>> Jennifer: We created a learner guide for today's session.

The learner guides are created as a tool for to you extend your learning on the topic.

Feel free to explore the guide alone or perhaps with others.

It's a great way to take some next steps and apply your learning and you can customize it.

If you have specific things that you'd like to bring to your conversation or your discussion with your team, make that guide work for you.

Alright.

We're going to go ahead and get our recording started, and I'm so excited to welcome our presenter today, Miranda Dube.

I actually forgot to ask you how to say your last name.

>> Miranda: It's Dube.

>> Miranda Dube a witness victim advocate, former academic librarian and coauthor of "LIS Interrupted: Intersections it was of mental Illness and Library Work."

We're excited to have you with us today.

I feel strongly about the topic and the work libraries can do to support survivors.

Thank you for coming to bring your great learning and expertise in this area.

>> Miranda: Thank you so much for having me.

Do I have control of my slides now?

Perfect.

Awesome.

So as Jennifer was saying, I work as a victim advocate currently but just to give a little bit of background about myself, I started in libraries in 2010.

My first experience with advocacy outside of libraries was in 2015, a year of service with a program called Americorps Victim Assistance Program it's local to New Hampshire and I spent a year working with victims of misdemeanor domestic violence and sex assault crimes and that really informed my learning, my research interest when I went to graduate school, how I engaged with my community when I worked in academic libraries and have since kind of made that more of a full-time thing and do my work with libraries on the side doing presentations like this, ensuring my experience and helping you all meet the needs of your community.

So I want to give a little bit of a shout out to anybody who is on here who is either, you know, the only one or one of very few in your library that is a whole mess of things you have to do, right?

When we are talking about different tools that you can use in your library and things today, there's going to be a lot that may not apply to you.

So I encourage everybody to take what resonates and leave what doesn't.

If you have questions about your unique library situation, my email is at the end of the slides.

I encourage people to reach out if you have more unique circumstances that happened.

I did a presentation a few years ago and one of the people who was there left, went back to work the next day and emailed me, was like I got back to work and we had a situation with a survivor and we were not sure if we handled that correctly and we were able to problem solve that together.

This is my biggest thing for the day, self-care.

We are talking about a really heavy topic.

It is not just something that impacts our patrons.

It is something that impacts us in our personal life, if not directly through family and friends and loved ones so being mindful of how this material is feeling in your body.

If you are feeling a little bit more elevated or amped or stressed and need to take a break, please take a break.

The webinar is recorded.

I want you to take care of yourself and not focus on missing things.

You can always go back and watch the slides at a slower pace if you need to.

You can also always reach out to me if there's some processing you want to do about any of the material and things like that.

If you're watching this with colleagues, if you're doing a group viewing, things like that, being present for one another, if somebody needs support, just giving that peer-to-peer support, if it is needed.

So our general outline, we are going to talk about recognizing signs of abuse and this beginning part of the presentation is really geared at making sure we are all in the same page, while we're moving through the rest of the stuff.

Some of this might be redundant for people who are a little bit more knowledgeable about domestic violence, sex assault, stalking, things like that, but I think it's important we all kind of have shared definitions as we're moving forward for the rest of the conversations.

We're going to talk about what to do if you suspect that somebody is being abused.

We're going to identify best practices for responding to disclosures, if that were to happen and learn how to provide resources to people in our community.

These are some things to know about the way that I do my presentations.

I try to my best to use victim, Sur vafr and target interchangeably and to not get too narrow sighted on when I am using them.

The biggest thing is using the language that the person uses for themselves.

If I'm in a one-on-one conversation and somebody is identifying as a survivor, I'm not going to keep calling them a victim.

They identify as a survivor.

I tend to use victim to discuss the pre-leaving of abuse or transitioning from maybe not understanding that they're in an abusive relationship to recognizing that, kind of that transitionary phase and survivor for most of the post phase and target is a term specifically used for people who are victims of stalking.

You'll hear them interchangeably.

If you wonder why I use many different ones, that is why.

There is a lot of ways people identify.

I do my best to be gender neutral.

We are all human, all grew up in a society taught men are Bussive and women are victims and that is the only narrative and it is a lot of work to reprogram your brain so I certainly will slip up and use hetero-normative examples at times, I will fall into the category of using he/him pronouns for an abuser and I use this as a blanket statement in the beginning to call out anybody can be a victim.

There are is no rule, guideline about who is a victim and who is a perpetrator.

Occasionally I'll say KV, domestic violence, I'll say SA, it means sex assault, shorthand unfortunately a very ingrained part of my language now given my job.

I talk about domestic violence a lot in my day job.

Saying it that many times it becomes shorthand to DV.

The first thing we'll talk about signs of abuse and talk on how you might see these in a library, right, because it's great to have knowledge about domestic violence and sex assault and stalking and human trafficking but how we apply that professionally can be different.

I'll give you examples of ways you might see these signs.

I really want to stress that seeing one of these signs is not an indicator that somebody is definitively being abused.

This is not a checklist.

This is not to, you know, use as a guide for maybe needing to make a report.

Ultimately that comes down to you knowing your patrons, knowing what is unusual, not usual, and your protocols that you have in place.

So for adult victims of domestic violence, anybody who has been around the world of DV, heard of the power and control.

This is a simplified version.

If it's interesting to you, I encourage you to look up different variations of it.

  They'll go into more subtle forms of abuse.

The thing we think most is physical abuse.

The bruises, black eye, broken bones.

The most dangerous form of physical violence in domestic violence is going to be that strangulation.

So there are studies that show that strangulation is typically the last thing right before somebody is murdered by their spouse.

So that is very high up on the threat level, when police respond to a domestic violence call, there is a thing called a lethality assessment protocol they go over and it's essentially to gauge how dangerous the situation is for the victim and saying yes to my partner has strangled me is an automatic screen in that is high lethality and we work on getting those people access to resources as quick as possible.

But the flipside of that is physical abuse is actually a sign of a really inept abuser.

They have no other skills essentially to keep the victim in control other than physical threats.

So most of the time, victims of domestic violence are not necessarily experiencing physical abuse, because they're experiencing all the other things that are keeping them in control for the abuser.

Those are those threats against the children, threats against pets, cutting them off from money, monitoring them, making them feel worthless, and that the only value they have is in relation to their abuser.

So ways that you might see this in expression in a library is going to be that lack of being able to make decisions, right, because I have no autonomy.

My abuser doesn't allow me to have autonomy and I'm not capable of making decisions in public, that's something my abuser needs to do for me.

They might not engage with staff because talking to people can prompt a lot of spark in the abuse cycle, especially if it's somebody of the opposite sex, so if I was the victim in a straight relationship and I was seen by my abuser talking to a male staff member at a library, that is inherently dangerous.

It's going to bring up those sparks of jealousy with an abuser.

They're going to accuse me of cheating.

That's why you want to go to the library, things like that, and it's dangerous.

You might see them not engaging with staff as much or anybody else in the library.

Obviously again, bruises and injuries, but there are so many other ways that people can abuse victims that are not visible.

That lack of financial independence, maybe they're struggling with paying fines.

Maybe they are frequently saying I have to talk to my partner about getting that money.

Maybe there's somebody you know to be really involved with their kids at the library, but when it comes to paying fines and things like that, all of a sudden it's this other parent who you've never seen who is not seemingly involved that needs to, the person needs to get permission from to come pay the fines.

There will also be self-blaming for their partner's behavior.

This is something we use when trying to identify who may be the victim and who may be abuser is the way in which they talk about their partner.

So victims will often blame themselves for the perp's behavior, so it was my fault.

I upset him.

I angered him.

I was acting out of line.

I'm crazy.

It's not his fault.

I shouldn't have done that.

Abusers put the blame on the victim.

She pushes my buttons.

She's the one who makes me out of control.

If she hadn't done X, YOZ, I wouldn't have hit her.

That language can be indicative in general in life of who is maybe abusive and who is the victim.

When you see that dynamic in the library how they're talking about their partner.

Gas lighting has gotten more prominent in culture.

To give a brief overview, convincing someone reality is not their reality.

Eight an oversimplified version of that definition if you're interested in learning more.

I encourage you to do so but those are things where gas lighting is also easier to notice when you're outside of the bubble of the gas lighting, so the victim may not be aware that's what's happening but looking at it from the outside, it can usually be very easy to see.

So children who have witnessed domestic violence if anybody is familiar with the ACE scores it is on there, it is in my county that qualifies victims and their children to be screened in for additional services if children were in the home when it happened.

So they're often going to be very fearful, but they're not necessarily going to be fearful in the way that you think.

They have learns that the abusive parent holds the power and control, and they will learn very quickly that being on the good side of that abusive parent is the way to stay safe, and kids are very good at keeping themselves safe, whatever they have to do, to do so.

So that may mean that those kids are following the abuser's thought process, blaming the other parent for pushing the abusive parent's button.

They may not be defending the victim.

They may be defending the perpetrator, and that can be a hard thing to kind of listen to, and figure out in your brain, but the kid's goal is staying safe and they'll do whatever it takes to do that.

They also need a caregiver.

If I take the victim's side and I know that we'll say it's my dad that's the victim has no access to money, that I'm going to lose my house if I'm siding with him and I'm defending him because mom holds all the power and control, now I don't have any caregivers, I don't have a place to live.

I don't have a way to get food in my belly.

That's not sustaining, and so kids will often be supportive of the abuser.

For kiddos who have been sexually assaulted or abused, there is a range of behaviors.

We talk about this a lot when we're talking about victim responses to trauma, or trauma responses in general.

There is no one way that anybody responds and I work in courts now, right, so there is jury trials where members of the public come in and don't necessarily have an understanding of complex trauma responses.

So they come into a trial fully expecting the victim of that crime to behave a certain way, whether that is crying uncontrollably on the stand or composed.

They have their own vision of it.

We have to work hard with jury members to do education that victims can respond in a variety of ways.

They can be super monotone and dissociated and not having any type of emotion or inflection, all the way up to that uncontrollable crying.

I've had to take people off the stand before because they're having panic attacks and about to throw up and no response is better than the other.

So with kiddos we're also seeing a wide range.

You might see absolutely nothing.

This behavior might have been so normalized to them, that they don't even know that what else' happening is inappropriate.

They don't know they're being sexually assaulted or the news which is why statute of limitations for kids who have been assaulted is so lengthy.

It is take them a lot of time to realize what happened to them is inappropriate and additionally to disclose and come forward and want to talk about it takes even longer.

So the typical things that you may see in terms of the big red flags, going back to bed wetting, sexually inappropriate behavior, whether that's touching other kiddos in a way that's inappropriate, touching themselves in front of other kid dos.

They might not be bad people, they might remind them of the person abusing them, they might have some nightmares which can go into bed wetting as well, and you might see a general regressing in behaviors.

Yes statute of limitations varies state by stated unless it's a federal crime.

So for aggressing behaviors it mite not be across the board the 9-year-old is acting 6.

It can be person specific.

I had a case a few years ago the kiddo acted normal age appropriate with everybody except the abuser and went back to a 3-year-old with "dada, mama" and talking in a young voice and acting like they were incapable of doing certain things they had the skill for, tying shoes, getting dressed, things like that.

And I think it's important to note here obviously a lot of these bed wetting regressing behaviors you might not see in a library but you might see a non-offending parent coming in and being like oh, Tommy started wetting the bed again.

Having a hard time with potty training.

Do you have any books about potty training so we can work on this again?

It's not a checklist.

That doesn't inherently mean anything bad is happening.

If you see that sign with a lot of other signs it's a thing to take into consideration.

And then teens and adults who have been sexually assaulted tend to exhibit similar but different behavior.

Certainly anything we just talked about with kiddos you can see with teens and adults.

Bed wetting occurs in adulthood as well but more of it is that social emotional stuff, so depression, anxiety, engaging in self-harm, having suicidal ideation, changing the way they look, whether that's hair, shape of body, things like that.

Oftentimes it's a big disassociation between what their body looked like while they were being assaulted and who they are now.

They want a stark difference between the two to create kind of a rift between those links.

I actually am going to go back, I want to talk on drug and alcohol use.

Drugs and alcohol are an excellent tool for abusers to use, if somebody is struggling with addiction, they may fuel that addiction to keep them in control.

They may force somebody to take drugs and get them addicted to something, and then they are their own supplier, so they have control over that.

So just being mindful, I think.

We as a culture have gotten a little bit more educated on substance misuse but there is still pockets where people are judgy about that and think it's something you need to get over or get control over, you know, just stop drinking and it can be a lot more complicated than that.

For people who are being stalked, this is probably one of the types of victims where they don't know they're a victim more often than they do.

Stalkers who are good at being stalkers are not letting it be known that they're stalking you.

It's that secret monitoring, things like that.

There might be some sense that a victim has that things are kind of weird, but they're not anything overt, and stalking is probably one of the harder things that we prosecute here because people can do really creepy things that are still legal and it's still stalking if we look at it from a trauma-informed perspective.

It's still stalking, monitoring somebody's social media with fake accounts and things like that.

That's still stalking but doesn't always qualify as a crime.

So they might not be aware they're being stalked but they have a sense something is iffy, might have a suspicion who the person is, might not, might be a friend, family member, it could be a complete stranger.

Those people are tending to have a lot of security questions, because if I don't know what's going on, I know something weird and creepy is happening and a certain person seems to be most of the places I go and it's weird coincidence that I keep running into them and they never talk to me or approach me.

I see them all the time, it might just be general security questions.

Where is your exit and how long can you see it take for the police to respond here?

Do you have a police officer in your library?

Things like that.

And then talking about human trafficking, which I think especially prior to doing my job here, I don't know if I fall in the same category as other people, definitely human trafficking lights off a little bulb in my head that is directly linked to sex trafficking, and that is not all it includes at all.

It also includes labor trafficking.

Any trafficking of humans for any reason.

Labor trafficking actually tends to be a little bit more prominent in my area and sex human trafficking is most often family facilitated in my area so it's typically a caregiver of a teen or a young child facilitating sex trafficking, so that they can fuel a drug habit, so they can take, you know, if their own abuser is pimping them out, they take the pressure off.

We most often see familial facilitated sex trafficking and labor trafficking as well.

It's going to be kind of a stuff we see in movies.

They don't have access so their passport, don't have their important documents.

They sleep where they work.

They don't have money for food because all of their money goes back to their employer, because they're paying off debt for being brought over to the United States and things like that.

So I also want to touch on diverse populations.

So everything we just talked about general umbrella.

We could do a whole presentation on each one of the slides and I'll try to give us a little bit of the same thing with diverse populations in terms of an umbrella.

This is by no means all of it and we could again say each slide to could be its own presentation.

Women with disabilities experience abuse for longer periods of time and abuse from a greater number of perpetrators and fewer options for leaving.

That is an alarming stat.

When you think about it, anybody with a disability especially if it's mobility related is relying on a caregiver to take care of them, if that caregiver is the abuser, that abuser is in control of where I go, how I get my needs met, how I go to the bathroom, how I get fed and also in control of whether or not I can use the phone to call 911.

They'll be monitoring me everywhere I go because I need assistance 24/7 so it is concerning.

We will talk about reporting for a variety of things, but this would be something that would also fall under reporting for a vulnerable adult.

In the LGBT community, these are a lot of ways abusers will additionally abuse their victim.

So in each of these populations, there is something about it that gives an abuser an additional level of power and control.

It's another tool in their toolbox, essentially.

So for somebody who is in the closet, threatening to out them to their employer, to their family, to their friends.

That is another way that you can use control.

If it's somebody who is transitioning and the abuser is withholding their transitioning meds, that's another way to have control.

It is harder for victims in the LGBT community who are not out to ask for assistance.

Even when they are out, it's really hard to go and report because of the trope we talked about earlier, men are abusers and women are victims.

If you are in a lesbian relationship, gay relationship, that doesn't fit that trope and you are walking into a police department that may not understand the narrative that they have in their own head.

They might not be aware of that bias that they have and they're going to respond with that bias, and it can make a really traumatizing experience for somebody who is trying to report assault, domestic violence, things like that within a non-heteronormative relationship.

>> Can you explain that double closet phenomena again?

>> Miranda: Yes, the double closet is that you are in the LGBT community and you are also a victim.

So it is hard enough for victims to come forward when all of the stars align, right, when they feel like they're going to be validated, that they have a really good support system, that they have a way to leave.

They have the finances or whatever it is that they need to leave, they have all that.

That's incredibly difficult.

There's a reason why it takes people on average seven times to leave a relationship.

It's also the time that they are most likely to be murdered.

So leaving a relationship is like or identifying as a victim is a huge thing and being in the closet so to speak about that and also being in the closet with your sexual orientation.

For African-American women, there is understandably a resistance to participating in what this article calls the Prison Industrial Complex and associated criminal justice system.

Just because I work in it couldn't mean I also think it's also crap so we'll talk crap for a minute.

This system predominantly prosecutes and puts African-American men into prison, into jails at a higher rate than they do for white men and so there is a sense of loyalty sometimes within the African-American culture that women who are victims don't want to report their abuser, if they're an African-American man because they know the system they end up in is already unfair and unbiased.

I don't think that is an unrealistic view to take.

It is essentially going from what is happening to me as an individual to what is happening as a society, and do I want to perpetuate that, and that is up to each individual.

I'll say it many more times in this presentation, victims know their lives best.

They are the expert and we listen to them, and we trust what they know.

They are the best people to tell us how dangerous a situation is, when the right time is to leave, what they need to leave, what the barriers are and if somebody doesn't want to report, then they don't want to report.

Whatever those reasons are.

In my job I'm happy to talk about what those reasons are, but at the end of the day, I'm not the one who might potentially have to come in and testify in front of a room full of strangers about the worst thing that's happened to me.

So whatever somebody's reason is, is valid.

So not wanting to report makes sense to me for African-American women because they don't want to put an African-American man through the system that is already rigged against them.

On the side we talk about police brutality so all of that is lumped into what I just talked about and I also want to highlight that they're in this study they found that African-American women did not find the term "victim" to be representative of their experience.

They much more fell into the lane of using "survivor" as an identifying term.

For immigrants and refugees, they often aren't eligible for the same services that I might be able to offer to somebody who is not an immigrant.

There is a huge issue with language barriers in my court.

We have, you know, like language line which is where I can call and get an interpreter, but they need to know the court language.

They need to help me translate what is essentially a very complex system into non-complex words, and so working with somebody no's native language isn't English can be challenging and creates that unfair and unequal access to resources and we also have special visas for crime victims so there's a visa, the new visa for a variety of crimes and TVs, trafficking victims.

The new visa doesn't cover every crime.

It tends to cover more higher-level crimes so things like robbery, like criminal threatening I don't believe is on there which you think it would be but robbery with a weapon, physical assaults, things like that, sex assaults help you qualify.

I've been in this position for four and a half years and I helped somebody do one U visa.

We're not super common but they exist and it's important people know they exist so more victims who are concerned about that barrier of their visa status have an option if they want to take it.

And then for male identifying victims or survivors, there is a huge stigma.

We talked about it earlier, men being aus bookers and women being victims.

If you're a man grown up in the toxic masculinity, I should have been able to fight it off, do something more I'm a man, big and strong and I should be able to X, Y and Z and that narrative and internal monologue can harm victims coming forward and talking about it.

There's a lot of fear about not being believed.

I think the conversation has hugely shifted at least in my little scope of the internet, where I exist on the world, after Baby Reindeer came out.

If you haven't even Baby Reindeer trigger warning it is not for everybody but I think it is by far the best TV show I've seen that has pushed this conversation forward about male victims.

I also think it is incredibly brave and honorable and deserves a mention.

I get goosebumps when I talk about this, the real-life victim of those victims acted in this show as the victim, portrayed the victim, was essentially himself in this show.

I don't know how much therapy it took to be able to do that, to be able to re-enact your own sex assault seen, to relive the stalking trauma that he went through, but he deserves all of the praise in the world and I am really hopeful that the more people see that, the more we can kind of shift this narrative and kind of reduce the stigma.

There are, I could write a whole dissertation about the trauma responses that are in that show, and we were working in our county on doing a viewing with some of the police officers about how the police responded to a male victim.

So it's providing content for us to further that discussion, and I just think that it's, yes, he did feel so strongly about getting his story out and I am so grateful because it's prompted a lot of really necessary discussion in my own little world and across the country.

So why does any of this matter?

I told you I was giving you umbrella talk so we could all be on the same page but it also matters because if we haven't been trained to look through a certain lens, our policies, our procedures, the way we walk in this world can't be informed.

If I only ever thought women were victims and they were white and poor and drug addicts, I can't then help a victim who doesn't fit that narrative.

I can't provide resources that are going to benefit them in a way that they deserve to be met.

They deserve to be met where they're at, and so knowing more about domestic violence, sex assaults, stalking, trafficking, helps us meet their needs better.

It is an extra thing that we have to learn, yes, but it informs our practice so much and makes us so much more successful at helping that next person who reaches their hand out that I think it's worth the extra time.

Before we switch into unique information needs, I wanted to take a quick break and see if any questions have popped in.

>> I think you answered the question about the statute of limitations varying by state, but I encourage folks to, as I said, if you have questions for the group, feel free to post those or if you have resources or things come to mind, don't hesitate to share those in chat and definitely certainly if you don't feel comfortable asking your question in chat with the full group, you can private chat it to me WebJunction webinars and I can ask it on your behalf.

I think we're goed for now, Miranda.

>> Miranda: This is an overview of a research article done by Lynn Westbrook with an anecdote from me about how you might be able to apply it in your library.

Lynn Westbrook did probably the early stage in research of libraries topics like this, sex assault, domestic violence, trafficking, things like that.

She has a wealth of knowledge, lots of articles.

I list almost all of them in the link sheet.

If you have the time and access behind a couple of them are behind a pay wall to read them, they're very helpful.

A couple of them are on the older side and certainly could be redone but she identified six information-seeking stages for domestic violence victims specifically.

I do think a lot of this can apply to sex assault victims as well with a little bit of tweaking.

So stage one is that initial consideration of a life change.

I talked about this a little bit earlier when I was talking with that transitionary phase.

This is somebody who maybe didn't know they were in an abusive relationship and is slowly learning that what is happening in their relationship is not the norm.

I hear a lot of kiddos talk about this who grow up in domestic violence households, they kind of reach that age where they start going to friend's houses for sleepovers and things, and like oh, my house is not like this house and starting to realize maybe what happens at home isn't normal.

It's that initial consideration and thinking about like what if I want to change this, what does that even look like?

Think about, this is again an oversimplification but if you were to redesign your bedroom.

You're like okay, I need toic. 

Out a paint color and I need to get new furniture and decide on flooring and artwork and the money and I need to take time off of work to do it.

You're thinking what need to go into that project.

For DV victims it's okay if I want to leave, where do I live and how do I get the money away from them because they take my paycheck and I have the kids and what am I going to do with the kids?

I don't have a car.

I don't have a license because they have my license.

How would I get my license back?

It's making that to do list and stage two is during shelter and/or criminal justice engagement.

I like it is identified as and/or.

Not everybody has criminal justice engagement.

Not everybody chooses to report to the police, even people who report to the police choose not to continue moving forward with the case and that is all okay.

So during shelter or the criminal justice engagement process, that is I've made a report or chose on it flee and live in a shelter, and I'm kind of having to figure out what life looks like now, so where do I get those documents that I needed, and how am I going to get food?

How do I get signed up for food stamps and stage three is post shelter, post police planning so that is I've lived at the shelter for X amount of time.

I've been able to decompress a little bit, let the dust settle and where am I going to get an apartment?

How am I going to get a job?

In stage two we figured out how to get the documents to get a job but stage three, what job can I do that's maybe mother's hours because I need to bring my kids to day care and things like that and how do I get them signed up for day care and stage four is legal concerns.

So this can happen at any point.

It's the divorce.

It's the child custody.

It's the we are cosigners on the car and I want the car to myself or I want to get myself off the loan because I know my abuser is not going to pay the bill and they're going to take my credit score and repo cess the car and stage five is specific to immigration related needs, so similar to what we talked about on the other side, getting U visa, signed up for services, getting connected in the community, things like that and stage six is all of those overlapping.

So all of these can happen at the same time, right.

I might be, you know, realizing that I'm in an abusive relationship and in the process of realizing that, the police are called by a neighbor.

So maybe it's not my choice that I'm leaving for the night or that this is kind of been brought forward a little bit sooner than I was ready, but the neighbors heard us arguing and they called the cops and they do the lethality screening with me and they recommend I talk to a crisis center advocate who recommends I go into a hotel for the evening with my kids and think about going into shelter and I don't disagree.

I realize things are not going great in my relationship but it's all of that at once.

What do I need to get tonight?

Where are my important documents?

What do you do with the kids?

Can I take the car, all of that.

There's a lot of situations where this will overlap or they'll move back and forth.

Victims don't always leave and stay gone.

They might go back with their abuser.

They might try to move through a couple of stages and end up back there permanently, I didn't have enough safely to do this and I need to just be back because I need the kids to have care, so that I can go and get a secret job so that I can have secret money so I can leave in a safer way.

And all of these stages are super helpful in evaluating our library.

So if you can pick one, and just look at your library.

And not the whole library.

Maybe you're looking at your collection.

Where in my collection do I have books that are about domestic violence and how would I rate myself?

This is I had asked libraries in New Hampshire to rate themselves on the six information-seeking stages and how well they thought their library met them in a variety of capacities.

This is a spreadsheet from one of them, from the post police planning so things like how to get EBT cards and things like that.

How do I think we're doing on this, we could add three books that are updated about domestic and sex assault.

Maybe made a male victim focused one or maybe we'll do a screening of one of the episodes of Baby Reindeer and have a community conversation about it.

It's a way for you to look at your library without it feeling overwhelming.

We talked about diverse populations and a lot of signs of domestic violence, sex assault, human trafficking and we talked about the information-seeking stages and how much information survivors need to make informed choices that are going to keep them safe, and that can feel overwhelming as a librarian about all of those needs, and so just picking one, a very small subset, maybe it's your programming.

Maybe it's your collection.

Maybe it's your online database.

Maybe it's the signage you have in the library.

What's an actual thing that I can do here?

Is it making another flyer?

Is it just making a Facebook post, if it's domestic violence awareness month, can I make a Facebook post?

The library is a safe place to be and just using that as a way to navigate a path forward, so that you're not feeling overwhelmed and if you're like me doing nothing because you feel too overwhelmed of how much need to be done.

So moving into more practical stuff, we're going to talk about what might happen if you receive a disclosure of abuse or something that is reportable, if you suspect abuse or something that's reportable and how to generally provide support to patrons in your community, regardless of disclosure, suspicion, things like that.

There are a couple different pathways and we're going to get a little bit into legal stuff here, so I'm not, I say I'm not a lawyer.

I'm not giving legal advice.

I'll be redirecting you to where you can get that.

If you know of or suspect a reportable crime is occurring the first thing you need to do is figure out if you're a mandated reporter or not.

The state of New Hampshire, anybody over the age of 18 is a mandated reporter.

Because I am over the age of 18, if I suspect or know that a child is being abused, that somebody who is a vulnerable adult or elderly is being abused, I have to report that to the local government agency that is responsible for that, so whether that's DCYF or BEAS.

There are other states where they are a little bit more strict on who has to report.

They might be limited to things like doctors, nurses, teachers, things like that, and those states typical already have a comprehensive list and you would know if you qualify.

The thing to pay attention to in some states and I've done enough of these presentations and looked at them that I've seen a few, they'll list the professions, that qualify and say "or any other adult" at the end and it's just a few words.

Excuse me.

So being really mindful of reading the entire language about who is a mandated reporter in your state is important.

In New Hampshire, if I knew that somebody was being abused specifically a child, we'll use that example and I didn't report it and somebody finds out that I knew and didn't report T I can be charged criminally for not reporting it.

That's how seriously they take it.

Because you are not a mandated reporter does not mean you can't report, and I think that's where a gray area is for a lot of libraries and having conversations with your staff is really important with your supervisors, with your board of directors on what do we do in this gray area.

If somebody discloses to me that they're being abused, and I'm not a mandated reporter, what do I do with that information if something, at all.

So these are a couple websites where you can search to see if your state has requirements.

I don't love them but they are the best option out there.

Use them as a guide, like I liftlooked up New Hampshire, it's half way accurate but doesn't include the fact anybody over the age of 18 is legally required.

New Hampshire mandated reporting laws and you can read the law exactly as it's written and it will let you know if you're a mandated reporter.

I see a lot happening in the chat so I just want to check in and see if any of them were questions.

I see really good suggestions for materials but no questions so I'm going to keep going.

So when we are reporting to agencies, and again, this is if you are a mandated reporter or if somebody is disclosed and your library protocol is even though you're not a mandated reporter but you're reporting, we want to make sure the person that discloses to us knows our responsibility prior to disclosing to the best that we can.

Anybody who has been in therapy has gotten the speech from your therapist, if you disclose that you are suicidal, homicidal, blah, blah, blah, that they have to report that to an agency.

It is very similar to that.

The studies show that telling somebody our reporting status does not stop them from reporting, if they are ready to talk about what happened, they're ready to talk.

If it's somebody who is not quite sure, yeah, it might, and that is okay.

We want people reporting when they feel safe and ready to do so.

Forcing a disclosure before they're ready is never helpful to their healing process.

If somebody sounds like they're getting close to telling me something that I might be required to report, I'm going to say something like hey, it sounds like what you're about to say is really important and I want to listen, and I also want to make sure you know that if it has to do with X, Y or Z, I have to call DCYF because it's our job to keep you safe.

Do you still want to talk about what you were about to share?

It's as simple as that.

Most often kids are going to keep going.

If it's an adult where they understand the consequences of reporting to agencies, they may not.

Or if it's a kid in and out f DC why, F they may not.

It's important for victims to make choices and not blind-siding them after saying something I'm going to get on the phone now.

They're like what?

I didn't know you had to tell anybody.

I thought I was telling you in secret.

Healthy adults do not keep secrets.

We can help with surprises.

Kiddos who say I want to tell you something it's a secret.

I don't keep secrets.

Healthy adults don't keep secrets.

If they're a teen or adult is something if they want to be involved in the reporting process.

This can be really helpful for teens who are in DV homes or being abused like sexually abused in the home because they are going to get to hear everything you report to the agency, and the way that the agency in my state works is they might reach out to what's considered the non-offending parent to get some context, and then they'll talk to the kid and talk to the abuser, and in all of that conversation, abusers get the opportunity to manipulate what's happening, to manipulate what's being said.

I love nothing more than being able to give a victim the agency to be like nope, this is literally the exact words you can hear them come out of my mouth of what I'm reporting to the agency so there's no chance the abuser can twist that.

We're going to practice active listening while somebody is disclosing.

So we are focusing on understanding them, not just hearing them, but understanding them, making sure if they use a word and we're not sure about it, that we're going to get clarification on that, right?

We're not prying.

This isn't 50 questions but if I'm unclear what a word means.

I'm in my 30s and there's new teen slang and sometimes they say things, I don't know what it means.

I have to ask and I usually regret it but making sure I'm not guessing.

I'm not going to be thinking about my response while they're talking.

So it can be especially if it's a little bit of a lengthier disclosure, I could be thinking oh I wanted to ask that clarifying question and I want to validate that thing they said.

I'm not doing that.

I'm just listening to what they're saying, not making a to do list of what I need to respond with in that moment.

It is a hard skill to do, hard skill to learn.

I encourage you to practice it when you are talking to your friends, to your partner, because it does take some practice to be able to trust yourself that you're going to remember what they said but I promise you, the more you actively listen and don't focus on what you need to respond with, the more you're actually going to hear and the more that that person is going to feel heard by you.

We're going to show we're listening by nodding, by leaning in a little bit, all of those social cues that we do, maybe throwing an um-hum in every once in a while.

Not the whole time they're talking because that doesn't feel welcoming.

We'll ask clarifying questions when we need to but not going to pry.

When we're responding to that disclosure, maybe this is the response that we're giving back, we are going to honor what they did.

Right?

Earlier when I was preempting what I might say to somebody who sounds like they're disclosing.

Sounds like what you have to say is really important.

After they shared, that was really important and I'm really proud of you for sharing that with me.

That was really brave.

You can use whatever words feel right to you, if the person disclosing to you has acknowledged their own feelings about it, say I was really scared but I got really brave today.

You said you were really scared today and I heard that you got really, really brave today to tell me and I'm so proud of you for that.

Mimicking language back is totally appropriate.

We'll move to an area that is quieter, for privacy reasons.

You wouldn't want to be talking about your business with a bunch of strangers around either so we're going to give people that respect if they're choosing to disclose to us and ask how can I best support you.

Again, this is because victims are the experts of their own lives.

They know what they need.

There is a little bit of movement in this, I would say, in terms of kind of how I present this piece to the extent that you can include a couple things that you might be able to offer, giving people a little bit of a picture of what you can offer is helpful, but we don't want to tell them what we're doing.

We're not going to say I'm going to get you out of that house tonight.

One, it's probably not physically possible, not our decision to make and that might not be what they want.

If it's a DV victim who disclosed, how can I best support you?

I have the local crisis center's number.

I also know where the food bank was.

I know you said you were struggling with getting food if that would be helpful.

Also if you want to make the phone call to the crisis center for my office, so it's private and the kids can go hang out for story time, we can make that happen.

Being able to offer some examples of parameters about what you can offer for support is helpful in getting them to frame what they may need, but we're not going to tell them what they need.

And then sometimes you're going to end up in a situation where somebody is disclosing previous trauma and it sounds like a disclosure but there's nothing we need to do with it.

This was so long ago or it was already dealt with legally, or through DCYF and things like that, so being mindful of the context with which someone is sharing something with you.

For me, I was a baby librarian, doing a reference point, and a woman came in to kind of help narrow down her topic.

It was at a community college, it was like a three- to five-page essay.

Trying to to narrow down her topic.

I know you want to study one geographic area but what about it?

That's too big for three to five pages.

And she's like, I want to talk about the rapes that occurred there on children.

And I was like, okay.

A specific angle on that?

We need some more key words, doing all the answers and she blurts out, I was assaulted there as a kid and that's why I'm interested and we fled here and blah, blah, blah, and kind of gave me a little bit of context for her life story.

That isn't something I need to go report.

It was very, very far in her past.

This was, I worked at a community college that had a lot of non-traditional students.

This woman was significantly older than I was, and she said it like she was telling me she had PB&J for lunch.

It was clearly not something that was super traumatic to her and I want to acknowledge that people can talk about their trauma and it doesn't seem traumatizing but I had spent an hour and a half with this woman and it was very clear to me that there was no big trauma response, so just being mindful of that, if somebody's disclosing trauma that happened way in the past.

We don't necessarily need to jump into action.

It's very similar I feel like to grief, right, when somebody dies.

I hate telling people that my grandfather passed away, because I get inundated with oh my God, I'm so sorry.

He was such a great man.

And then I have to deal with all this other person's feelings about a fact that happened in my life and that's kind of what we want to avoid, dumping all of our feelings on somebody who is just trying to share a fact to help us with whatever we're doing.

If we suspect abuse and a reportable offense we'll take this a step further and be thinking really heavily about safety.

So if we -- it's not a direct disclosure, we're kind of suspicious, we want to make sure that any time we're having a conversation with that person, that we are not putting them in harm's way.

So I had a similar situation happen in court recently.

It's a domestic violence case.

The victim hasn't been getting back to me.

I was notified for the court that the victim showed up for the hearing, and so even though they weren't getting back to me it's not uncommon.

People change their phone numbers, don't have good mailing address.

I didn't have an initial super concern they were necessarily dodging me but when I went up into court the abuser on the case was sitting five feet away and I'm absolutely not going to put that victim in danger by going up and being like hi, I'm Miranda.

I'm the victim advocate.

Would you like to talk?

Because that puts her in danger.

The abuser was clearly watching her, monitoring her appearance at court.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were violating the no contact order and he told her to come here and say certain things to the court.

So those are safety considerations to take into account.

So if you suspect who an abuser is, being mindful about that.

If you don't, that's okay.

Be mindful about who is around you and the way in which you're engaging in conversation.

Ma ina more private area, maybe going to the ladies' room or the men's room, things like that.

If you decide to say something, and this I think is more peer-to-peer, so this might be more applicable to you talking to a fellow librarian, staff member, things like that, I also want to recognize that we can bond with patrons, especially if you've worked in a place for a long time and someone comes in frequently or you're able to build that intimacy through many interactions.

You may feel like this person is less of an acquaintance and more of a friend. 

You might want to say something.

It's important that we're leaving that door open especially for domestic violence victims.

They are told by their abusers that nobody will believe them, that people just want to separate the two of them, that nobody understands their relationship, things like that, and so if we come at them in a judgy way, in a really firm way, it reinforces all these lies that the abuser has told, right.

We are coming at it from a place of caring and kindness and compassion, but are inadvertently feeding into the lies the abuser has been telling the victim.

They're going oh, shit, yep, that wasn't safe.

This is important language that you feel is honest and true to you but leeflg that door open.

It's non-confrontational.

It's kind.

Hey, I noticed some stuff was off.

I want to let you know if you want to talk about it, I'm here.

We're leaving it at that.

We're not pushing.

We're not pressing.

We're letting them know the door is open whenever they want to walk through it.

The key is when they walk back through T you better have left that door open for realsies.

We better not have gotten like annoyed that for the 20th time they've left that person and they've gone back.

It is okay to have healthy boundaries for myself and how much you're willing to emotionally support a person but it's not okay telling the victims you're there for them and when they decide to come it's like "It's about time you left him.

I can't believe it took you this long, what is this the 18th time you left him?

You'll be back next week."

That is not okay.

When we are talking about providing support to patrons in the community as a whole, these are going to fall into two categories.

So we'll talk about the culture within the library, talking about library staff, that kind of stuff, the conversations that are happening, and then the environment, so that physical stuff, how the stacks are laid out, things like that.

I do want to take another just quick pause and see if there were any questions.

Jen you're muted.

>> Thank you, so sorry.

There are a few questions and comments that I think would be good to touch on now.

Someone asked, they work for a tribal library and domestic violence is high among tribal communities.

Are there any resources out there aimed at Native Americans?

>> Miranda: Yes.

There are off the top of my head, I'm not going to be able to think of their names but there is definitely some resources available and I can work on getting those to you, Jen, to -- 

>> The resources, excellent.

>> Miranda: I think the big thing there is I know a lot of victims in tribal communities struggle with how tribal kind of government is set up.

It's not a very trauma-informed and responsive process to especially assaults and domestic violence, and so getting assistance in that community where victims often want to stay, right, that's where they live.

That's their family.

That's their life.

They don't want to have to leave just to get access to the supports that they need so in that situation, it is honestly more of a like continuing to work on culture change is the best way to assist, and having those hard conversations about what's happening in tribal communities and the way things are being kind of brushed under the rug.

>> Definitely.

Someone was asked about support groups for sexual assault survivors at their library and they tried best to find the right resources for her, but what would be the best response in this situation?

>> Miranda: Yes, just so I'm understanding, a patron asked if there was support groups for sex assault survivors? 

>> I believe so, yep, um-hum.

>> Miranda: I think in that situation, being aware and we'll get to this in a couple slides about what crisis center services your area.

They'll typically have support groups.

I know my local one doesn't have them 24/7.

They don't run all year.

They run in groups because they try to make sure they have a small group of people that can commit to a certain amount of weeks because it's a little bit more structured.

There's so many more online resources so being aware of like RAIN who have online resources that you can refer somebody to.

Sounds like getting more familiar what's in your area and having a sheet at your library for different referrals you could make for different questions would help out with that.

>> Somebody mentioned how do we know when someone is emotionally abused when they show up in the library.

I want to emphasize emotional abuse, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, all of these different things are all things that I feel like libraries need to have a better understanding about, so just really somebody else mentioned how important it was for them to have the language, to be able to talk about their own experience, so thinking about the ways that the library serves as an information space to bring understanding around some of these topics.

One more follow-up.

The person that mentioned the person coming to ask about support groups said that it was in a busy public library reference desk.

Can you remind us again of some of the things that you could do if the situation at that moment makes it difficult.

>> Miranda: Yes.

So obviously without knowing the exact context, I'm assuming this person asked, they asked at the desk.

If it was busy when they asked, and they chose to ask that question in front of a bunch of people, that's their comfort level and I'm going to go with that.

I'm not going to sit there and continue to talk loudly about what we're talk but I'm not going to move from the situation if somebody asked that question.

I'd be like that's a good question.

Did you want to move somewhere more private or continue helping you here.

Giving them the option.

Option is best.

We don't want to make choices for people and you also have the option of writing the information down or printing it off of your computer to give to them, so maybe you're not verbally giving it to them.

You can hand it to them where it's not broadcast loudly.

Those are all options to get somebody information.

I will say just general safety, FYI, for things like domestic violence, handing things on paper can be dangerous.

So being mindful if we are giving somebody a crisis center phone number on a piece of paper for them to call to go into shelter I'm not just going to hand that to them.

Do you have a safe place to keep this where your abuser can't find it or do we need to do something else with this?

We can program it in your phone as a different phone number, we can change the contact.

If you want to call them, I can put you in my office and you can use the phone there.

I'll give them alternatives so I'm not setting off what could be a bomb on a piece of paper and put them in a dangerous situation.

>> Right.

The other question that came up is I know that there are like signs or code words or, I mean I see things come up on TikTok and I'm like I should remember that but I don't remember what they are.

Talk in your field if there are practices that have come to be more helpful in that way?

>> Yes, I think, I always get weary.

I'm on TikTok and I see people being like I saw this and it's a video clip, I saw this woman and wasn't sure if she was giving me the signal she needs help and is in danger.

That's where it becomes problematic.

If we're not on the same page about what something means, then we can't help or we can't know to help or to not help and things like that.

The biggest thing I think is more consistently adhered to is the drink order at the bar, if you order a certain drink.

I don't drink, I can't think of what it is, it indicates you need assistance from the bartender.

It's risky.

Bartenders or often perpetrating in the place they work as well but that I know about and I know there's one hand signal for DV stuff but honestly, just being, yes, the angel shot.

Thank you, I haven't had a drink in ten years and haven't been in a bar in eight so really outdated on that.

So there's the hand signals and things like that, but being able to just kind of do a check-in and not be really blatant about it.

Not walking up to someone you think is giving a sign and "Are you being abused?"

I might do girl code.

I have' done this before out at places, especially the gym.

Guys are so creepy at the gym, and if I see some guy who is super up in another girl's business just trying to work and I'm going to walk and pretend we're best friends.

It's so good to see you.

I can't believe I ran into you here.

It's been so long.

Sorry to interrupt.

We haven't seen eacher in in forever.

I'm going to chat and be like are you good?

They'll be thank God, I was sick of talking to that man.

That's great.

They're also like that was my boyfriend and you're weird.

That's fine, too.

Nobody's ever gotten mad about it.

And I think you know, I'm calling it girl code but just humanity code.

Just checking on people, when they seem like they're uncomfortable and maybe can't advocate for themselves, is so important.

>> Excellent.

I know you're going to talk a little bit about flyers or what kind of information as you move through this next segment so I think we're good for now but keep your questions coming, folks.

>> Miranda: I see somebody talking about the pizza code which is great.

I've seen a lot of 911 calls that have been facilitated through pizza code or a variety of.

For environmental staff approaching patrons and the staff, just that general roaming through the library type deal, displays and crisis center information.

So this is a suggestion, just like everything else.

So I stopped asking people "Can I help you find anything" when I was in the stacks if I was roams.

Some people have people who are roaming and are asking patrons flat out can I help you find anything.

There's other libraries that take more laid back approach and let patrons check in with them.

Neither is right or wrong but if you are falling into that category of routinely in your job going up to patrons and asking if you can help them find anything, what that is doing is putting it on them to disclose what they're looking for, which is most of the time fine, right?

99% of the time it's probably a mundane topic they have no problem sharing with you.

We don't want to put somebody on the defensive maybe trying to find something sensitive.

An alternative that I might do is say something like, hey, I noticed you're browsing near the cats and the airplanes, and the domestic violence and the crochet, and the water boats, if there's anything else I can help you find, let me know.

I'm happy to give you any assistance you need in finding stuff.

So I've lumped in a bunch of generic topics that hold no weight with something that does hold weight.

I understand none of those things are catalogued together, before everybody comes at me but to give you an overview and depending on how large your collection that might be the case where you have varying topics near each other.

If you have, depending on your library size, this is going to work for you or it's not.

What that does is a couple things.

It lets us get the information to them, we're still engaging, doing that patron check-in.

It also lets them know we're not scared for them to ask us about a sensitive topic.

I can sit here and say the word sexual assault.

I can say the word domestic violence.

I can sit here and say the word stalking, human trafficking, without being uncomfortable about that and so it lets them know if they want to talk to us, they can come and talk to us about that.

People especially patrons especially survivors are deciding if they want to trust us and talk to us before they've ever talked to us.

They are watching how we're interacting with other people, how we are talking about things at the desk so being able to emphasize that you are a safe person, I can say those words no problem.

It's almost the equivalent in health class, we can say penis and we don't need to laugh.

I can say domestic violence.

It is just a word.

I can help you with that topic.

I'm not scared about talk about it.

I know it exists and I am not fearful of engaging in conversation or assisting you with finding information about that.

It opens that door.

For displays if your library allows space and I know that is always a hardship no matter how big your library is, having a display on a sensitive topic in a prominent area and a private area is going to do wonders for your community.

Having it in a prominent area is going to help boost that community conversation.

So if we have a big display right when people walk in, that is about sex assault, we are starting that conversation in our community, whether that's sex assault awareness month or whatever they're doing.

We're starting that conversation and letting people know, the library knows about this stuff and we are going to talk about it because it need to be talked about and we're going to provide support because we also need to do that.

Having a private display in addition to that also allows survivors and victims in our community to access those resources in a way that isn't as publicized, so maybe they're really excited that you are talking about sex assaults on college campuses, but they don't feel comfortable going up and grabbing that pamphlet or grabbing that book off of the display, where everybody can see them.

Having a private display that's much smaller, maybe carries a few books or a DVD and a couple books, whatever your collection looks like and has also the flyers, the handouts, the brochure, the book mark, whatever you have with your display on it that they can take in private, will help kind of further that conversation from just a community-based conversation to actually helping victims in your community.

And then crisis center information, I know I talked about crisis centers a couple times and I feel I maybe haven't done it justice in defining it because I think it means different things in different contexts.

When I say crisis center information, I mean domestic violence and sex assault crisis centers.

Sometimes those are the same crisis center, so it's just one crisis center that offers services to both.

Sometimes they are separate.

So this is not mental health crisis centers.

This is specific to DV and sex assault.

Crisis center information, what their name is, where they're located, if it's not a private address.

It's about 50/50 whether they're private, if they double as a shelter, what their phone, website, it should be available to everybody in your libraries from patrons to the staff to the board of directors.

If you have a conference room I want it on a poster in your conference room.

I want it in every bathroom.

I think this is the one flyer that should surpass any no flyers in the bathroom rule, that is how important I think it is.

It is the bathroom is one spot where you can privately get information guaranteed.

So I think a flyer deserves to go in every stall, in every staff bathroom, in the staff meeting room, around your library.

It should be accessible everywhere.

You never know when somebody need to grab one.

There's a lot happening in the chat.

I wanted to pause in case anything was happening with that.

>> Just an interesting comment that the crisis center needs to come from comorbidities with both mental health crises as well as domestic violence crises.

So that was important.

>> Miranda: Yes, absolutely.

And I think that's super important to highlight.

I more meant the delineation of like the mental health crisis centers.

We have a mobile mental health crisis unit here and sometimes when we say crisis center, people get confused by what we mean.

There is absolutely mental health components.

There is substance use components to all of the stuff we've talked about, and if somebody is finding support through one agency better than another, that's not on me to tell them they need to go somewhere else, because they're also a domestic violence victim.

If they're getting services through mental health and that is helping them, then that is all that matters.

>> Right.

A couple great points, one person works with teens and uses QR Codes to look up information privately excellent point and one mentioned they provide bilingual information, so I think that's a good reminder as well.

>> Miranda: Yes. I know for my local crisis center, we carry their pamphlets for work purposes in English and Spanish, because that's the two languages that they provide theirs in so we always have that on hand.

So for cultural stuff, kind of what is the vibe in your library like?

How are we creating safe space?

How are we working with our community partners, and how are we talking?

So for creating safe space, we are all taking this first do of using a trauma aware approach of patrons and staff.

You're doing that today by learning more about the subject so you can go back to your community with a little bit more nuggets of information in your brain and use those to be trauma informed and victim focused.

Another thing with having victims be the experts in their lives is working with victims and survivors and the crisis centers on how you can improve your space.

So again, we don't tell victims what they need.

We ask them how we can best support them.

The same thing goes for that, asking for the feedback from community members or from a community agency on what they want to see and we'll talk about some real examples that I've had from survivors in a couple slides but just getting that feedback because it's going to be contextual to your area, to your space, to the size of your library, all of that.

What we're not going to do is approaching people from behind, just period.

I think this is good life advice.

We don't know who somebody is, how they're going to respond, approaching from the back is just not a fun feeling.

To the extent that you can avoid this in your library is going to depend on how your stacks are set up and what your setup is.

If you are approaching somebody from behind, I am making sure a nouns myself well before I'm five feet.

I'm making sure my heels are loud or say "coming cups up behind you," making sure somebody is aware of my presence.

We're also not going to box them in a corner.

aware of my presence.

We're also not going to box them in a corner.

It's not intentional.

We're not intentionally boxing anybody into a corner.

If I have to give a presentation on why that's more inappropriate we have more things to process but being mindful of exits is what this is about.

If I'm talking to somebody and the only exit is like requiring them to walk past me with a three-foot radius, I'm not comfortable with that.

I want them to feel they can freely move past me for any reason so I'm ideally out of the path of exit or making sure they're stopped in a space with two exits so they can get wherever they need to get, people with PTSD, claustrophobia, being boxed in just makes that interaction really stressful when it doesn't need to be.

And then again, with collaborating with crisis centers, they can help you out with your book displays, so what is the ongoing conversation in the domestic violence world right now?

Has anything new been published that the residents at the shelter are enjoying or are they, do they have a lot of residents in the shelter that need help with parenting skills, and they would love a book display on parenting skills.

Maybe you can make a book display at the crisis center, and lend some books out there.

Maybe you can collaborate on some programming, so maybe that's programming on what the crisis center offers, but maybe it's a little less, you know, it's more toned down than that.

I know in our community right now, our crisis center is doing collaboration with a local police department and they're talking about essentially digitally facilitated assaults in teens and Snapchat and why they're doing parent education night and that could easily be facilitated at a library who had the space to do that.

We can have crisis centers do staff trainings and talk to you more.

I'm talking in general terms.

They can talk about the actual needs of victims in your community because they're going to differ depending on where you're located, what they have access to, things like that.

I live in a city somebody could easily take a bus or have access to public transport.

Maybe in an area the crisis centers had to work through barriers to help people flee so they have knowledge on work-arounds they can give that you information on and help with policy development.

We'll talk about that in a little bit.

Language use is really important, again, because people are deciding if they're going to trust us before they've talked to us.

So how are you talking about issues like domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, with your colleagues.

We all gab at the desk or while we're shelving or taking inventory, things like that, talking about our personal lives, talking about what's in the news.

This was hugely problematic with the Johnny Depp/amber Hurd trial.

Everyone had an opinion who was abusive and who was the victim and having that conversation in public at a library is not a great way to go about it.

If you want to have that debate with your friends, go home and have that debate.

Debating who is a victim and who is a survivor at a library is just asking for trouble with ruining the rapport that you've built with your community, whether they agree with you or not, having that debate, I saw it everywhere, it was all over the news, I'm sure you all, did, too, with TikTok and memes.

We've taken a very serious DV case and essentially made a joke about it, and a joke about who is a victim and who is a perp and what needs to happen and qualifies a person and it shifted the narrative.

It's a dramatic example and being aware of how we talk about things.

Maybe you have your own personal opinion about an ongoing issue in your community that's in the newspaper and things like that, not talking about it at the desk, it's a great start.

And then we also want to talk about linguistic avoidance, which is how we don't talk about what we're talking about, and this is in the news a lot as well I think is probably the best way to highlight it, so and click bait articles.

There's something in the headline that intrigues you and you get in, it's not quite the full story or they chose to write it a certain way.

This has happened a lot recently with trying to highlight females' accomplishments and so one of the narratives in news is being like oh, this is Mr. So-and-so's wife.

No, it's so-and-so, the five-time Olympic champion gold-winning medalist, blah, blah.

That is an example of Lin which can avoidance.

Another example talking specifically to the topic today with sex assault and domestic violence, a linguistically avoidant way to say one in four women is raped.

We're putting the focus on the victim instead of saying what is the stat on how many men are assaulting women?

Or saying Sam raped Finn, is a more appropriate way than saying Finn was raped by Sam.

Where are we putting the blame?

Where are we putting the focus in our language?

This is a big oversimplification because linguistic avoidance is fascinating and I could talk about it all day but a little tidbit of when I talk about these thing, how am I talking about them?

Am I feeling uncomfortable with saying something a certain way because it's really direct, and I'm calling out an abuser, and I'm trying to soften my language because I've been taught to, just being mindful of that.

So what we say matters, again, linguistic avoidance, how we're talking in a library, building that rapport.

I'm not going to stay on this slide for too long because you guys can watch it back in the rerun, but these are responses that I got when I was doing my research, and if I wasn't so passionate about this topic, I probably would have just quit what I was doing, because I was being told all of these things by librarians who had more experience than me, who I respected in my community and they basically were like, survivors don't exist, and it's not my job to deal with them and none of this makes sense, and probably my favorite one is in regard to giving out information about checkout record to a family member who is not listed on the account.

And one of the librarians was like, there's occasions when it's appropriate to reveal a book title to a family member but generally speaking, we respect privacy.

Do you want to disclose your abuse to somebody who generally respects privacy?

Because I know I don't.

And this is disheartening.

These are people in our community and this is not to give them crap.

It's just to acknowledge that there are, while there are 158 of us in here, having the hard conversations, being willing to work on this, there are also other people in our community who are not, and that is okay.

We will meet them where they are at, and we can keep doing the hard work and the good work to help survivors, while they kind of, you know, get up to speed and see that this is important.

It's important not only for jobs but for our community.

So all of these things that we've talked about today end up with a referral to your local crisis center, and it is imperative that you know that information before you have to give it, because the science shows that there is a significant increase if I am able to say, here's the crisis center number.

Here's their website when somebody asks they're more likely to utilize the service than if I say hold on, let me look that up.

There's no real explanation for why, other than just it is more effective.

It is more effective if we know the information before they ask for it.

It doesn't mean you need to memorize the phone number or the website, but you should have that information generally available whether, most checkout desks have a monitor and things up there, maybe you have the business card for the local crisis center there, so when somebody asks, yep, here is the business card.

And so just being ready to provide that because your number one referral is always going to be your crisis center, which I'm glad we had the question earlier will groups.

It's always going to be my number one referral there who knows the community best, who knows survivors best and then these are just some things that survivors have asked for in various surveys I've done and it's a collaboration also of feedback I've gotten from other library members who have identified as a survivor or a victim and have kind of commented on what would have been helpful in a library.

Generally it boils down to more resources, utilizing the space in the library for assistance so whether that's a private one-on-one meeting with a crisis advocate, they can meet safely under the guise of going to the library or at night, how to file for benefits or what does living in shelter look like and things like that.

And then these are some really great library projects that are currently ongoing, or have been started that are assisting survivors.

There is a lot out there.

It is a lot of grassroots stuff and so finding what other libraries are doing can be a little bit challenging.

These are just some examples of different ways that you can help.

So whether that is doing some human trafficking education and awareness, whether that is waiving fees for people who have fled violence and this is another project that I think or protocol I think is really important to include.

What are you going to do for survivors who have fled library fines, because they're obviously not in a place to pay them but the library has great resources to help them on their way to establish financial independency to be able to pay them.

Some freedom kits that have burner phones is more concrete in helping somebody flee versus kind of giving a referral.

And then these are projects that were used as final projects.

I teach a course for librarians academy, these are final projects people came up to take back to their library so working on policies, if somebody's living in shelter and they can't give you the shelter address, how are they supposed to get a library card?

Does your library have a policy in can they say I'm in shelter and that's sufficient?

Is there a form the shelter can give the guest to give to you guys that will help them facilitate that transition smoother?

Somebody just wanted to go through their materials and weed it and get you the outdated material.

That's a great start.

If we're not ready to add to our collection, we can reduce the harm our collection is doing to the community by removing things that have outdated ideologieses and books that check out with hotline numbers, one of my favorites because it was a quick overview that had a variety of things, the local food pantry and the mental health line and the crisis center and the local hospital and police.

It was mixed in with a bunch of things.

If someone needed the crisis center, it didn't inherently look like it was for the crisis center.

And we will open it up for questions.

We have a couple minutes left.

>> Thank you so much.

It's really amazing, amazing information.

There are a number of questions, we'll see if we can't get to them all, we'll ask Miranda to give any additional thoughts that we'll add to the event page so keep that in mind.

>> Miranda: I will answer all the questions in some way if it's not verbally today.

>> Yes.

One that I thought was helpful, do you have suggestions for wording if you as a staff member feels triggered by your own experiences and need to hand the question off to someone else.

>> Miranda: I do.

I've actually talked about this before.

I think having a buddy system is great.

So that doesn't necessarily mean you need another person with you right away but who is your person at your library who you trust to tell, not your whole trauma to but hey, sometimes I struggle with being triggered and need to take a break.

If you feel comfortable sharing your trauma with them that's wonderful.

If not, hey, I might need to tap out at some point and I need you to understand, trust and respect that I'm making the decision best for me and the patron.

I can't help somebody if I'm triggered.

If someone is asking questions and I'm getting triggered I'll say these are important questions and I want to you get the best help you can.

I think Sarah is the best person so let me grab her for you. I'll tell my buddy, I cannot do this.

They're talking about sex assault.

I'm super triggered, having flashbacks.

Can you go out to the desk and help them or whatever extent of information you shared with them.

Then I'm going to walk back out, here is Sarah, she's happy to help you.

Best of luck with your research question.

If you need anything, let me know.

I'll take a minute and take care of myself.

>> That's helpful, thank you.

There is a lot of questions about cards, privacy, came up with the fee question.

I thought this was helpful advice, in regards to the fee question, check your systems, policies and procedures to see if find can be forgiven in special circumstances after the fees are forgiven, issue a new library card to the victim noting the abuser should not have access.

>> Miranda: Yes, I love that.

>> Then like for example, there were issues, how do you approach a patron if the patron doesn't have internet access at home, for example, or if they're in a situation where they're being monitored 24/7 or their abuser has access to their phone.

Do you have any tips on those very tense situations?

>> Miranda: Yes.

My first thought I want to share is we cannot help everybody and I think that's an important lesson that we all learn at some point, right?

We all want to help and there are going to be some people we cannot help safely.

We are either not the most equipped person to do that or they are just in a situation that is inherently so dangerous that it's just so far out of our wheelhouse.

If it's their phone that's being monitored, but they're able to come to the library safely, I'm going to ask them if they want to use the library phone.

I'm going to offer the internet at the library.

I'm going to show them the quick escape button and make sure they know about that on any crisis center website they're on and make sure they have an understanding about that safety.

If you have patron computers that require the patron to login for timing purposes and things like that I'll use admin or guest login so it's not linked to them, things like that, anywhere where I can reduce the trail of evidence that could be used to put them in a dangerous situation.

I'm going to make that call to use something more anonymous.

>> That's super helpful.

I know that we are, and this is a 90-minute session.

People have taken a chunk of time.

We need to wrap up but there were a few more questions like I said.

We'll get Miranda's feedback and add that to the event page, but she also has provided her contact information and like she said, there may be specific situations that you're interested in getting a little bit more advice on, so thank you so much for providing that as well.

Thank you, thank you so much.

I can't tell you how appreciative I am that this information is now available to folks working in libraries, and really thank you so much, Miranda, really, thank you.

>> Miranda: I appreciate you asking me to present on this.

I think we were equally passionate so we're very excited and I want to say to everybody I'll answer any email you send me.

By all means, if it requires to do a conference call, and problem-solve something more specific with your library I'm always available to consult and help your library get what you need so feel free to reach out.

Legitimately I will answer.

>> Thank you so much and to everyone here today, I'll be in touch with you later on once the recording is posted and I will automatically send you a certificate for attending today.

We'll also ask that you, if you have time now, you can complete the survey that I'll send to you, too, when you leave but the survey link will also be in your email and we really, really appreciate you taking the time to provide us with that feedback.

We'll share that with Miranda as well, but it really helps us guide our ongoing programming to make sure we're bringing you what you need.

So thank you so much, and thank you again, Miranda.

Have a wonderful rest of your week, everyone, and thank you so much for all the great and important work you're doing in your libraries.

>> Miranda: Take care, everyone.



	
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