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Several years ago, e-mail had just started to collect a head of steam and was becoming a reliable method of communication. I signed up with CompuServe and logged into the Crime Forum. After sharing many messages with other crime victims and survivors I accepted the role as Section Leader of this forum. Shortly after taking the leadership position I started communicating with Stephen Koski.
After exchanging several e-mail messages we learned that we were both in the Seattle area of Western Washington State but were surprised that this was not the only common ground we shared. My son Patrick was murdered on May 1, 1983 and his daughter Michelle in August 1990. Both cases remain unsolved. There were even more commonalities, Stephen’s murdered daughter and my surviving son Eric dated for a brief period; at the time of Patrick’s murder, we only lived a few blocks from one another and our children attended the same schools and were acquainted. Both Stephen and I began working with victims, as volunteers with Families and Friends of Violent Crime Victims a nonprofit support and outreach organization then in Seattle.
During one of our message exchanges, we decided that a meeting over a pot of coffee was in order. We needed to share our thoughts and experiences as victim volunteers. That weekend Stephen Koski and I met for the first time. After more than five hours, we were still talking and I’m sure we downed more than a reasonable amount of coffee. That meeting cemented our long-term friendship. During the early days I also helped and coached his filing a Social Security Disability Claim. Like me he suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
A couple of weeks later we had a second meeting. This time we discussed our victim advocacy in terms of the emerging Internet. This new medium had not yet exploded as it has today but Stephen suggested that we work with victims on the Internet. His idea was for me to cancel CompuServe and join him on the Internet in reaching out to victims and survivors. However, I resisted his urging and decided to remain with the system I was using at the time. Besides my computer was an old one. It was an old 386 computer with a 20mb hard drive, a modem that was barely acceptable for Internet work and it had barely enough RAM to allow me to get onto the Internet before bedtime.
In those days the Internet had little more than 50,000 hits a day but it was growing fast. During one of our many meetings, we used Stephen’s mega fast state of the art computer to do a search for victim, murder, and homicide. We were not able to find anything of merit available for victims and survivors. That afternoon we agreed to collaborate in the development of a website devoted to the support of violent crime victims and survivors and to provide as many resources as possible. A prime feature was being able to share our experiences with victims via e-mail; we often called our effort our cyber-outreach group. Today there are so many sites available that it would take hours just to read the lists of victim services from search engines.
Neither Stephen nor I had much experience with HTML code in those days or the mechanics of putting a website together. My main contribution was to be artistic and share my many writings with our cyber-clients. First we had to search for a program that would help us assemble what we would need for our site then we would secure the Internet Service Provider [ISP] to host our site. It took a little over three weeks of learning and feverishly assembling material and locating it on the assigned pages. Within four weeks we had posted one of the first if not the first Crime Victim Website on the Internet and had begun reaching out and sharing our experiences with other victims and survivors of violent crime.
It wasn’t long before we started receiving email messages and requests for resources. In the years since we began our Internet efforts we have worked with, shared experiences with, and counseled victims from China, Canada, France Germany, Israel, Mexico and many other points on the globe. In addition we advised with Australia in setting up a system for victim impact statements.
After nearly two years it came time for a major website update. Stephen and I had a lot of difficulty in reaching common ground on how the update was to be organized. Eventually, we decided to go our separate ways and each dedicate our own websites. Stephen was able to get his updates done much quicker but it was to take me a little longer.
It is important here to note that through the proceeding years, our friendship and bonding has grown very strong and our relationship exceeds that of normal friendship; in fact we are more like brothers than friends.
I began searching for ISP’s that would be willing to donate the space for the new DOVE website. World Link of Seattle ultimately provided a home for the DOVE website and helped secure our domain name www.dove-wa.org. In the meantime I purchased a new modern computer and bought a copy of FrontPage from an auction on e-bay.
It took me a few days to learn the program and at the end of a week the new DOVE website was posted on the web. Since then both Stephen and I have reached more than 40,000 victims, survivors, and interested individuals. We are both members of an International Crime Victim Assistance Online Organization.
It was through this organization that I became aware of an international consortium of victimology. The 9th International Symposium of Victimology submitted a call for papers and out of curiosity I answered that call. I had some very definite ideas that would make excellent topics.
After several months of research and data gathering, I submitted two abstracts: Stress Disorders-A new Classification and Victims of Crime-Victims of Stress.
I confess that I had little hope that such a prestigious group would accept my papers but I had nothing to loose. Imagine my great surprise on April 17, 1997 when I received notification from the Symposium Secretariat that my paper Stress Disorders-A new Classification had been accepted for presentation at the Symposium at the University of Amsterdam. One out of two was more than I expected. However, I received the second notice on June 30, 1997 informing me that they had also accepted my second paper Victims of Crime-Victims of Stress paper as well.
Having new encouragement, I began in earnest to complete both papers. That task however, proved to be the easiest. I began searching for grant money and other donations for the trip to Amsterdam to present my papers to the symposium. I was able to secure more than half of the funding for the trip but could not arrange for the balance.
I notified the symposium that I was unable to secure the appropriate funding for the trip and asked the secretariat to present the two papers in my place. They honored my request and the papers were submitted for me. After such a backdoor approach I felt quite satisfied that at least my papers were presented. However, there was even more surprise in store. Several thousand copies were distributed to the members and both papers were included in the Symposium’s Final Report. Both papers are available from the symposium and at one time the Department of Justice was considering adding them to their archives as well.
More than 40,000 victims, survivors, and interested others have been assisted through the efforts that Stephen and I initiated so many years ago. These victims and survivors have been able to find someone that suffered as they have and could understand their grief. They found an identification and validation that they never knew existed.
Our friendship has continued to grow into a relationship that is special not only to us but to our families as well.
About a year ago Stephen began complaining of night sweats. It took several months of doctor’s visits and tests to get to the root of his problem. Unfortunately the unwelcome results came as no real surprise to either of us; if you read Victims of Crime-Victims of Stress [http://www.dove-wa.org/Download.htm] you will understand.
Our friendship is about to come to an end as Stephen battles terminal kidney cancer and has precious little time left. It is perhaps ironic that the man that got me started on the Internet is no longer capable of punching out messages on a keyboard to do Internet research or even log onto the Internet. His care now is entrusted to his family and a hospice nurse that visits three days a week.
He asked me last week to take over the maintenance of his site. I will re-integrate our sites once again to continue reaching out to those we can help. I hope to re-dedicate a large portion of his site to Cold Homicide Cases, his major area of work and devotion.
Please visit our sites at:
http://www.dove-wa.org and http://www.eskimo.com/~yaquii/victimpg.htm
Dick Cress
