Indiana attorney general announces assault prevention coalition

Zoeller introduced the Indiana Coalition to End Sexual Assault from a conference room in the Clark County Youth Shelter in Jeffersonville. The shelter, which provides support services and shelter for youth in crisis, is an example of the kind of resources the coalition wants to help. Zoeller said that one in six Hoosiers experience sexual assault before the age of 18.

“We know this problem is a lot worse than we ever wanted to realize,” he said. “So now that we do recognize the extent of the problem, it’s really incumbent upon everybody to make better efforts to not only address the problem of prevention, but to address the problems for victims of sexual assault.”

The coalition, known as ICESA, would be the “point person” for service providers to pursue federal and state funding. It would operate with the same goals as the now-defunct INCASA, an earlier sexual assault prevention coalition that went bankrupt last year. The problem, Zoeller said, was that the INCASA board didn’t have proper fiscal oversight.

With ICESA, Zoeller said the board is comprised of “the best [people] we could find,” including United Way of Central Indiana CFO Gina Miller. Having Miller on the board is one way to provide needed fiscal oversight and to avoid INCASA’s fate, Zoeller said. The 11-person board also includes Indiana Health Commissioner Dr. Jerome Adams and Pacers Vice President Frank Pulice. Zoeller will sit on the board as a non-voting member.

“We really are going to put our own credibility on the line ... to ensure people that this entity will be fiscally sound,” he said.

Clark County Prosecutor Jeremy Mull said he doesn’t yet know the specifics of the newly-formed coalition, but that any source of support for service providers for victims of sexual assault is welcomed.

“Unfortunately there are consistently cases of child abuse and those children face a lifetime of dealing with the consequences of that and in my experience those children spend many years in counseling and that can be very expensive,” Mull said, adding the same is true for female victims of sexual assault. “Often we try to make sure the offenders are ordered to pay for that but in reality it’s difficult to elicit that money from them when they are incarcerated and therefore the victims bare the costs.”

The Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence and other entities have helped fill in the gaps since INCASA’s disbanding, Zoeller said. ICESA is now applying for grant money and working to staff the new coalition. Zoeller said he is going to spend his efforts in the Indiana General Assembly next session to make sure the coalition is funded by the state. He also serves on the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute board that is helping to fund ICESA’s early efforts.