Feds ask Crime Victims Center for assistanceby Dick PetersonPublic Relations A few days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered his director of the Office of Victims of Crime (OVC) to come up with a cost estimate for federally mandated mental health counseling and family assistance for victims of the four disasters. A daunting task. Unprecedented. Thousands killed and missing. Families decimated. The cost would be astronomical. Where to turn? One place the OVC turned to was MUSC’s National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center. “We have good relations with the OVC,” said National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center director Dean Kilpatrick, Ph.D. The federal Office of Victims of Crime is responsible for providing crime victims with compensation and assistance to victims of terrorists worldwide. “In the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, OVC set up an excellent information system for the family members of the bombing victims and provided funding for travel, mental health counseling and other needs. Last year OVC provided us with a research grant to help them evaluate utilization of these services by family members as well as their satisfaction with the services and how they might be approved.” “We found that most of these OVC services were viewed as quite helpful by Pan Am 103 family members,” Kilpatrick said. He also said that OVC’s experience with providing services in the Pan Am 103 case is directly relevant to designing and providing similar services to victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “OVC asked our help specifically in estimating the amount and costs of mental health and victims assistance services. They had to rapidly come up with how much money this would cost. Although no one knows at this point what the total cost will be, we were pleased that we could help the OVC come up with a reasonable estimate.” He said that the OVC has done a magnificent job of dealing with the overwhelming task to come up with a dollar estimate of what is required to comply with victims rights laws. “If we begin with categorizing the types of people who were affected, we realize that not everyone was affected equally, nor will everyone require the same services. Just looking at families, if we figure an average of three family members for each of 7,000 people killed, that’s 21,000 who will require services. And that’s just families. It’s not the rescue workers. It’s not the observers.” Further complicating the estimate is that many of the victims are not U.S. citizens and were here from as many as 60 countries. Kilpatrick said that commonly when there is a death in a family, people
are very supportive. They bring food, and they care. But two to three weeks
later things are still not back to normal and they still need help. “Everybody
wants to help for the short term, but we have to be prepared to offer help
for the long term.”
Federally mandated core rights for the victims include continual notification of investigations and trials, the right to be present for hearings, the right to express thoughts at a trial, restitution from the perpetrator for loss suffered, and compensation for mental health counseling, funeral arrangements, lost wages, and physical injuries. He said it’s been 12 years since the Pan Am flight exploded over Lockerbie, and people are still suffering from the psychological effects. “We’ve been viewed by the Justice Department as major resources for crime victims mental health issues,” Kilpatrick said. He said that Connie Best, Ph.D., Ben Saunders, Ph.D., Heidi Resnick, Ph.D., are all well known in the Department of Justice for their work in crime and disaster victim counseling. Opening a Department of Justice handbook, entitled “New Directions from
the Field, Victim's Rights and Services for the 20th Century.” Kilpatrick
pointed out a chapter detailing the work the MUSC Crime Victims Research
and Treatment Center has done.
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