I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Michigan State University students and community activists from the greater Lansing region will descend on Veteran’s Memorial Courthouse in downtown Lansing Friday morning for a planned eight hour protest. They will protest from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.
MSU students Emily Syrja, Matt Staples and Elizabeth Battiste prepare signed to protest Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III.
Dunnings has since told various media outlets, including Fox 17 in Grand Rapids and the Grand Rapids Press, that the victim can come back to the department and he will meet with her and review the case and consider possibly issuing charges.
The students preparing for the protest want that to happen.
“My biggest desire would be for the victim to get her day in court before a judge and jury,” says Matt Staples, 22.
“I hope to inspire an open and honest conversation about how safe our community is,” says Elizabeth Battiste, 20. “I’m not expecting the basketball players to be kicked off the team or convicted of a crime, but I want there to be justice for the victim.”
For 20-year-old Emily Syrja the goal of the protest stretches beyond the case of the basketball players.
“I hope it can bring attention to not just this case, but to the lack of prosecution of cases in general and in this county in particular,” she says, as she continues to letter her sign for the protest.
“If I was a rapist, I would want to live in Ingham County,” says Battiste.
That’s pretty high rhetoric, but it’s backed up by the experience of the three in the trenches dealing with sexual assaults and their aftermath in the community. They are members of the Sexual Assault Crisis Intervention student group. The group works with sexual assault programs doing training and outreach, but it also works in immediate crisis response.
Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital runs a certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner’s Program (SANE) where nurses with special training in forensic evidence collection and testimony for court conduct exams of victims of sexual assault.
When a victim shows up at the hospital, the staff page the SANE staff member on call. That page also goes to the volunteers from the MSU student group. Both the SANE staff member and the volunteers meet at the hospital. There they introduce themselves to the victim. The goal of the SANE staff member is collect evidence, as well as provide medical care. The volunteers are there to provide support and resources for the victim. They also provide primary crisis counseling.
Staples, who has been involved in the program for seven months, has responded to nearly 40 cases. Battiste, who has been working with the program for two years, and Syrja, who has been involved for a year, wouldn’t say how many cases they have been involved in.
Of the nearly 40 cases Staples has been involved in, he is aware of only one case that resulted in an arrest. Part of that, he says, is that the follow up from the program happens only once, unless the victim takes advantage of other services they provide. But he says the real issue is that many victims won’t report the crime.
Battiste says there are several reasons for that. “Some of them can’t give a very good description of the person who did it, because it was some one they didn’t know,” she says. “Sometimes — a lot of times — the victim knows the attacker too well. They are a family member or some one they have had a relationship with.”
As a result, when a situation like the Wonders Hall incident come up, and the prosecutor declines to issue charges, it drives victims further away from the legal system, the activists say.
“It says justice is unsure. They don’t know if they want to spend their time on it because it is not a community shattering event,” says Staples. “It’s a quiet event.”
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