Forty-three individuals attended a specialized training session earlier this week in Jefferson to better deal with victims of sexual assault cases.

ACCESS Assault Care Center sponsored Dave Markel of Markel Consulting LLC to talk about Forensic Experiential Trauma Interviews. The session covered a variety of different ways to asked questions of sexual assault victims to get information from them following the incident.

“During a sexual assault or any critical incident trauma, our brain goes into what’s called a tonic immobility. Basically what our body and brain is trying to do is to protect us. Our brain puts us in different areas that we don’t focus on the hurt at that time.”

That’s Greene County Sheriff Steve Haupert. He says sometimes tonic immobility can cause the victim to tell different variations of the incident.

“This tonic immobility may take 36-48 hours for the brain to actually function properly and think about the actual course of events that happen to them.”

By asking more open ended questions such as asking the victim what they are able to tell law enforcement about your experience, it may help to get the victim to be more comfortable to recall details about the assault.