PSU Magazine Winter 1989

I ' Portland and free lancing on eve nings and weekends. It just got to be too much... she says . B oy lan ' s work is often intense. For most of her interviews, she travels to the home of the vict im or witness. And frequently they are so traumatized that they claim to remember nothing of the crime. ..What I try to do is prompt their memory," she says. " [f they te ll me they don 't remember anything but the gun, I know the information is there in their minds . "While I' m talking with them, I don't make direct references to the crime . I talk about things in their home , the ir interests , and weave in questions as we go along . For instance, I mi ght ask a victim to pretend her assa ilant's face is a block of c lay and ask Jean Boylan wirh skerches of criminals. how she would sculpt the nose - would it be broad or narrow, long or short? This way, the victim fee ls she 's in control of the si tuation. " While her sketches can be uncannily acc urate , Boy lan ma intains that the drawi ngs are a small part of what she does. "My interest in this is from the psychological poi nt of view. I want to help the victims understand they don ' t have to remember every detail. The mind absorbs so much when it undergoes trauma, but it also tries to cushion the person from what has happened by bl ocking some of the memory. "When I lecture, I compare thi s to peopl e remembering exactly where they were and what they were doing at the time of the Kennedy assass ination or the Challenger tragedy," Boy lan continues. "The same thing happens to crime victims during great trauma the mind registers information even though you may not be aware of it. " Boylan uses no visual aids when she interviews a victim or witness and regards the identity kits that use combinations of eyes, noses and hair as detrimental to a person's recall. "People get confused when they see all those features or stacks of mug shots," she says. "When I visi ted an East Coast police department several years ago, I fo und out they put rape victims in a room with a desk drawer full of composite features and asked them to put together an entire face." That kind of insensiti vity inspires Boy lan to keep working for victim ' s rights and is part of her message when she is invited to teac h and lecture at various law enforcement gatherings . Loca ll y, she shares her knowledge as an adj unct instructor in the Oregon Hea lth Sciences University's fore nsic studies department. Agencies are improving, tho ugh, notes Boy lan . "They are recogni zi ng that even victims of less seri ous crimes , such as purse snatchings, have undergone a traumatic event and need to be treated with care and respect for their situation." Boy lan 's most recent major ass ignment took her , for the second time, to the embattled ci ty of San Salvador as part of a U.S. State Department task force. While in El Salvador for two weeks. she taught investi gative interviewing tec hniques to local police agencies and helped them work with witnesses of po litical assassi nations. From the moment she stepped off the plane , Boylan sa id she knew that it was no ordinary business trip ...I was met by machine-gun armed guards who escorted me everywhere. They also gave me a nine-mi llimeter gun and told me to sleep wi th my shoes on in case ihe hotel was attacked in the middle of the ni ght .·• Although her ex peri ence in Central America is one she doesn't want to repeat , Boy lan pl ans to continue traveling and teaching her interviewing techniques. "I want to convey to agenc ies how impo rtant it i that they treat victims and witnesses with sensiti vity and respect," says Boy lan. "And I want the people in volved in the crime to know that what we ' re ab le to come up w ith together may he lp so lve thei r case ." D (Jan Acker is a free-lance 111rirer and cor7Jorare communicarion consu/ranr in Parr/and.) PSU 17