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Terrace Review —- Wednesday, December 18, 1991 5

by Michael Kelly

"We need a treatment centre
for victims and offenders. We
won’t do anything about family
violence unless we look at the
whole problem."

. This is the parting reflection
from Karen Walker, the woman
who started up the Terrace Vic-
tim Assistance Program in the
fall of 1988 and has nurtured
and overseen it through the three
years since then. She is leaving
Friday for a new job in Mani-
toba, and being replaced, appro-
priately enough, by Jan Le-
francois, who started out as
volunteer in the first group

when the program began.

Walker’s call for a treatment
centre in Terrace comes from the
heart of her experience in setting
up counselling for victims of
every sort of crime, Although
people affected by all kinds of
criminal acts come to the pro-
gram for help, those who suffer
from family violence and sex-
related crimes need by far the
most help. And those who don’t
get that help, ironically, are in
gteater than average danger of
becoming offenders themselves.

trained for victim assistance

Treatment centre
seen as response |
to family violence

During her three years with the
program, Walker says, she has
seen in several instances the
complete cycle in which victims
evolve into offenders. These
involve pre-adolescent boys who
came to the program for help as
victims of sex offenses or viol-
ence, only to reappear later as

_adolescents on the other side of

the equation, having become sex
offenders themselves.

One of the most disturbing
aspects of that cycle is that
people in their early teenage
years are making career choices.
Adolescent sex offenders can be
governed in that choice, perhaps
even subconsciously, by access
to victims, choosing careers in
teaching, social work or other
child-oriented fields. "It’s like
an alcoholic who plans his
weekends around the places
where he’s going to drink,"
notes Lefrancois.

A treatment centre would be a
device for interrupting that vic-
tim-to-offender cycle, to counsel
both victims and offenders, to
give people the opportunity to
reclaim their lives. "It would be
staffed with people who are

— Continued on page 31

SAVE AS MUCH AS

i

on Furniture for every room in your Home

; OPEN T0 THE PUBLIC
59 Locate

Terrace

4730 Keith Ave.
635-4111

MON - WED & SAT:
THURS & FRI:
SUNDAY:

10 am - 6 pm
10 am - 93 pm
Closed

Roadside screening devices are in the hands
of police officers across the province. These
devices are being used to detect drinking
drivers, to measure their levels of impair-
ment, and to get them off British Columbia's
roads BEFORE they kill or injure someone.
Because...

WE ARE OUT TO STOP DRINKING DRIVERS

DRINKING DRIVING |
COUNTERATIACK

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