EVERETT – The woman asked how to talk to her young son about the unspeakable.
The Seattle mother’s call for help found its way to Everett and inside the cramped office of Families and Friends of Violent Crime Victims. It came shortly after the boy’s school librarian, Mary Cooper, and her daughter Susanna Stodden were slain on a popular hiking trail east of Granite Falls on July 11.
That kind of call is just one of hundreds the agency’s staff and volunteers field when violence slams into a community.
For more than three decades, the nonprofit agency has helped survivors as grief grabs, pulls and threatens to suffocate once-vibrant and productive mothers, fathers, children and friends.
But the elimination of a federal grant, waning donations and no fixed funding have recently forced the agency to make cuts to its already small staff.
That could mean less help for crime victims and their families.
“We’re just struggling to keep the doors open,” said Mark Roe, a Snohomish County criminal deputy prosecutor and board member of Families and Friends of Violent Crime Victims.
National and local grief experts say crime victims can’t afford to lose the services provided by the Everett-based agency.
Neither can the community, they said.
“When something traumatic happens, it’s like throwing a rock into a pond. There’s the initial hard ‘kerplunk,’ but you see the ripples go out more than you could imagine,” said Ken Gaydos, a police and fire chaplain for south Snohomish County for more than 30 years.
Unattended to, grief can and does affect an entire community, said David Kessler, counselor and co-author of “On Grief and Grieving.”
“When grief isn’t attended to, people tend to be less productive. And also, many times when grief isn’t given the help it needs, we see misplaced anger or fear,” Kessler said. “We’re a society that underestimates grief, and we pay the price.”
Kessler said the largest requests for his books on grief come from inmates in prisons and drug rehabilitation centers.
“Without support, there can be long-term impacts such as substance abuse or depression,” said Susan Howley, director of public policy for the National Crime Center for Victims.
“Once you have become a victim, you enter a world that is outside the realm of the human experience,” Kessler said.
Agencies such as Families and Friends of Violent Crime Victims, however, can help people heal and return to productive lives, Howley said.
The group runs peer support groups, does one-on-one interventions, runs a 24-hour crisis line and provides legal advocacy for victims and their families.
“We can’t take away the pain. We can offer to stand beside them in that pain, and it doesn’t scare us,” said Jenny Wieland, the agency’s executive director. “You see people build new lives. You see when they can smile again and laugh, work and form new friendships.”
The agency has provided services to parents, friends and coworkers of the victims of some of the most heinous crimes in the state.
It does it all without any funding from the state, counties or cities it serves. Instead, it relies on a dwindling pot of money from the federal government, donations and the work of volunteers, a number of whom are survivors.
Bill Burkheimer, whose daughter, Rachel, was murdered in 2002, recently completed training to volunteer with the agency that helped his family.
“I didn’t know what Families and Friends was, but there they were on the first day in the courthouse,” Burkheimer said. “They literally guided us through every single minute.”
Burkheimer wants to pay back that help, saying the agency isn’t just for families whose loved ones were murdered, but for anyone who has been a victim of violent crime.
He said it seems wrong that the agency has to beg for money to fill such a critical role in the community.
Roe said it’s hard to understand why there isn’t more funding to support crime victims.
“I’ve watched the worst criminals get everything their heart desires paid for by the taxpayers, but the victims and survivors don’t get squat,” Roe said.
The agency’s board recently was forced to make cuts, including laying off its full-time victim advocate. Rather than lose the advocate’s services completely, Snohomish County Sheriff Rick Bart found money to fund an advocate position in the sheriff’s office for a few months.
“We use Families and Friends because it fills a void,” said Bart, the board president. “You don’t leave people hanging.”
Reporter Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463 or hefley@heraldnet.com.
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