Serving Victims' Spiritual Needs

Resources

Building Victim Assistance Networks With Faith Communities
Includes information on victims' needs from a faith-based perspective, elements of collaboration, lessons learned, issues unique to victim assistance faith-based initiatives, and supplementary materials.

Creating Partnerships with Faith Communities to End Sexual Violence
Explores the ways in which service providers can work with faith communities and includes practical educational and organizational resources for providers who are interested in working within their own faith communities or who want to build secular/faith-based partnerships.

Faith Communities and Sexual Assault—Sexual Assault Coalition Resource Sharing Project Newsletter (Issue 14)
Focuses on ideas for collaboration between faith-based communities and sexual assault and domestic violence programs that can be used to build SART agencies' capacity to collaborate with faith communities. Available to state sexual assault and dual coalitions through the Resource Sharing Project.

Faith Community Professional Education Initiative
Offers a strategic opportunity for graduate theological schools to train representatives of their faith communities in how to support victims of crime. The initiative's Web site includes the postgraduate curriculum Victim Care: Issues for Clergy and Faith-Based Counselors, which covers victimization, trauma, pastoral care, theological and spiritual issues, cultural considerations, the criminal justice process, victims' rights, restorative justice, vicarious trauma, and mandatory reporting for clergy. companion multimedia presentation breaks the curriculum into shorter segments for classroom use.

Faith Trust Institute
Offers a wide range of services and resources, including training, consultation, and educational materials, to provide faith communities and advocates with the tools and knowledge they need to address religious and cultural issues related to abuse.

Handbook on Justice for Victims (chapter 3)
Discusses critical issues of victim assistance for clergy and spiritual leaders, training for clergy and spiritual leaders in victim assistance, and international examples of victim assistance through religious or spiritual institutions.

New Directions from the Field: Victims' Rights and Services for the 21st Century—Faith Community
Discusses a range of crime victimizations and provides recommendations to facilitate the role of faith communities in helping crime victims.