Word: cave
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...They deserved some help. Like the overwhelming majority of American jurors in murder and abuse cases, the 14 Austin jurors had to face unspeakable horrors without the benefit of the psychological assistance afforded to both policemen and victims. Cave has turned to State Rep. Juan Garcia to sponsor a bill funding a jury counseling program in Texas state courts for those cases where graphic, disturbing evidence is often featured - homicide cases, sexual offenses, family-relations crimes such as child abuse. The bill, which would give additional funds to victims' assistance programs, is gaining support in the legislature. While victims' advocates...
...have come to take jurors for granted," Cave says. "They saw the pictures over and over again, pictures I have never seen. I asked 14 people to take my pain and the hell that doctors and psychologists and friends have begged me not to look at. I watched as the days went on and I began to see people who had not slept, people with dark circles and pallor, people with nervous twitching...
...Cave knows those kinds of symptoms all too well. In August of 2005, her 21-year-old daughter Jennifer was killed by Colton Pitonyak, 22, a University of Texas finance major with a drug habit. Jennifer had dropped out of college, but was trying to get her own life back on track after some problems with drugs and had begun work as a legal assistant. After Jennifer failed to return home from a dinner out with Pitonyak, Sharon, a Corpus Christi small business owner, and her boyfriend, Jim Sedwick, drove to Austin and began the search. When...
...years later, after Pitonyak was given a life sentence for the murder, Austin firemen and policemen who followed Sedwick into the apartment are still undergoing counseling, Cave says. Sedwick and her family are also being counseled by therapists and the family priest. But all that help still can't prevent daily, commonplace events from triggering the horrible memories. "We don't eat anything in our house that is carved and there is a certain type of garbage bag with a red cinch that we don't use," Cave says...
...agonizing as the recounting of her daughter's murder during the trial was to bear for Cave herself, she also worried about the jurors, four of whom weren't yet 30 years old. At one point during the trial a young juror cried softly all day. Soon after the verdict Cave begin researching the issue of juror counseling, and what she found was not much comfort. Jury counseling, or debriefing as it is sometimes called, has been used in several high-profile cases including the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer and the Oklahoma City bombing case, according to the National Center...