April 24-30th marks this year’s Crime Victims’ Rights Week. This year’s theme: Rights, Access, Equity, for all Victims,” embodies the unique challenges experienced by under-served populations in Deschutes County and across the Nation.
This year’s crime victims’ rights award winners demonstrate the dedication in our county to serve all victims of crime and ensure equal access to services throughout the life of an investigation, criminal prosecution, and beyond.
Congratulations to winners:
· Sari Ourada
Sari is a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) with Rapid Sexual Assault Victim Exam Investigations. Sari treats every single victim/patient and family with the utmost respect, compassion, and equity. She makes them feel welcome, valued, and truly cared for in an environment that can feel unknown and frightening. She takes the time to listen, explains their rights before completing an exam, explains each step of the process thoroughly, and ensures that each family has the necessary follow-up services in place before they leave the hospital. Sari truly embodies the theme of “rights, access, and equity for all victims” and demonstrates this daily through her incredible work.
· Milagros Aparicio
Milagros provides outstanding service to crime victims through her work with the Latino Community Association. Many crimes committed against our immigrant and Latinx community members go unreported, and when they are reported, these victims of crime face challenges with language access and uncertainties with an unfamiliar legal system. This past year, in the midst of the pandemic, which disproportionately impacted our Latinx community and created even more work for LCA, Milagros took on an immense amount of work to support a local Latino man who was assaulted and it was charged as a bias crime. Milagros and the victim decided to use the experience as a way to create more awareness on how belonging begins with all of us, and with the support of LCA and a local videographer, shared his story for Welcoming Week in September 2021. Milagros’ work is not just supporting individual crime victims, she visions ways to make a greater impact to the broader community, so that our immigrant and Latinx neighbors know they will be supported and welcomed when they are victims of crime.
· Barbara Hendrix
Barbara (Barb) Hendrix is selected for our Lifetime Achievement/Outstanding service to Crime Victims. Barb served our community for many years in both her capacity as a child therapist and forensic interviewer with the KIDS Center. She served on the Deschutes County child abuse multi-disciplinary team for over 10 years. Barb was passionate about always being available for both victims and their families; she was compassionate, caring, and always made sure they felt heard and understood. Barb was a strong voice for victims of crime as she testified in court as an expert in her field on dozens of occasions. During COID while everything was on lock down, Barb worked with a young victim living out of county because her mother was unable to find a therapist in their community willing to see her. Although Barb is no longer with us, her legacy lives on. Through the families that she served, the lives she touched, all the people that she worked with, and family she loved.
