Reaching Latina Assault Victims

The 30 or so women had battled drugs, alcohol and abusive men. Some had been raped.

Fanny Garcia was there to tell them they were not alone as victims of sexual assault.

“Many feel ‘this happened only to me.’ We reiterate it doesn’t happen only to that person. It happens a lot. That’s why we want to give them counseling,” Garcia, a Valley Trauma Center prevention education specialist, explained in English and Spanish at a meeting at El Proyecto del Barrio in Panorama City.

One 30-year-old Van Nuys woman, who said she was raped by a relative when she was 14, found Garcia’s talk encouraging.

“It helps us to not feel so vulnerable,” the mother of three daughters said in Spanish. “We have to take care of ourselves because as women we are more at risk, whether in the house or on the street.”

Garcia’s presentation was part of an effort by the rape crisis center to help more Latinas who speak only Spanish. To better reach this group, Valley Trauma Center is trying to raise $70,000 for a planned expansion in Van Nuys early next year.

The 16-year-old Valley Trauma Center, which treats victims of sexual violence, will also maintain a small office in Northridge. Center officials decided to add the new East Valley office after realizing a large number of clients lived there and were unable to get to the Northridge center.

Of the 62 primarily Spanish-speaking East Valley women who called for counseling between April and June, only one came to the center, Executive Director Charles Hanson said.

“You’re either alive and growing, or dead,” Hanson said. “Our orientation has always been to provide services and to learn from the community what services are needed and to respond to that.”

Since January, center volunteers have accompanied 434 rape victims to the hospital following attacks and offered them support during police interviews and court appearances. Of the 234 victims who were Latinas, only 31 later came for counseling, Hanson said. By comparison, one of four English-speaking victims came in for counseling.

Many of the East Valley Latinas who most need help are poor with little education, said Juana Mojica, a program director at the nonprofit San Fernando Valley Partnership in San Fernando, which fights alcohol, tobacco and drug use among young people.

Opening a center in Van Nuys would provide a safety net to women who come from Latin American countries, where they customarily do not trust the police enough to report rapes, Mojica said.

“We are so far behind in this type of services to the Latino community. I don’t know of other agencies that focus on this issue,” Mojica said. “Getting medical care is easy, but not the support services to go and move on with your life after these kinds of crimes.”

This year the center has also provided more Spanish versions of its literature. By reaching more Latina rape victims, the center hopes to make a difference.

If rape victims use the center’s services shortly after attacks, “they will recover quicker and experience a more positive recovery,” said Hanson, who is a professor at the Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling at Cal State Northridge, which is affiliated with Valley Trauma.

“Women will understand themselves better and be better mothers and better women out in the work force,” Garcia added. “It’s a man’s problem as well. If she has a husband, a father, that sexual assault is going to affect that man.”

Many of the women share similar post-traumatic symptoms--nightmares, trouble eating and sleeping, flashbacks, anxiety and lowered self-esteem.

Garcia, who joined the center staff in July, said she has sensed the need for the center’s services during her presentations at area high schools, churches and other community gatherings.

“People ask me, ‘How long am I going to feel like this? How long will I not trust people?’ We tell them we don’t know. There’s no cure, basically,” Garcia said.

The women who do come for counseling often have no previous experience with therapy and are surprised to learn they are eligible for eight free sessions, said Madelline Hernandez, who joined the center last year as a bilingual services specialist.

Valley Trauma started with about 30 volunteers and now has about 200, but more Spanish-speakers are needed, officials said.

The nonprofit crisis center, which also has a site in Newhall in the Santa Clarita Valley, receives about $740,000 in grants from the California Office of Criminal Justice Planning, other government agencies and corporate and individual contributions.

Still, the center will face challenges reaching Latinas.

“A lot of times in Hispanic culture, women are taught to be submissive and stay quiet about this,” said Garcia, 22, of Tarzana. “We help them acknowledge this is not something to take lightly. It’s something painful a human being shouldn’t have to go through.”