The goal of this training is to improve the criminal justice experience for victims by showing victim advocates how they can support victims at each stage of the criminal justice system process.

Often, when sexual assault victims seek advocates’ advice about whether and how to navigate the criminal justice system, advocates feel at a loss because they are unfamiliar with that system, they do not know how to advise their clients or whether advocates themselves may have a role to play in providing much-needed support to victims who do report through the many stages of a criminal justice proceeding. 

In addition to the modules in this web training that provide an overview of these stages, Module 7, “How Victim Advocates Can Support Victims at Each Stage of the Criminal Justice System,” shows advocates how they can improve the criminal justice experience for victims by bringing their own advocacy into the system. That advocacy must respect the ways advocates’ roles differ from those of the criminal justice professionals such as law enforcement and prosecutors. It must acknowledge that because, in criminal cases victims are witnesses, not parties, the prosecutor is not their lawyer and they cannot control how their case is conducted.  But even with those limitations victim advocates can provide critical support to their clients at every point in a case, from deciding whether to make a report, to helping victims secure information prosecutors are supposed to give them under victims’ rights laws, to managing victims’ expectations about the outcome of a trial.

Victim advocates’ critical role in supporting their clients in the aftermath of a sexual assault trial clearly extends to every phase of the criminal justice process.