Prime Minister Dean Barrow & Meetings with Key Decision Makers for My Project

Attorney Antoinette Moore and Idonia Trotter after visiting July 4th with Belize Director of Public Prosecutions(DPP), Ms. Cheryl-Lynn Branker-Taitt. This meeting solidified the recently appointed DPP's commitment to hiring a crown counsel to focus on and prosecute ONLY sexual assault cases by the end of August 2008. Although not as comprehensive as we would have liked (wholistic approach of prosecuting perpetrators and providing services to support survivors/victims families of sexual crimes), adding a sexual assault specialist crown counsel is a step in the right direction for Belize. Branker-Taitt also agreed with Moore on the need for training of crown counsels on sexual assault prosecutions. The door was left open on adding more crown counsels to focus on sexual assault prosecutions and forming a "sexual assault unit".

Trotter and Moore with Women's Department of Belize Director - Ms. Icilda Humes on July 4th. Humes gave her approval on the sexual assault project. Atty Moore agreed to speak at an August meeting of the Women's Department's National Gender Based Violence Committee (made up of women from each of the six districts of Belize) to solicit their support in increasing public awareness regarding the increased sexual assaults in Belize and to work hand-in-hand with the Director of Public Prosecutions in possibly providing support services to victim's families and survivors of sexual assaults. Ms. Humes was very passionate about her work for the women of Belize and gave her full support of the sexual assault unit project.

I had the most fortunate opportunity of meeting the new Prime Minister of Belize on June 30th. The Honorable Dean Barrow is the leader of the country and the head of the United Democratic Party. Barrow took office on February 8, 2008 after a landslide victory over the now Opposition Leader, Said Musa (whose party had been in control for more than 10 years before the 2008 defeat). The UDP and Barrow won on a message of transparency in government, decisions by the concensus and outlawing secrecy in governmental contracts. Barrown and his cabinet may be viewed at http://sanpedrosun.net/old/08-071.html.

The past few weeks have been filled with meetings promoting the sexual assault unit within the Director of Public Prosecutions office. In addition, I have attended several court hearings, prepared three Statement of Claims, written letters on behal of clients hoping to avoid a lawsuit and sat in on a murder trial (in which Defense Attorney Antoinette Moore won on behalf of a 17 year old client). With our meetings with Ms. Humes and Ms. Branker-Taitt having positive implications in the near future, the project is now in the community advocacy outreach stage with a community-wide meeting planned in Dangriga to "Shine the Light on Sexual Assaults" on August 1, 2008. We will inform the public on the sexual assault unit plans and engage them in dialogue about what they as individuals, a community and a nation can do to end sexual assaults.

Tonight, I am meeting with the sponsors of the event (POWA, Men for Social Change and Human Rights Watch-Dangriga) to present the campaign's elements (that I have developed over the past few days) and get approval. Elements prepared for tonite's meeting include;

• Two PSA's for Cable Television
• Flyer to hand out to locals and place in key locations
• Letter Invite to be "hand delivered" to Key Contacts in Dangriga (mayor, education minister, youth group coordinators, police dept, hospital admin, magistrate, churches...etc)
• List of the Key Contacts

Although there's a little more than two weeks left in this project, there is still much work to do to ensure a really successful community meeting and to prepare final project description and analysis for my host contacts.