disproportionately affected by drug offense incarceration, any policies that result in a substantial reduction in these types of offenses would also disproportionately benefit them.
More resources
Sentencing Project's
INCARCERATED WOMEN

2009 Road to My Calling

My name is Cathy Mendonca and I volunteer as an English tutor and family mentor with the International Rescue Committee in San Diego, am a crazy art teacher with A Reason to Survive, and if that isn't enough I'm a Peer Educator through a company called South Bay Community Services.

Through the International Rescue Committee (I.R.C), I had the honor of working with a courageous yet serene Ugandan mother of four. Overcoming formidable disaster with only faith blessing her with the endurance to survive, she relocated to the United States for a chance at a better life for both her and her family. As her tutor, I am blessed having the opportunity help her in any way i possibly can. I view her, as a survivor, and the journey which she will travel beginning her new life here in the United States, will be behind her every step of the way. I first had an interest in mentoring while training to become a S.A.R.T Advocate with at the Center for Community Solutions. There, Sexual Assault Response Team Advocate Volunteers work as an interdisciplinary team with emergency room staff, Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) and police officers to respond to survivors in the hospital or at designated S.A.R.T forensic labs. The volunteer's role includes providing crisis intervention to the survivor and to any non-offending family member(s) about sexual assault, counseling during evidence collection and providing information about social, health and legal resources.

With South Bay's WIA (Workforce Investment Act) EXCEL Program, job readiness classes are offered to clients so they are prepared to face the job market. I am honored to have played the part in improving the lives of youth by inspiring them to desire meaningful employment and preparing for the career they can accomplish.
From a refugee's faith to a foster youth's dream to a woman's ability to heal, I am very passionate about what I do and why I help. Life is all about go forward after tragedy for that's the only time we will find how strong we really are. We must recognize the value in helping one another for one's tragedy affects all and the road to resilience starts with believing that you can.