 Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Stephanie O'Gorzelak and I work in the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues as the Senior Policy Advisor on Gender-Based Violence. I will be moderating today's very important discussion on changing how we respond to sexual assault. Before we begin, I would like everyone to understand the topic might involve graphic descriptions of sexual assault that may make people uncomfortable. Everything discussed should be to further our goal to establish best practices for law enforcement when it comes to responding to sexual assault. Worldwide, an estimated one in three women will be physically or sexually abused in her lifetime. In some countries, that rate is much higher. In few sexual assault cases are successfully prosecuted and the majority go unreported. We know that gender-based violence, including sexual assault, undermines women's empowerment economically, politically, and socially. Women and girls can navigate more freely in societies when not faced with the threat of assault. There has been a long-standing need to have more effective conversations about addressing sexual assault, but today's discussion is particularly timely. This past February, President Julius Madabaio of Sierra Leone declared sexual assault a national emergency. First Lady of Sierra Leone, Fatima Madabaio, is also involved in this campaign and both are making concerted efforts to change laws that criminalize various forms of gender-based violence. There are many aspects to how countries respond to sexual assault, from passing new laws to changing social norms, but today we will discuss best practices for law enforcement and the importance of building trust between police and the communities they serve. Before I introduce our panel, I would like to give a special welcome to all of our online viewers and viewing groups joining us from U.S. embassies and American spaces throughout the region. During the program, we want to hear from you, the viewer, about your thoughts on the discussion and your questions for our panel. So please use the chat space next to the video player to ask your questions. Now it is my pleasure to introduce today's panel. First joining us today from Dallas, Texas is Police Chief Loretta Hill. Chief Hill is the Police Commissioner for Public Safety and Security in the Dallas County Community College District. She also owns Hill and Hill Consulting Group, LLC, a company that helps law enforcement agencies build stronger teams and better relationships with communities. Thank you, Chief Hill, for joining us today. Next, I'd like to welcome Lieutenant Jordan Satinski, Deputy Director of the Montgomery County Police Department's Special Victims Investigations Division in Maryland. Lieutenant Satinski created the Police Department Sexual Assault Unit, founded the Sexual Assault Response Team, and created new methods for sexual assault evidence tracking. Good to have you here in our studio today, Lieutenant. Again, welcome to everyone. Now let's start the discussion. To start, I'd like to ask our panelists to define their understandings of sexual assault to help frame our discussion. Chief Hill, how would you define sexual assault from a legal standpoint? Thank you and good morning to everybody that's joining the conference. I'm excited and thrilled to be joining you today to discuss this critical topic. So in the United States, there is not one clear specific definition of what defines sexual assault. Each state has a legislative body, and that legislative body determines the definition of the criminal laws that apply to their state. So I'm in the state of Texas. Even though the definitions may be different, there's a lot of similarities. But again, each state defines their definition and their criminal prosecution, what qualifies for that by the state legislature. So in Texas, what defines sexual assault is a person intentionally or knowingly causes the penetration of an anus or a sexual organ of another person by any means without the person's consent. It also states if you cause the penetration of the mouth of another person by a sexual organ of the actor without the person's consent. So that is the definition. And when we have a child involved, which is also defined by that state in the state of Texas is anyone under the age of 18. So 17 and young is defined as a child in the state of Texas. And that makes the crime aggravated on the causing of the penetration of the anus or a sexual organ by a child. The cause or the penetration of the mouth of a child by a sexual organ by an actor or cause a sexual organ to come in contact with the child's mouth, anus or sexual organ. That will make it an aggravated sexual assault based on the age of the individual. So that's how it's defined here in Texas. And again, around the country, there's different definitions, but there are some commonalities. Thank you, Chief. Now I want to ask our viewing groups to write in the chat space how they define sexual assault. And we will read off some of your responses later during the discussion. Again, to our viewing groups, please let us know how you define sexual assault in your countries. And we will come back to that topic a bit later in the program. I know there are many different understandings of and definitions for sexual assault. Countries also have different judicial processes for dealing with sexual assault cases. Lieutenant Satinski, can you walk us through the judicial process in Maryland? Sure. Stephanie, thank you very much for having me here today and everybody else who's out there. There are several different points where victims can actually enter the criminal justice system and report their crime. Sometimes it will be through the police station, other times it's via the hospital or in cases of a child. It'll be their school system or a counselor. At that point, the patrol officer would respond and that patrol officer would come and confirm that the crime occurred, making sure that, much like Chief Hill talked about, whatever occurred to this child or occurred to this adult fit into the construct of the crime for that state. From there, the patrol officer once confirmed would contact an investigator who specializes in sexual assault response. That investigator has been trained in certain tactics and how to interview a victim, how to make sure that they keep their body language in a certain way and ask open-ended questions to confirm the event. Once that occurs, they would transfer the victim to not only a victim advocate who could help the victim as working through the process of the sexual assault exam, but also a specially trained nurse who actually collects forensic evidence called a sexual assault nursing examiner who would take that individual, that victim to a specially hospital room to collect evidence, biological evidence, other blood evidence, pictures, and capture the victim's account of the event as well as get them assistance for the future. From there, the investigator would talk to that same nurse, that sexual assault nursing examiner after the exam, discuss with them what's going on, and then start to move the case forward. One of the things our investigator would then do is sit down with the victim, usually about 48 to 72 hours later, and have a nice long conversation with the victim about the event. And when I say nice, I mean it's in a controlled environment, in a not sterile but a controlled environment where the victim would feel more comfortable, and the victim has had a chance to reset from the event that just occurred. And this is what we call a trauma informed interview, where the investigator allows the victim to pretty much run the interview and give them the information, give the investigator the information they need to move the case forward. And from there, we'll take that information, search for suspects, search for witnesses, and eventually if we do find a suspect, move that suspect into an area where we can interview or interrogate them depending on where we are. And then if they meet all the criteria, charge that person and affect an arrest. At that time, in some states, many officers would confer with their state's attorneys or prosecutors prior to charging, and we do do that on some occasions, but in clear-cut cases, we would charge and then refer the case over to the prosecutor for the judicial process, where the prosecutor, the detective, the victim advocate, and the victim would all meet at some point, decide the best part for this case and how to move it forward, and then the prosecutor would take it forward for trial. And if found guilty or the suspect pleads guilty, move that into a sentencing phase where the trial effect, the judicial folks would then sentence that individual. And in Maryland, for our felony-level sexual assault cases, the lowest one is 10 years and the highest one is life. And just like Chief Hill said, each state kind of has a myriad of sexual assault laws, and that's what we have in the state of Maryland. That's ours running in that cabinet. Thank you, Lieutenant. I hope that was useful knowledge for those who might have questions about how the judicial process works in Maryland. Now, at this point, we want to get your questions and thoughts about what we've discussed so far and other questions you might have. Please ask them in the chat space next to the video player, and we will try to get to as many questions as possible. Let's go first to our group in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Before we get your questions, Freetown, I want to go back to the beginning of the program when Chief Hill shared with us how the term sexual assault is defined in Texas. Can you share your definition of sexual assault with us? I believe we have with us today Justice Bintu Alhadi, who will speak for the group. Justice Alhadi? Hello. Good afternoon. Basically, in Sierra Leone, we don't have a definition. We don't say sexual assault. It's not an offense in itself, because it's a sexual nature. It includes a wide range, a wide range of unwanted sexual contexts, such as rape. So, there are various offenses that would come under the sexual offenses, such as rape, forced renal, or anal over-pensification, forced sexual intercourse, inappropriate touching, forced kissing, child molestation, exhibitionism, aeurysm, obscene phone calls, torture of a victim in a sexual manner, and things like that. The perpetrator causes a submission of the victim that is reasonably calculated to cause submission against the victim's will. So, basically, we don't have an offense to say it's sexual offense. It's sexual assault, but sexual assault refers to a number of sexual offenses. That's how we define it in Sierra Leone. That comes under sexual offenses Act 12 of 2012. Thank you very much. Thank you. Loretta and Jordan, do you have any thoughts you would like to share about this? Yeah, real quick. One thought. We do have a lot of the, as she mentioned, there's a lot of different ways you can commit criminal offense. And so, performance of a child will have different categories. We have a pornography area. So, a lot of the things that she, that were covered, we do cover those somewhere else in the law, but specifically under sexual assault. It only defines, in Texas, those specific areas of penetration, touching of the anus, unwanted, basically unwanted sex. And it used to be called rape, but the term changed more broadly to sexual assault as opposed to just the term rape. So, we do have in other places within our law system, within our system of laws where we also cover contact, you know, offensive and provocative contact. It's covered under another part of our penal code. So, we don't have a specific all-encapsulating, but we do have laws that cover a lot of the things that she touched. Thank you, Chief. Lieutenant, anything else? Sure. So, in Maryland, we actually have it somewhat set up like Sierra Leone, where it's siloed to where we have the major rape offenses in one category, sex assaults in another category, and sexual contacts. And they filter out through there. And I think this just illustrates the point Chief Hill made earlier, that our states create their state-run laws much differently and have different definitions, but the overall is the same. So, what I would look for in Texas versus what I would look for in Maryland, I'd have to go different ways, but I would eventually find it. Thank you. Now, let's get to questions. Freetown, what are some of your other questions? Would you mind standing up, please? Yeah, actually, they can see from there. Thank you. I noticed that in their submission that sexual assault is not necessarily a crime. And so my question is, at what point does it constitute, why is it called an assault? It's not a crime. Because I found that a bit unusual that it is not a crime, I think, until investigations have been done, and the fact that children do not have the capacity to consent to sexual crime. And yet, it is not treated as a crime as a sexual assault. That's what I want to clarify. Sure, we'll start with that, and then maybe we'll go back to Freetown for another question. So if I'm understanding correctly, the question was, when does sexual assault constitute a crime, and what are the specifics of sexual assault against children, and when does that constitute a crime, and maybe what are the different types of crimes? I don't know which of our panelists would like to take that first. Lieutenant? So for here in Maryland, we have to have, there is a force aspect to rape us for adults, so adults much like Texas, it is 18 years old and above. So there has to be a fear of force or threat of force to constitute a sexual assault or rape. That's part of the caveat. Unless the person is mentally incapacitated, a vulnerable adult, or an elder individual, that is for the adult side. For the child side, it's wildly different. For the child side, much like the person asking just said, just asked, the child does not want to have sex. So the construct is under 18 is for our juveniles. If the person who commits the crime has what we call carried custody, it actually changes, it adds a little bit more to the crime, it actually is a separate crime. And if that person has sexual contact or conducts a sexual act against the child, but is understood that the child does not have the capacity to give in the affirm, yes, that they're consenting to sex. So yes, that in and of itself would provide that, that's why we don't have that fear of force in there, because they can't provide that consent at that age. So that's for us in Maryland. Chief? Yeah, I would say it is the same thing in Texas, a child cannot consent. So it doesn't matter anybody under the age of 18. You cannot consent to this because someone older, the force action true enough, but a child cannot consent to this crime. So they're automatically a child is involved and they're under certain age. They're not, they don't have the ability to consent to it. So it automatically changes that into a child, an aggravated type of fence or child sexual assault as opposed to if it involves adults. So in our laws, a child can't consent to sex unless they're married, unless they're they have already by the courts deemed an adult meaning have legally court system and deemed themselves an adult. So or they are married, but outside of that, they cannot consent as a college juvenile as a child. Thank you, panelists. Let's go back to Freetown for one more question. And then we'll go to some of our other viewing groups. Can you come to the middle of Mexico? Yeah, my name is Mustafa tomorrow, and I'm the director of gender hospitalizing protocol. As a matter of fact, we as police do have a constitutional responsibility to prosecute offenders and specifically their sexual offenders. And what I have observed that has been acts nice and insurance. So that's kind of cause is when matters are investigated, there is the point of being sent to court, but compromises come in. That is here at the end of the day, you will get the perpetrator going to court. That compromise would have been entered into by both the perpetrator and the teacher. So how has it been overcome? So just to clarify, the question is about investigative processes. So when they settle before they go to court, when they settle before going to court, and is that something that happens in the US also? Thank you. Lieutenant, would you like to start? Sure. So, yes, and I think what we call here, we call them plea or plea deals. And those do occur for sexual assault and rape investigations or charges in the United States. And I can speak for Maryland specifically that they do, absolutely. And in some cases we do them, we try to do them more often than not as a reason not to put the victim back on the stand and not revictimize them. Because here in the States, the victims have to actually get up on the stand if we go to a full trial potentially. And because those who are accused have the right to confront their accusers under our Constitution. So putting that victim on the stand in front of that aggressor, if we don't have to do that, we won't. Especially if the defendant decides or the person charged decides that they have had enough, there's enough evidence against them to plead guilty. And we do, my investigators, do a great deal of work to try to make that happen to lessen the revictimization on our victims. And that's done through heavy investigative process, lots of evidence-based investigations. And then we put all that forth with the prosecutor who ultimately makes the decision. Chief Hill, anything to add from your perspective? Yes, I would also say that the, I would say a majority of cases, criminal cases in the United States are worked out through plea agreements. But that doesn't mean that the charges are dropped, the person doesn't face any responsibility. So in sexual assault cases, much like the lieutenant said, there's usually something worked out because we have to, we call it retraumatizing the victim. Because the victim, according to our Constitution, that says people that accuse the crimes have the right to face their accusers. And so when we put a sexual assault victim, a rape victim on the stand, we can be revictimizing them to go back through that trauma. If there is a way that we, the prosecutor, it's the prosecutor's decision, speaks with the defense attorney of the suspect. And they work something out saying, I have this much evidence, and it will be your client's best, best defense if they would plead to this. Because if you can get up to from five to 99 years and you have somewhere in between taking that to trial, the suspect is taking a chance on having a lot longer sentence. So that's why a lot of them are pledged to. But it doesn't mean it does not go on their record. It doesn't mean that they're not held accountable. And we also have laws that once a person is convicted of a sexual assault or a sexual offense. There's been certain criteria they have to register as a sexual assault predator. And some of them are lifelong registrations, and there is stipulations on them what they can do, where they can go. They can't live within so many miles of, if it's a child, so many miles of a school. There are certain things that they're not allowed to do, and they have to register with the police department and check in on probation very frequently. So it's not that the person, just because there's a plea, you call it a compromise. If there's a plea agreement here, it doesn't mean that the person gets off free. It just means that they avoid the, they avoid the court, but they still are held accountable for the actions. Thank you, Chief. Now let's go to some of our other viewing groups for questions. Odile Yemba at the Democratic Republic of Congo Embassy in Washington, D.C. asks, after a rape, how is the survivor supported in terms of psychosocial care? Lieutenant, we'll start with you again. Okay. So one of the things we really have championed in Montgomery County, and this has become a national model, not only with us, we borrowed it from other folks, and it's kind of become a thing around here, is we bring in a victim advocate very early into this investigation, usually the night that the victim actually reports it, and as long as the victim wants it, and the victim advocate is that voice of the victim, and the victim will come in, the victim advocate will come in and sit down with the victim and start explaining the criminal justice system, because the criminal justice system in the United States wasn't built for our victims, and it was built for defendants to make sure that we as the police don't put the wrong person in prison or jail, which is fine. But we didn't have a method to really work with our victims, because police officers are not therapists, and these folks were really good at this. So we brought them into the fold, and they work with our victims, so our mind detectives can go off and find our suspects, and our victim advocates get our victims the services they want, they contact the police if the victims have questions, and they will assist them in getting that care during the criminal justice process, and then post the criminal justice process. Now, these victim advocates don't provide the direct care with the victim of the therapy, but they do set them up with those supportive groups outside of the criminal justice system to get them the situations and assistance they need. Thank you. Chief Hill, anything to add from your perspective? What I would say is that it's very important, you know, the criminal aspect of it is going through what meets the criteria and the definition. What is also equally as important is making sure the victim is taken care of, and taken care of is wraparound services. So there's trauma, obviously, there may need to be support systems put in place, and there's, we have victims assistance, victim advocates groups, but it does have to be all just a police lift, just a police have to be concerned about it. We should engage with private partners, meaning there's groups out there that this is what they do, they care for women. We should be engaging our women's groups, we should be engaging our children's advocacy groups, because they would love to partner with the police department to make sure that we're taking care of these victims, not just in the criminal aspect, but also in their physical well-being, their mental well-being, their spiritual well-being. So you have to have these wraparound services, and you have to have other people outside the criminal justice system that are able to provide these services, such as counseling and care for them. So that would be what I would say, you have to have a wraparound services for your victims. Thanks so much for those important points. Now we have a question specifically for Lieutenant Satinsky. How do police in the U.S. investigate sexual assault allegations? What is the process? So the basic process, once the patrol officer confirms the crime, it meets with the victim. The investigator then meets with the victim as well that evening and will go over the incident, but vary at a high level, pretty much just trying to confirm the crime occurred. Once that occurs, they'll go out, start their investigation, they'll be looking for witnesses, potential video evidence, potential cellular evidence, computer evidence, social media, and start building a case that supports the victim and supports this case moving forward. We may not engage a suspect right away because we really want to build our case. We want to be able to approach our suspect with as much as possible because many of these cases, a lot of them sometimes are constructed or people consider them a he said she said type matter. And that's not always the case. You can overcome that with lots of evidence and lots of good just on the ground police work, but it just takes us doing that. And we have been doing that a lot more and we've seen a lot more victim engagement, a lot more commitment in higher arrest rates because of doing those things. And social media has been incredible, has been an incredible assistance to law enforcement as far as helping these cases and building them out. Thank you for that. Let's see, do we have any more questions coming in from our viewing groups? I think we have a question from LaLongue Malawi. How do you link cases to the perpetrator when you are not equipped to conduct forensic investigations? This is the situation in Malawi. Maybe we'll go first to Chief Hill this time. If I heard correctly is how to conduct the investigations if you don't have a forensic interviewer? Yes, that's correct. Okay, what I would say is we all started when I say in police in the U.S. where we did have the level of expertise that we have today on our sexual assault in our rape cases. So you have to start where you are. And the first thing I would say that you would need to do is get people trained. And training nowadays can come in the form of interactive around the world, but to get some training for your investigators to be able to conduct these types of interviews because they're different from a regular criminal interview or different from a regular crime that occurs. You really have to have somebody specialized. And in the United States, and I can say for Texas, probably in the last 20 years when we actually formed sexual assault investigative units because we realized that the level of expertise needed was not just a regular detective that would investigate any crime. These types of detectives were specialized. And so once you're in a specialized field such as being able to investigate rape and do forensic interviews, you have to get the training. So here in Texas, the United States, every department I've been a part of, we made sure that we had our investigators trained appropriately. So the first thing I would say is to find training and find, bring in trainers who are looked to do some type of web-based training where you can get your investigators the training they need in order to do those forensic interviews. Thank you. Lieutenant Tytinski? Chief Hill is absolutely correct. I totally agree with her as far as the specialized training and the need for those specialized sex assault units. I mean, in my agency, we used to have adult sex crimes and homicides and the same grouping done by the same detectives. I was one of them. And then we separated it out some years later and we saw a much higher rate of victim engagement. As far as the specialized interviewing, that trauma-informed interviewing, that is so important and Chief Hill is on the money with that one because that really gives the victim a voice in this investigation. One of the things that obviously occurred in this is that the victim lost their voice and how they ended up with us in the first place. This trauma-informed interview gives us that opportunity or it gives the victim the opportunity to sit there and tell their story without having to be interrupted. So basically, it's open-ended questions where our body language is very different and we just listen and capture notes and go through the entire process. And these interviews can take much longer than we're traditionally used to. My original training for adult sex crimes investigator was basically, watch that other guy. I didn't have anything else. And Chief Hill's correct. There isn't a lot of training out there for adult sex crimes. There's a lot for child, but not adult. And we're working on that and we're getting it out there and having that training and having that open-ended, empathetic interview process with your victim really goes a very long way with your victims and we're seeing our victims stay a lot longer in the criminal justice system just from that initial meeting. Thanks for sharing that about trauma-informed interviewing. I believe we have another question from Superintendent Alexander Nguala in LeLongue who asks, thanks for the informative explanation on how complaints are captured at the police level. How do you ensure that victims are protected from reprisals after reporting sexual assault and having someone arrested? Who is responsible for the protection criteria and how do you assist victims with overcoming fear and stigma in their societies? American Space Conno in Northern Nigeria is also asking a similar question. How can we assist victims with overcoming fear and stigma and reprisal in their societies? Maybe we'll start with you again, Chief Hill. I think one of the major hurdles is to make it known that the victims of the sexual assault or rape are truly traumatized victims and take the stigma away, they did something wrong. So you have to get in this education, it's educating our community, saying that this is a crime to harm our girls, to harm our children. This is a crime and it has long-lasting implications. So the public has to be informed that this is traumatizing to a child, to a sexual assault victim, and that they should not be stigmatized because of it. And so first what needs to be done is once they're brought into, once they are deciding to come in and make a complaint against a suspect, here in Texas we have a way to feel their identity. We call it pseudonym and it's a police department activity. And so if a victim comes in and they feel fear of reprisal, they feel fear of retaliation, if the person knows, especially if it's a stranger and these pseudonyms are for stranger rights. So if it's a stranger and they have fear of the stranger knowing them, in the court system we will refer to them with a different name throughout all the court documents, all the court people work. Their birth name will never be used and we use a pseudonym name. We use a fake name for this person throughout the process. And that's for stranger rights because they don't want their identity revealed to the suspect. And so we have that avenue. But also if the suspect is known to the victim, what we have to do in a criminal justice system is offer services and protection when I say protection is to make sure that we're proactive with our victim advocates groups. We're proactive with other groups out there that can provide assistance to them. And we just have to make them comfortable and coming forward and contacting them. That's what a victim have contacted them on a weekly basis, trying to alleviate some of their fears, making sure we're working the case very diligently, keeping them informed on what's happening with the suspect. But I think the first part of it is educating the general public that these victims are traumatized and when they come forward they need to be protected. They need to be listened to. They need to be believed and take the stigma away from the victim and put it on the onus on the suspect who committed this horrific crime. Thank you for sharing about how the issue of stigma is dull within Texas. Lieutenant Setenski, maybe you can share a little bit about the Maryland experience. So for here in Maryland, and almost everything the Chief said we do here, we don't have the option in Maryland because again remember the state systems that we have here of shielding someone's name and the court documents all the way through. We do deploy the use of instead of the victim's name, we'll say victim one, victim two, something like that with their age because of the adult juvenile system we have. But eventually the name is going to come out. One of the things we take great pains to do is not to release these things to the media. We do in cases of stranger rapes, not with the victim's name obviously, but that's just more or less to get to see if there's other victims out there we don't know about. But more than 70% of your sexual assault cases are domestic related. Even more than that are the victim and the suspect know each other in some fashion. So if we release names of people that could create some sort of a stigma much like the person has said about that. So that's one of the reasons why we take great pains to avoid the media as much as we can and they're usually actually pretty good about it, the media folks for the same reasons. As far as protecting them we don't have a protective detail that we can follow them around with. But what we do do is for those sexual offenders at least in Montgomery County and some other larger agencies here in Maryland, we actually slap GPS on the suspects and we can see them at any time. It actually goes right to some of my detective cell phones so we can see them. But our pretrial unit that handles those things, follows them all the time. We are able to set up geo-location zones. If they get close it automatically triggers an arrest. We ask the victim to change her cell phone number, change her email account password, social media passwords, anything they can think of so that suspect can't come back and find them again. And in some cases while we don't pay for it, we will assist them with finding other places if they need to move or relocate. So those are the kind of steps that we've taken. That's very helpful. Thank you. American Corner Ibadan in Nigeria asks, how do you deal with cases where the victim is found to be untruthful and the perpetrator is found to be innocent? Chief Hill, we'll start with you again. I mean, it happens. It's a very, very, very small percentage. And I think, again, part of it when victims come forward because it's so traumatizing and, you know, up until probably the last 15, 20 years, sexual assault is one of the most under-reported crimes here in the United States because of the victims are traumatized and have to come forward. So most of it, in most cases when victims come forward, you have to listen to them and you have to listen to them and believe them until you find evidence that they're not being truthful. So I would say you go into those interviews, you go into taking a report from a victim from the standpoint of, I'm going to believe this person until I have evidence that says it's not true because the majority of the time, at least here in the States, the victim is telling the truth. There's a very, very small percentage of victims that come forward that are untruthful, that are lying, that are filing a false report about being sexually assaulted. So we have to make the laws and the rules for the passes and there's protections for that suspect if they're falsely accused. And we have crimes if a victim files a false report, but more often than not, the victim that comes forward because it takes a lot for a victim to come forward is more often than not telling the truth and throughout the investigative process, the truth will come out. So if there is some deception on either side, we will find that out and we're able to deal with it. But they should be believed when they come forward until we find some reason not to believe what they're saying. Thanks for that, Chief Hill. Any other thoughts, Lieutenant, from the Maryland experience? Chief Hill hit all the points I would have hit, absolutely. But when the victim comes in, we have to have that mindset of, no matter what crime, I mean, if it's a property crime, would we sit there and investigate the victim to see if they were telling us the truth or not? Sex assault and rape offenses are one of the few crimes, if not the only, where some people, investigators, take a lot of pains so that the victim was actually truthful. That's traditionally how we were trained because police officers are trained to root out inconsistencies. And when an event like this happens, a victim experiences trauma in the brain that causes them to not remember things in a consistent manner like you and I would expect. So this triggers that auto response from the investigator internally saying he or she is lying to me. That's not the case. Like Chief Hill said, it's exceedingly small, the amount of untruthful statements that actually come forward. And normally there's some sort of underlying issue that has nothing to do with us to begin with, something that the pair already had involved. So yes, everybody that comes in the door, we believe them just like Chief Hill said until there's some other reason not to, like evidence bears out a different way. Thank you. I hope that answered your question, Nigeria. Now let's get back to our group in Freetown, Sierra Leone, for two more questions. Freetown, what are your questions? Basically, I just want to make just two comments before I ask the question. Going back to the aspects of a child giving consent or whether, you know, child kind of, in Sierra Leone, we do make a difference between a child, you know, of course, under 18 years of age and an adult. For a child under age, the child, I mean, under our law, you just kind of give consent. And we call it a sexual penetration. And we make a distinction between that and rape. Rape will refer to an adult whereas sexual penetration will refer to a child under 18. And then on the aspect of the plea bargaining, I mean, in Sierra Leone, I mean, I suppose, you know, that would happen between counsel. But in court, it will only come, I suspect, as part of the plea in mitigation. And that is when the judge will probably have to consider, you know, MM that under the plea in mitigation. But my questions I want to ask is whether you do have, whether you experience anything about when police officers have been trained, for example, in sexual offenses matters, whether within a short space of time or after a short period of time, they do get changed to a different section of the police or different, you know, division of the police after going through the whole aspect of being trained. Thank you. Maybe we'll turn it over to Lieutenant Zatinski first. I believe maybe any reaction to the comments. And then I think the question is about rotating police officers after they receive training. Yeah, so thank you, Justice, for the information about the child, the differences in child laws as far as sexual assault. That makes sense. And it sounds like it follows a lot like what we do here. But as far as being trained up in trauma-informed interviewing techniques and forensic interviewing techniques for child sexual assault cases, do we see people moved in my agency in order to become one of these detectives? You actually have to apply for it. And then once you're in there, you can stay in there as long as you want, unless you get promoted and you get moved out. That would be the only time. Or there's some huge change in the division where they are realigning manpower. We haven't done that in years. I can tell you right now the woman who trained me to be a child sex investigator when I was a young detective, she'd been in that division for 20 years. She trained me and she retired about 10 years ago. But she trained me and then when we started this adult sex crimes unit, those investigators that are in there now, the ones I had all hired when we started it, with the exception of two who left through promotion, they're all there. And it is time-consuming and expensive to train people. Because like I said earlier, there's not a lot of training out there for this. So it's a lot of on-the-job training and watching senior detectives do this. So that's where you end up having two detectives go out with a victim so the younger detective can observe. So that is where there's some cost involved in that. But we're getting better at it and we do try to keep people in the same spot. Now there are other places that do move folks around quite a bit. My hope is that they wouldn't move specialized detectives as much, but again, that's jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Thank you. Chief Hill, any reaction to those comments or thoughts from the Texas perspective? Yeah, I think it's very important because since the training is so specialized and there are other specialized units within police departments, that the police administration, the chief of the head of the police organization should make every effort to keep trained and skilled investigators in those units that they have the expertise in because you gave, you sent them to that training, you prepared them to do these cases and it's a loss to not only the department, but it's a loss to the community if you move them out. And I think the skillset is, that you train them to do that. And I would say and also something down the road that I've done at the departments I've been at, once you have somebody that's been in a high stress unit such as sex crimes, that we also make sure we take care of those detectives and that they get services that they need and that they apparently are talking to police or clinical psychologists because that's a lot of potential trauma to the investigators. So, starting out, you need to skill people obviously stay in that unit because they've gathered a level of expertise that you need in order to have these cases. But we also have to dig down the road once you have seen and been a part of so many traumatic cases that we also take care of those officers. Thank you, Chief. That's a very important point. Let's go back to our other viewing groups and see if there are any other questions coming in. Okay, great. Actually, I think we're going to go back to Sierra Leone first. So, Freetown, maybe we'll start with you. Well, I'm George Cicely. Yes, I'm a Supreme Court judge and, of course, I've been in the deciding list of the cases for so many years almost a year or so. There is an issue here which I want some clarification. The issue of medical evidence has been very problematic in the course of the war. And we have seen instances where a lot of the traitors have gone out of the web by reason of lack of medical evidence. And the medical evidence is a problem in the sense that we have a DNA, the issue of DNA is actually used in short. And we, as George, for those people in most of the cases, rely on just the medical, probably medical, which might cause a very scanty or rather skeletal remark or observing from regarding the medical report. I don't know whether there might be some midstream in the sense of course the DNA is possible in United States, but it's not possible. What kind of medical approach apply to the absence of DNA? Okay, so I think the question, just to confirm, was about medical evidence and the level of evidence that's needed for cases. Would you mind just confirming for us? I believe the question, the question was about lack of DNA evidence and then what kind of medical evidence could suffice in place of DNA evidence. Perfect, thank you. We'll start with Lieutenant Satinsky. Oh, thank you. So that does happen where we have cases where people say, you know, he used a condom at the time of the event so we do not have a DNA trail to follow so we have to use other things. Maybe the victim said, well, he strangled me. He put his hand around my neck or he scratched my arm or whatever it may be. That forensic medical nurse, that sexual assault saying examiner, we'll take pictures of that, swab with a DNA swab to see if we get lucky as well as we can use that. Hopefully we get DNA from that. If we don't, as long as that's in her story and she also told that to the forensic medical examiner, those are things we can use in our interview and or interrogation with the suspect later to talk about, hey, so how did she get that scratch in that part of her body? Oh, I don't know. Oh, well, I did XYZ. Well, that shows that he was there then and that changes the dynamic. So we can use those kind of things in conjunction with other circumstantial evidence such as maybe there was a witness who heard something. Maybe there's some social media that tells us something, but it's not a case work. It's not a case work. It's not a case work. It's not a case work. So there are other ways to do cases outside of DNA. DNA is an awesome addition, much like fingerprints were a long time ago, an awesome addition to case work, but it's not case work in the end. It's basically just another tool in our toolbox to help us out and to move us forward. Thank you. Chief Hill, anything that you would like to add to that? Yeah, I think that because DNA you know, 30, 40 years ago and DNA is still you know, here in the U.S., it's solving a lot of cases, but most cases are solved absolutely without DNA. Everyday cases are solved without it. You have to have a partnership with your medical facilities there in your countries, in your cities. And that partnership, like he was saying, that's the sexual assault nurse examiner, someone in the hospital that specializes in collecting evidence from sexual assault, meaning a nurse that has a certain skill set that may be different from another nurse, like if it's a hard doctor, they get more training in cardiac. Well, if it's after the sexual assault exams, they have a different level of training. So partnering with a medical facility to make sure that when your victims come in that if they if they want to, you can't come here in the state, you can't make somebody go take a sexual assault exam, but we encourage them to no end because we can get physical evidence to not just DNA, it could be fibers on them, it could be anything, we take their clothes from the time of the sexual assault because there may be something in there that later during an investigative interview with the suspect may lead us to determining whether we can case. So it's really important that you partner with your medical facilities there, and that when victims are taken in that they're given a medical exam not just for DNA, but also other evidence that may be collected. And that evidence oftentimes most cases here are proved through the hard work of a detective and not necessarily through the DNA. Thanks chief. Now let's go back to our other viewing groups for a few more questions. Our group in Bonjul, the Gambia asks is there value to having laws that criminalize unwanted gestures and sexual advances in addition to unwanted physical contact? Lieutenant Zidinski, we'll start with you. So here in the states at least in Maryland we don't have a combination crime like that where unwanted sexual advances actually would trigger a crime. It would actually have to be something where there was a physical touching or a pattern that would lead the victim to feel that they were being threatened. So someone simply walking by on the street and making some sort of a sexual comment or a gesture wouldn't in and of itself be a crime. Could that lead to crime down the road? Could that be a let's say gateway drug of sorts? Absolutely. But we don't have it here in the states. I think if personally for me I'm not sure if criminalizing it here would have value at least for what we do here in the states. At this point I can't speak for everywhere obviously. But I haven't seen cases that we have collected information that would say that that was the absolute reason why this person did XYZ and became a sex offender. Thank you. Chief Hill? And I would think here under our Constitution under our freedom of speech and expression that we have somebody that does a rude gesture or something like that it's not criminalized here in the state of Texas. It would have to be something you know if someone yells I'll give an example if when I say speech if someone yell fire in a crowded theater even though under our speech laws in the Constitution it's protected but it didn't cause the immediate breach of the peace it made disorderly then we can criminalize it but just gestures themselves rude reports they're not criminalized under our system they would when it comes to sexual they would have to have an act beyond just saying certain things so it's covered a lot of what this sounds like this question was the gestures or the speaking of sexual things it would be under our Constitution as free speech they would have to do something just say things they would have to act which will be under our criminal laws we could prosecute thank you American space Joss Nigeria asks how can one help teenage girls being sexually abused by a family member when others in the family may be against reporting the crime. Chief Hill maybe we'll start with you this time that's a hard one it obviously happens here in the states and we say there's a lot of under-reporting of sexual assault and some of them are because they're domestic related meaning there's some kind of connection so what I would say in that situation is we have to educate our young women that it's okay to come forward and speak against a family member or somebody that is using them because they are traumatized and this has a long lasting effect on our young girls this carries with them throughout their entire life so we have to make it okay for young girls to come forward and say that this is not right we have to educate our families and our communities to say it is not okay to take away the precious this precious gift that a girl should be able to decide when they want to engage as opposed to someone takes that from you so we have to educate until community is not okay to take away the innocence of our girls and that if they do take away the innocence of our girls that we will punish them to the full extent of the law and we have to have services that counselors and those wraparound services that those girls and the family members feel comfortable when they come out and know that something is going to happen to the suspect and they don't have to continue to live with the same person that they're reporting so it's education, it's education, it's education Lieutenant anything to add on cases such as these? No I think she feels summarized perfectly that was perfect. Thank you Another question from our group in Accra Ghana which asks do you have special centers for survivors of sexual assault do you have institutionalized models that bring different service providers in one place so that survivors don't have to travel from one service point to the other Lieutenant maybe we'll start with you this time Sure so in Montgomery County and we actually modeled this after another agency on the west coast we have a family justice center and the idea being that we bring all the services we can to the victim so when I was a young patrol officer and she feel might agree with me on this from her aspect as well have you had a domestic violence or a sex assault victim you would take in the report and then you'd have to direct them to several different services on their own because there was no method to bring them all together at the time now we've brought all the services to the victims the victim comes in we bring victim advocates, detectives, prosecutors, sheriffs everybody's right there allied services those are for adults for juveniles we have what we call child advocacy centers which are almost all over the country and that's the same idea bringing all the services to the victim that we can now there are other agencies that also have what we call rape crisis centers which not only do what I just talked about for both aspects but also do that sexual assault nursing examination right there in those facilities which is just another bonus where you don't have to re victimize the victim by having them tell their story multiple times or move around to go to different facilities to get things done about these family justice centers in Maryland Chief Hill anything else from the Texas perspective you'd like to share we also have those in the what we call them children children's alliance network and it's the same concept meaning that you have once you bring a child in or in the case where it's a family advocate center but in the children's alliance network centers where you bring them in the forensic interviews are done there if they need housing the housing person is there if they need whatever services they need that's the nexus and it's all done in one place so they don't have to go to different places all those referrals and all the services that that child or victim are housed in one location and there was grants and federal funding and state funding to help start those because there was a need to not make a victim have to go find all these services but go to a one stop shop and they could take advantage and they could engage in all those services fantastic another question from US embassy co-tenu and benin how do you determine that a victim was sexually assaulted when the day before they may have had a consensual sexual interaction do police privately discuss with doctors on the victims in order to gather details on the results of the examination lieutenant szechinski will go to you first so sometimes victims won't tell you about a consensual sexual encounter that they had that occurred after they were sexually assaulted and that may be for a multitude of reasons and again I'm not here to judge about that but what we'll do when our trauma informed interviewing is ask about that and if they do say yes we will go and find that individual we're going to tell the victim we're doing that and we'll get what we call a elimination swap for their DNA so we can rule out that person as being a potential suspect if we do get DNA back in that sexual assault examination kit if they don't tell us but maybe they tell the sexual assault forensic nursing examiner that nurse examiner will tell us that there might be another potential partner so we can then engage the victim in that and we're not interrogating our victim I want to make sure we're clear there this is just we don't want to put the wrong person in prison and we don't want to go down and investigators go down the wrong road either so we get that information and we try to be as sensitive as we can with that thank you lieutenant chief well not much to add it's just a good I mean an investigative work and the victim has to tell us everything even if they may be embarrassing or may they feel may not show them in a good light but we still have to know everything so we can make sure we get the correct person the right person to be held accountable because we don't want people that are innocent to end up in the criminal justice system so we want to hold the right person accountable so we have to have the victim comfortable enough to tell us again about their sexual experiences what's going on, consensual all of those things we want to make sure the detectives have what they need to do their investigation alright we'll move on to another question from our group in La Longue, Malawi they ask how do you investigate cases of sexual offenses where a victim is a minor and cannot speak for themselves what do you do when a parent of a child victim wants to withdraw the case lieutenant, we can start with you so for cases of child sex offenses in Maryland, especially where have a case where the child can't speak let's say it's because they're too young they can't really articulate what occurred we go to great pains with our child protective services therapists who work in conjunction with my child sex investigators through a very standardized interview process with these children to try to get as much information as we can now in the event where a parent comes in and says we don't want our child going forward now there are some agencies that would stop there we will weigh that against the value of the case meaning that is this person been a predator before have been predator these are other potential victims in the house child protective services for our county will actually step in and take action against the parent for stopping that we're attempting to stop that investigation we very rarely stop at the request of the child's parents in cases where the child can speak and is older let's say in their teens, late teens and they don't want to go forward we will weigh that much more heavily than we would prior when they're younger if that makes sense chief anything that you'd like to add to that no I think that captures it we just keep investigating if we got a victim and use I said we forensic investigators like he said child protective services but those specifically they are trained in getting evidence out of kids by using anatomical dolls all kind of different things if we have a kid that's not verbal or that can speak for themselves thank you a lot of our groups are asking about support for victims after sexual assault we touched upon it a bit in the beginning of the program but can we address it again how can communities and law enforcement work together to assist victims after the legal process has concluded chief Hill we'll go back to you first well what you within your areas your cities your countries find out who those groups that provide those services in the private sector now so you're going to have groups out there that you're rape crisis centers children advocacy groups those private groups and meet private groups and start forming networks and so you you can't do it all the police has a lane of determining if a crime occurred and then the prosecutors prosecuted and holding an offender accountable but the other services that the victim has to have around services so you have to partner with those groups within the community and also you can also bring some of those potential groups inside one of the resources within the police department here in Texas and probably around we have victim victims assistance where they're not just not just sexual assault they can be there for domestic but these are licensed counselors that are victim advocates that we hire that work for the police department and so when we have a child come in or an adult come in that's a victim they provide a connection to that victim so that's an avenue of hiring those advocates counselors to work for the police department but also more importantly is connecting with private and community related works that already do this that this level expertise counselors crisis centers medical facilities building that network and once you build that network then you're able to provide for the victim but you may have to be to go out and intentionally do this and try to build that network so you can have that expertise in your network because you're not going to have all that expertise in house thanks chief lieutenant any other thoughts on best practices in terms of cultivating this relationship between law enforcement and communities it really is just about getting out there and building those relationships like the chief said and maintaining them it's one of the things we noticed we brought all the players for the different allied agencies into the same building they couldn't hide behind phones anymore they couldn't hide behind email or fax or letters they had to make decisions one on one a lot of our relationships and how we did things and it also changed our understanding of what much like the chief said our silos were what our lanes were there were a lot of misconceptions about what the police did versus what victim advocates did versus what child protective services did those things we still have some pick up sometimes but those things seem to have worked themselves out over the several years we've been doing this that's good to hear from our group and co-tenu Benin and other question in a relationship how is sexual abuse defined can the woman report a sexual assault case by her husband Chief Hill will go to you first well the law defines it so here in Texas you can have a husband or a wife a husband that commits a sexual assault if it falls under the elements of the offense that's what we call the elements that you need in order to make it a crime so if it meets that criteria where it's penetration and it's without consent so that's the key to the sexual assaults here for an adult is without their consent so a husband or wife can't commit a sexual assault if it meets definition if it's done by force without that person's consent so we would if it's husband and wife if it's a stranger co-worker we still follow the same elements of that offense that have to be met regardless of the relationship of the victim or the suspect so there are husbands that are charges that are pressed against the husband by the wife based on not having consent at that time are forced and consenting to force to be consent to these certain sexual acts so we just use the same laws regardless of the relationship that apply and if they meet the criteria then we're able to take it forth and submit it for prosecution. Thanks so much chief. Our viewing group in Joss Nigeria asks how can social media be used to help solve sexual assault cases and I know Lieutenant you talked about this a little bit earlier so maybe I'll turn to you for this question social media has become a really intricate part of our investigations and I don't even think law enforcement realized how what a tool it would become the amount of data that people post online in our current society is unreal and we're able to work with the social media companies when we have cases of a felony level such as sexual assault and rape investigations to take that data digest it and find out what people are saying messengers are a great tool I can tell you right now we used one social media company their messenger service actually helped us solve a crime unbeknownst to our suspect he chatted about me in the messaging app and had some real not nice things to say about me but he admitted to the crime in that after I'd interrogated him and he didn't admit it we use that to post where they are because a lot of people do poster locations so we'll be able to figure out okay were they at that event does that corroborate what the victim talked about did they make statements saying they knew the victim so there is a lot of that that we use in other friends they might know that they spider out their network so we can kind of develop other potential witnesses in cases so social media is out there it's a big help and don't undervalue it at all it's there and they will work with you under the right circumstances thank you another question that's come in how do law enforcement officers and other service providers maintain self-care while dealing with difficult cases Chief Haley you spoke a little bit about this earlier so I think I'll turn to you for this question yeah it's really important to make sure that your investigators your detectives are that you see about them also in one department that I worked at we actually had required for our sexual assault children crimes against children which included the crimes against children's unit was everything it was homicides it was rape it was assaults it was anything against a child we require for them yearly to go back through a psychological evaluation because we want to make sure that they were okay so to put things in place to make sure that you're taking care of the investigators because police officers are going to say at least here in our country they're always going to say that they're okay they're always going to say that I'm doing it because I want to get the bad guys and they are but we have to make sure their mental well-being is taken care of so I would say you're to put some kind of practices in place where you periodically if it's months if it's a year that you periodically check on the investigators that are doing these investigations to make sure that they're mentally stable and that they're able to continue in that unit and that if you need to get them help then you're able to do that but they're always going to say they're okay but we have to make sure that we're providing services for them because it is traumatic to work these cases over and over and over again so we have to make sure that we put policies and practice in place to check on those detectives and offer them services to make sure that they're able to continue their jobs very important point thanks Chief unfortunately we are out of time thank you very much to Chief Hill and Lieutenant Satinsky for your time and participation and thank you to our viewing groups at U.S. embassies and American spaces that have helped to make this such a great program today's groups included participants watching from U.S. embassies and American spaces in Freetown Sierra Leone U.S. Embassy Abuja, Nigeria Ibadan, Nigeria Bouchie, Nigeria Joss, Nigeria Kano, Nigeria Akra, Ghana Banjul, the Gambia Lalangwe, Malawi Kotenu, Benin Bamako, Mali Niami, Niger Kamenge, Burundi Yamusoku, Cote d'Ivoire and the Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo Embassy in Washington, D.C. Thank you Women are frequently discouraged and often effectively barred from economic engagement by disproportionate burdens of gender-based violence including sexual assault to reduce barriers and advance protections in policies, laws regulations and practices to facilitate women's participation in the economy President Trump established the Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative or WGDP in February of this year making this the first U.S. whole of government effort to advance global women's economic empowerment and participation in the global economy We invite you to join us in supporting initiatives that seek to end gender-based violence and support women's economic empowerment leading to greater prosperity, security and stability for all I hope you all continue the discussion after this program ends in your respective countries and communities Have a good evening and goodbye