Victim Impact Panels Are the Newest Weapons Against Drunk Drivers : Safety: Offenders are required to listen to relatives of those killed in accidents tell how their loved ones died.

Three times a month, V Mathews climbs onto an auditorium stage and tells an audience of drunk drivers about the deaths of her two teen-age sons in accidents 14 years apart.

The 63-year-old woman from Milwaukie, Ore., has told her story hundreds of times in front of strangers who are present only because a judge ordered them to be there.

Mathews still cries into the microphone when she describes how she held her son Roger’s head while he fought for his last breaths. He was struck while changing a tire in 1969.

She describes going to a hospital on Mother’s Day in 1983 to identify her son Blake after his chest had been crushed and he’d been lying beside a road all night. A drunk driver had left the scene, saying later that he thought he’d hit a mailbox.

The audience is composed of men and women who have been arrested for drunk driving. They are charged $5 each to hear about the tragedies that drivers like them have brought to families such as Mathews’.

Five years ago, Oregon authorized counties to set up victim impact panels. The law allows judges to require convicted drunk drivers to attend such panels.

Under such a program, a first-time offender is “diverted” to counseling and will have no record of a conviction after completing the program.

Today, at least 200 counties in 40 states have started similar programs, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a nationwide group dedicated to fighting drunken driving.

In 1991, 48% of all fatal traffic accidents nationwide were alcohol-related.

On a recent night, a mostly young and male audience of more than 100 sat very still as Mathews spoke in a dimly lit auditorium in the Multnomah County Justice Center.

The offenders heard two other mothers tell equally tragic stories. A judge on the panel and a recovering alcoholic who once was caught driving drunk also spoke.

Then the offenders had to write down their comments before leaving the room.

“The lady’s been through too much and lost a lot of family members in the worst way,” one anonymous card said. “I am thankful I didn’t hurt anyone because of my stupidness. . . . I sorta feel sick.”

No one knows how effective the victim panels are in reducing the recidivism rate for drunk drivers.

But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is preparing a survey, using statistics from Oregon, Washington and California. Results are expected by early next year.

“We wouldn’t begin to profess that listening to a panel of victims on one occasion would rehabilitate an alcoholic,” said Janice Lord of the national MADD office in Irving, Tex. “But we have had many letters and phone calls and statements from alcoholics who say that listening to that mom’s story was the turnaround in their decision to get help.”

The panelists say they don’t need hard proof to feel their effort is worthwhile.

“If I can just save one life, or save one person the heartache and pain I’ve gone through, it will be worth it,” Nancy Henning, 60, told the Multnomah County audience.

Henning’s husband and 20-year-old daughter were killed in 1985 when a drunk driver crashed into them in Nevada as they were driving home to Oregon.

Henning’s husband died instantly, but she will always wonder how much her daughter suffered before dying in the flames. The girl was burned over 75% of her body.

“She was a beautiful girl, and I don’t know if her face was ruined. We had to have closed caskets,” Henning said.

The rapid spread of victim panels has prompted two professors of psychology at Eastern Kentucky University to conduct a nationwide study on the effect of the panels on the victims themselves.

“If it’s a useful healing technique, then we’ll tell the world and encourage people to set up these panels,” said Dorothy Mercer, who was herself seriously injured in an alcohol-related crash. “If it’s harmful, then it’s not worth victimizing people again by being on panels.”

But Oregon panelist Sharon Baker, 39, said prevention--not therapy--is the point of the panels.

“It just reopens the wounds every time you have to relive it,” she said.

Baker’s 13-year-old son, Jeremy, suffered severe brain damage in an alcohol-related crash in 1985 when he was 5. The accident left him a quadriplegic with the mental capacity of an 18-month-old.

The first victim panel was established in Worcester County, Mass., in 1982, followed by King County, Wash., in 1985.

In many states, MADD chapters administer the programs. In some states, it is up to individual judges or probation officers or even treatment centers to order offenders to attend.