T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Belmont County Commissioner Vince Gianangeli, from left, Belmont County Legal Advocate Lauren Hamilton, Tri-County Help Center Sexual Assault Program Facilitator JaQue Galloway, and Commissioners J.P. Dutton and Jerry Echemann are shown with a proclamation declaring April to be Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Belmont County commissioners declared April to be Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Commissioners approved a proclamation earlier this month establishing the designation.

“Whereas sexual violence and serious public health, human rights, and social justice issues that affect individuals or genders, ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds, and whereas sexual assault impacts millions of people each year, causing massive physical, emotional and psychological harm to survivors, their families and communities. And whereas Sexual Assault Awareness Month provides an opportunity to raise public awareness about sexual violence, educate communities on prevention strategies, and support survivors in their healing journey. And whereas prevention is possible through education, advocacy and the promotion of healthy relationships, consent and bystander intervention, whereas every individual community, workplace, an institution has a role in dressing and preventing sexual violence by fostering environments that promote safety, respect and equality, and whereas we stand in solidarity with survivors, advocate, advocate for policies and support them and work collectively to end sexual violence in all its forms, Now therefore we, the Belmont county commissioners do hereby proclaim the month of April Sexual Assault Awareness Month in Belmont County, and encourage all residents to participate in activities and initiatives that promote awareness, education and prevention of sexual violence,” the proclamation states.

Tri-County Help Center Sexual Assault Program Facilitator JaQue Galloway and Belmont County Legal Advocate Lauren Hamilton were both in attendance for the proclamation reading.

Galloway said the bulk of her job is listening and advocating for survivors.

“We facilitate the sexual assault response team, which is everyone in the county who’s responding to sexual assault. We have our advocacy center, law enforcement, examiners, CPS, the advocacy center where we meet, and we’ll do a case review as well as survivor feedback. We can identify trends that we’re seeing and also give the survivors that we work with that time to say how their case went, and this is what they liked or maybe what they didn’t like, and this is what we could have done better,” she said. “We’re able to plan and see what the community needs or what’s working really well. So everything we do is off of our interactions with survivors, what they’re telling us they needed, or if there was any barriers that they experienced, even if they didn’t report or they didn’t disclose until several years later. We’re able to talk to them and find out why, so that we can provide that prevention throughout the month and address the behaviors that we’re seeing.”

Commissioner J.P. Dutton praised Tri-County Help Center for everything that it does, not only during the month of April but throughout the entire year.

“Just know that you always have an advocate here. There’s always things that probably could be improved from a county government standpoint, and if you run into issues at certain points, please know that you can come here and know that we’re always looking for ways to make sure that we’re doing the best job we can as a county government, especially on issues as important as this,” Dutton said.

Commissioner Jerry Echemann then asked Hamilton the extent of her duties in regards to working with victims of sexual assault.

She replied that as a legal advocate she cannot provide legal advice to victims, but she does provide information and resources that will help victims prepare for their day in court.

“We prepare because they are gonna have to go in front of a judge, and they are gonna have to talk about what happened. So a lot of it is just preparing them to try to reduce the retraumatization,” Hamilton said. “They might have to sit across from their abuser, so it’s a lot of preparing for that.”

Commissioner Vince Gianangeli also thanked Galloway and Hamilton for bringing awareness to such an important subject and honoring survivors.