01/25/2022
I have something to say...
Well, we are now almost a month into 2022 and all the hope and promise we had for a new year have quickly fallen by the wayside. Crime and lawlessness are spiking everywhere and the people who were elected and appointed to protect us continue to create an environment for criminals to flourish. It is sad, depressing, exhausting, demoralizing and every other destructive emotional term there is out there. And on top of it all, I still can’t grasp how it is that we even got to this place. How did the public remain quiet and not speak up while their communities crumbled around them? Why does the public continue to elect individuals that are pro-criminal and anti-victim? Why do our elected officials continue to pass and support legislation that allows for more crime and less public safety? It baffles my mind.
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of my personal survival. And in the 20 years I have been fighting for the rights of crime victims, I have never seen things so bad. It’s almost like the last 20 years of progress that we have made has been destroyed overnight. I wake up in the morning feeling like I am living in the movie Groundhog Day. I wake up it is twenty years ago, and I am once again at square one in my fight. I am once again starting over. Day after day after day after day. To say that this can make you feel victimized, useless, and ineffective is an understatement.
To make things even worse, judges now are jumping on the anti-victim bandwagon. They are starting to redefine public safety and how they view the role of victims in the system. And not in a good way. Recently, a Sacramento County judge made the following statement, “…District Attorneys do not represent crime victims, they represent the People of the State…Thus, District Attorneys do not stand in the shoes of crime victims as their de facto legal representatives; they instead represent the public at large.” Excuse me? Victims are not who DAs represent? Victims are not “people of the state?” What in the world is going on with our criminal justice system? At what point did judges stop caring about victims? At what point did District Attorneys stop caring about victims? At what point did the public stop caring about victims? How can this all be unravelling so quickly and so mindlessly? For those of you who know me, you know that I don’t give up easily. I made my commitment to help survivors of crime get on with their lives twenty years ago and that commitment doesn’t diminish with time. It only gets stronger. Regardless of the never-ending treadmill I feel myself running on, making forward progress a mere fantasy, I have grown stronger in my fight. Isn’t that what treadmills are supposed to do in the end? Make you stronger? Make you more agile? Build your endurance? I almost lost my life over a treadmill and I made a promise that I am keeping forever. If there is someone and some organization out there ready to continue in this fight it is me and my organization Crime Survivors. We can’t be outdone by judges simply redefining what and who a victim is. We can’t be outdone by soft on crime District Attorney’s committed to enslaving the law-abiding public with out-of-control crime and lawlessness. And we won’t be undone by criminals and those who wish to do harm to others. That you can be certain.
So, as we get 2022 underway, here is what I say to all those crime loving, anti-victim groups out there, BRING IT ON! We are ready. The public is tired of living in fear and living without hope. No matter how much you try and coddle the criminals, we will survive. No matter how much you try to misinform the public and steal our identity, we will survive. I guess that is what is so great about being a survivor, no matter what you throw at us, we do what we do…and this is survive. With Faith, there is Hope... Healing to Thrive!
Patricia Wenskunas
"A Voice for the Voiceless"
www.crimesurvivors.org
