Advocate for Victims Helps Ease Crime’s Aftermath : Counseling: Helping people deal with anger and depression is a wrenching and rewarding experience for Carol Anderson.

Carol Anderson spends her working hours listening to the horrors that mark life’s darkest side.

Parents and widows of murder victims pour out their hearts to her. Small children clutching teddy bears tell her graphic tales of sexual abuse. Agonized rape victims sob uncontrollably in her arms.

The pain Anderson has witnessed, and helped to ease, is staggering. Yet, every day--nights, weekends and holidays often included--Anderson reaches out to try once more to soothe a tortured soul.

As the only victim’s advocate at the Torrance courthouse for the last seven years, Anderson, 48, knows her job can be both a wrenching and rewarding way to make a living.

“Their whole life is in a turmoil,” Anderson said. “When a crime has been committed, the legal system views it as a crime against the state. The court forgets that this is a person at all.

“They need someone to listen to them, to touch them, to care about them,” she said. “That’s where I come in.”

Employed at a salary of $28,380 a year by the county’s Victim-Witness Assistance Program, which is funded by penalty assessments collected from convicted offenders, Anderson works up to 60 hours a week counseling, guiding and listening to more than 100 people each month.

When she joined the program, there were fewer than half a dozen such advocates working for the county. Now there are 33--generally one per branch court, with six or seven based in downtown Los Angeles--but even that number must struggle to meet the demand for service.

Before she can begin helping, however, Anderson often must first defuse explosive attitudes.

“I get a lot of people who call and start out screaming and yelling at me,” she said. “Many times their anger will be directed at me or the district attorney or the police because they don’t know where else to put it. . . . I try to get them focused on what they’re going through and what they’re really angry at.”

Once that is accomplished, Anderson guides them toward such free or low-cost services as counseling, medical treatment and transportation. A state victim compensation fund, established with fines paid by convicted criminals, can help ease the financial burdens victims face, including funeral costs and lost wages.

If a suspect is charged, Anderson guides the victims, and sometimes witnesses, through the complicated trial process.

For victims dazed by the justice system’s whirl of impersonal bureaucracy, Anderson’s soft-spoken explanations and gentle encouragement can mean the difference between bitter resignation and vigorous prosecution.

“If she hadn’t been there for me, I would have never prosecuted,” said a 40-year-old Rancho Palos Verdes woman who was raped by an ex-boyfriend. “She gave me the strength to see that I didn’t deserve anybody doing this to me and that I had to try to keep him from doing it to anybody else.”

Anderson visited her home on weekends with the district attorney to discuss the case, held her hand while she cried and listened patiently to the woman’s torrent of emotion.

“Support, support, support. That’s what Carol Anderson meant for me,” she said. “She was always rubbing my back and my head, making me breathe deep and just being there for me. . . . There is just no way I could have done it without her.”

Prosecutors, too, are grateful for Anderson.

“She’s able to do the things I can’t do,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Janet Moore, who specializes in gang cases. “I have to be detached. I have to take care of the legal things. Carol takes care of them .”

It is rarely an easy task.

Last year, Anderson began working with Alice Hendrix, whose daughter had been murdered by her fiance. Hendrix, who already had lost three other children to violent deaths, says the loss of her daughter drove her “off the deep end.”

“The pain was just so great, I just wanted to die,” Hendrix said. “I had come to believe that there really was no God, that even a mean God, a punishing God, wouldn’t take four children.

“When Carol first met me, I know she didn’t think I would make it,” Hendrix said. “All I wanted was to find the courage to commit suicide.”

Instead, Anderson persuaded her to talk about her agony and seek counseling. As the suspect’s trial approached, Anderson stayed in constant contact with Hendrix, telling her what to expect at each hearing and warning her when testimony might be too graphic for her to bear.

At the man’s sentencing for second-degree murder earlier this month, Anderson sat somberly with Hendrix, hugging her gently and patting her hand as the defense attorney accused Hendrix’s daughter of provoking his client’s attack.

“She’s a lovely lady,” Hendrix said. “I don’t know how she can do this kind of work day in and day out.”

Anderson said her devotion to the job grew from a promise she once made to God.

Eighteen years ago, newly divorced and with four young children, Anderson was forced to go on public assistance while she struggled to figure out what to do with her life. Although she had graduated from Redondo Union High School, she had never held a job.

“I promised God that if he got me a job, got me trained, I would do whatever I could to give back to society,” Anderson said.

After six months in adult education courses, she became a typist for the county. Two years later, she began working at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and soon after transferred to an opening in the new Community Mental Health Center.

As an admissions clerk there, she conducted interviews with new patients and often spoke to community groups about the program. Over the years, she learned how to listen to people’s troubles and guide them toward assistance programs.

When the Victim-Witness Assistance Program began recruiting new advocates in 1983, Anderson said she felt drawn to the position.

“All the bad things I’ve gone through prepared me for this job,” she said. “I remember what it was like trying to get through a system I didn’t understand. This way, I can do something to help someone else stand up and take care of themselves.”

In recent years, Anderson has watched the South Bay shift from a place of security to one of growing violence.

“We used to feel very safe in the South Bay area. Nothing could touch us,” she said. “If I had one kidnap case every six months, I thought, ‘Oh my, things are getting bad.’ Now I have several kidnaps a month.

“I’ve been busier in the last two years than I have in the whole time I’ve worked in the program.”

Filling her cramped quarters in the Torrance district attorney’s office are some of the tools of her trade--smiling baby dolls, furry stuffed animals and other small games and toys.

A shy, 7-year-old girl in a pristine white lace dress and a profusion of long braids has selected two “friends”--a doll and a stuffed white tiger--to accompany her to the witness stand, where she will tell of unspeakable things done to her by her half brother.

Anderson accompanies the child and her mother to a courtroom and quietly plays games with her in the corridor as they wait through one of the court’s frequent delays.

Finally, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ron Geltz, with whom the child had at first refused to talk, comes out to tell them that it is time.

The mother, tense and silent, moves to go inside. Anderson softly coaxes the girl to spit out her chewing gum, telling her cheerfully: “You’re going to do just fine.”

The girl takes a seat in the witness stand, her eyes scarcely visible above the fist-sized microphone in front of her. Nervously, she tucks the white tiger under her chin and fixes her gaze on Anderson, who smiles at her from across the courtroom.

Ninety minutes later, after the child has patiently told and retold her story, the attorneys finish.

“You won’t have to come back ever again,” Anderson tells the girl.

“You mean I can’t see you again?” she asks, wide-eyed and clearly disappointed.

“Of course, you can,” Anderson replies. “We’ll be friends.”

The girl wouldn’t be the first to make Anderson a lifelong friend. Many victims, she said, continue to call her from time to time to tell her about the progress of their lives.

“I feel very protective of my victims,” she said. “They’re my people. I do become very attached.”

The sentiment clearly is shared.

“I think she’s an angel, really,” one rape victim said. “I don’t want to sound corny, but she’s like a messenger, really, from God. He put her here in the perfect job . . . and we need more people like her, because most people just don’t even care.”

Victim-Witness Assistance Program The Victim-Witness Assistance Program is a statewide effort to provide support services for victims and witnesses of all types of crimes. Each of California’s 58 counties has a program, and all are paid for through fines collected from convicted criminals. No public tax dollars are used.

The advocates, called victim services representatives, provide the following services:

* Crisis intervention and emergency assistance

* Forms and assistance in filing for state victim compensation, witness fees, restitution and the return of property

* Explanation of court procedures and court escort, when needed

* Referrals to community agencies and public services

* Liaison with police, probation, parole and other state and local agencies.

For more information, call (213) 974-7499 or (310) 533-3599.

Source: Los Angeles County district attorney’s office