Lyon County group reaches out to expand knowledge, support for assault victims

MARSHALL – Their mission is an important one: to help people who have been sexually assaulted find healing and justice. But many area residents may not even have heard of them.

The members of the Lyon County Sexual Assault Multidisciplinary Action Response Team (SMART) are hoping to change that, said SMART member Holly Johnson. In the process, they also hope to improve response guidelines that will help meet sexual assault victims’ needs.

Johnson said the group wants to reach out to community members and is also looking for feedback on how they can help.

“We always want to know, what are we doing good at? What do we need to do to improve?” Johnson said.

Lyon County SMART was formed in 2009, with the help of grant funding authorized by the Violence Against Women Act, Johnson said. The idea behind SMART was to bring together all the different agencies in Lyon County that investigate sexual assaults and work with victims.

“There’s a wide variety of members,” Johnson said. SMART members include law enforcement, medical and mental health providers, advocate groups like New Horizons Crisis Center, and members of area faith and community groups.

“We’re the only (SMART) in southwest Minnesota,” Johnson said, although there are other groups with similar missions in the region.

SMART members meet to develop protocols “to keep the victim in mind” when responding to sexual assaults, Johnson said. The Lyon County protocols, completed in 2013, include guidelines on topics like advocating for victims, reporting, investigating and prosecuting sexual assaults.

Johnson said SMART also provides information to help answer questions from people who have experienced sexual assault – questions like “Where can I go for help?” and “Should I seek medical attention?” SMART resources also talk about what a person’s options are if they are trying to decide whether to report being assaulted.

However, there’s still areas where SMART can improve its services in Lyon County, Johnson said. After evaluating, she said, “We realize we need to look at our medical response,” which could include offering additional training for health providers at area hospitals. For example, she said, it’s not possible to predict when a health care provider will need to help a person who has been sexually assaulted. “So, making sure all of the emergency department staff have the training and resources they need is important.”

Community education is another area where SMART can grow, Johnson said.

“We realized not a lot of people had heard about SMART,” she said. While the group has been part of public events like health fairs, that only reaches so many people, Johnson said.

Johnson said SMART plans to do more community education about sexual assault, perhaps by hosting guest speakers or other events.

“We want to do some education in the schools, also,” Johnson said.

Part of SMART’s ongoing process of evaluating and improving its responses also includes gathering feedback from community members, and from sexual assault victims, Johnson said.

More information about SMART, as well as resources for victims of sexual assault, is available at the group’s website, www.lyoncountysmart.org, or by contacting New Horizons Crisis Center, at 507-532-5764.