SIOUX CITY, Iowa (Iowa Media Wire) — This week is National Crime Victims Week. The Woodbury County Domestic Violence Workgroup held a conference, reminding the public to seek help, speak up, and be supportive.
The press conference was held at the Woodbury County Courthouse and aimed to advise the public on ways they can contain help if they are a victim of any crime, including violent crimes, rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault.
Coordinator of the Iowa Judicial Branch Lissa DeRoos said that anybody who is a victim of a crime to know that there is hope out there and recovery from it.
“When people have become victimized and are surviving a crime there are many services available within our community, we have a safe place is one, one of the big agencies that works with people who have survived crimes specifically domestic violence,” said DeRoos.
Each crime is different, but it narrows down to reaching out to supportive groups.
“Depending on the nature of the crime, we would certainly want people to reach out to law enforcement as a first measure, that way they can get the police report filed and if somebody needs to be held accountable, then the police can take it to the next steps and inform what the next steps would be,” said DeRoos.
According to a Sioux City Police Department’s press release from 2022, 20 million crime victimizations occurred daily, and more than 6.6 million of those were as a result of violent crimes.
DeRoos said that the domestic violence workgroup works collaboratively to create a simple process to go through for anyone being a victim of a crime.
“Our domestic violence workgroup kind of works as a collaborative to make our system response better when people have become victimized or have survived a crime,” said DeRoos.
The reason for strengthening the domestic violence workgroup to help victims is because of the 6.6 million crimes, only half of that 42% were reported to police according to the press release.
This year’s National Crime Victims Week theme is “How would you help? Options, Services, and hope for crime survivors.” This way victims of any crime can feel comfortable obtaining any type of support they might need as well as resources and how to take action.
If you want to be part of that big change, you can visit the Office for Victim’s Crimes website at ovc.ojp.gov.
National Crime Victims Week runs from April 21st to April 27th.