Group helps victims of sex abuse

By Mike Marino
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — A new group in Cibola County is fighting for the rights of victims of sexual abuse.

The group is called “Victims Needs Crystallized,” named in honor of Crystal LaPierre, a 12-year-old girl who was brutally raped and murdered in 1993 in Cibola County. The murder began at a party she was attending with adults older than she was. She left the party with them and was raped, stabbed, strangled and drowned. After that, her body was set on fire and found later in Cold Water Canyon.

Kristina L. Faught-Hollar, senior trial attorney with the 13th District Judicial Attorney’s Office is one of the active participants in getting momentum built for the group, and in her career she’s seen a lot of victims. “Crystal was one of those children that fell through the cracks in the system. We want to help seal up those cracks,” she said.

The mission statement of the group is to provide support and service bases to enable victims of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse to stop the cycle of violence by means of support and education provided by community resources. The program is designed for spouses and children, as well as for senior citizens and mentally disabled citizens who are victims of domestic violence and abuse.

District Attorney Lemuel Martinez, along with his chief deputy, is working to create a specialized victims unit to address domestic violence in all three of the counties in the 13th Judicial District which includes Cibola County, Valencia County and Sandoval County. The plan is to have a senior trial attorney in each of those counties to work closely on these issues.

“There are victims advocacy groups in Sandoval and Valencia County already, the Sandoval County group has been up and running for awhile and are very organized, and Valencia County is just starting up. I saw that we didn’t have a group like that here in Cibola County and would probably be a good idea if we started one too. We have a need here, and believe it or not, we have a lot of homeless children in the community,” Hollar said.

The children are generally unsupervised and invisible to the community because they float from home to home of friends. Sometimes they get in with older kids living on their own and develop some bad habits such as drinking or drug use and on occasion, incidents of sexual abuse occur. Recognizing the problem, Hollar spoke with Sally Sanchez and Joyce Grant from Roberta’s Place to combine the efforts of all aspects of the community, including law enforcement, mental health providers, and the faith-based community to meet physical, mental and spiritual needs of victims of domestic violence, sexual assaults, and child abuse in a multipronged approach.

The need for social workers to supervise these people is great, and the community has a number of social workers working on masters degrees who have already had training and education, so if they can go out with law enforcement at the outset of an incident, they can start working on the problem immediately. One of the areas of concern is the need for a “safe house” for children to be interviewed once they disclose incidents of sexual or physical abuse. When the interview process is handled now in these cases, all parties have to go to Albuquerque. Roberta’s Place has offered a physical location for counselors to meet with the victims at their location.

There is 24-hour local hotline available to call to make referrals so if someone doesn’t want to go through law enforcement, they can still get the referral or the counselor and other help they need or help for someone they know is a victim of these crimes. The Hotline number is (505) 287-7724. The next meeting is Thursday, Sept. 6, at 11:30 a.m. at Roberta’s Place, and there is a need for more community members to participate from all walks of life, including former victims of these types of crimes to help form a Victims Impact Panel.

To join in the effort: (505) 285-4627 or call Roberta’s Place, (505) 287-7200.