The Alabama District Attorneys Association and the state’s Office of Prosecution Services (OPS) on Monday announced the expansion of a program in which specially trained dogs assist victims of crime when they testify in court or to investigators, making the Yellowhammer State the first in the United States to have a statewide facility dog program.
This program, named Helping Every Survivor Realize Their Opportunity and Strength (HERO), was started as a one-person mission by Tamara Martin, OPS special projects coordinator, along with her facility dog, Willow.
A press release explained, “Willow is a facility dog, well-trained to be a calming presence for traumatized victims. She is at their feet when they must replay to the court or investigators the painful, heartbreaking stories of their physical or sexual assault. Most often, these are children who need a friendly, furry companion to feel relax enough to open up about the horrors they experienced.”
While Willow was the first dog in Alabama entrusted with and trained to handle this responsibility, the program (once self-funded by Martin) has since grown to see four additional facility dogs active on the job.
Besides Willow working in Montgomery, Zurg (Clanton), Mandy (Dothan), Wilson (Huntsville) and Josette (Phenix City) currently serve crime victims in the state.
“The training starts at birth,” Martin, Willow’s handler the past five years, advised. “They are conditioned to handle the stress, loud noises and things other dogs would consider threatening. They are trained to associate certain sounds with pleasure rather than sounds they should be afraid of.”
In August, Shelby County and Lauderdale County are set to see their own facility dogs join that exclusive club.
However, the good news got even better on Monday, when it was announced that OPS has been awarded a $700,00 Victims of Crime Act grant through the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs to expand the program. The grant is for one year, but is renewable.
Shelby County District Attorney Jill Lee, also president of the DA association, said, “We are just thrilled. We’ve seen Willow in action in Shelby County and witnessed firsthand what a difference she made with the victims. This grant means not only our circuit, but others across Alabama as well, will have these wonderful friends of the court available when needed.”
Now, within a year, there could be as many as 12 trained and certified dogs assisting crime victims, spread across the state. Etowah, Covington, Baldwin, Tallapoosa and Morgan counties are the next potential beneficiaries.
Trisha Mellberg, deputy executive director for the OPS and the DA association, said, “These dogs are amazing.”
“We applied for the ADECA grant because we have seen how these dogs help victims as they have to relive the very worst moments of their lives,” she outlined. “It’s hard especially for children to talk about what happened to them to strangers. These dogs put them at ease so they are comfortable enough to tell about their experiences.”
Another big contributor to the success of the program is Canine Companions for Independence, a national nonprofit that provides the dogs and trains them. Training for each dog costs about $50,000, according to Martin, who added that Canine Companions places the dogs free of charge.
DA association and OPS Executive Director Barry Matson commented Martin, Mellberg, Canine Companions and Governor Kay Ivey, whose office presented the grant, for making the program and its expansion possible.
“This puts Alabama at the very forefront when it comes to assisting visitors in the courtroom as well as when they are interviewed by police and prosecutors,” Matson commented. “Other states have looked at what we are doing with the dogs and want to copy it. We even had a visitor from Australia who came here last year to see what we are doing in order to help them with their start-up program.”
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
