In the Mankato Free Press, Lost case led to improved prosecution tells the back story about the National Child Protection Training Center's Victor Vieth, who will be Congressman Walz's guest at the SOTU address. Seems like Vieth's expertise came from hard experience:
In 1991, Cottonwood County assistant attorney Victor Vieth prosecuted a man charged with child sex abuse. He lost the case. Big time.
“Everything went wrong. We didn’t know how to interview children, how to interrogate a suspect, how to get corroborating evidence,” Vieth said.
Out of the failure grew a program that today teaches thousands of police, lawyers and child-protection workers how to better identify and prosecute abusers.
Vieth will get more national exposure in conjunction with Monday’s State of the Union address. Vieth, head of the National Child Protection Training Center, will attend the president’s address and will talk to congressional delegations while in Washington. He was invited by 1st Dist. U.S. Rep. Tim Walz of Mankato.
The 5-year-old training center at Winona State University has been teaching its model across the nation.
They provide a five-day course for investigators on interviewing young abuse victims and on building a good case. They train 10,000 people a year and have programs in 21 states. “That means 1 million kids reporting sexual abuse will be interviewed by one of these trained investigators.”
The center also spearheaded creation of a child-protection studies program that has been approved by the state university system and is being implemented at colleges across the country.
“For the first time, students in law enforcement, law, social work can get a minor in child protection. We hope to have it in 500 universities in 10 years.”
This is the sort of problem-solving that Congressman praises and seeks out from his district. Not merely those who can identify and talk about a problem, but work to create answers. Vieth returns the praise:
Vieth said he’s proud to be invited to the State of the Union and proud of the state’s congressional delegation, which fought for increased funding for the center. A couple of years ago, the center got $300,000 in federal funding. This year, the center will get $1.2 million in federal funds. It also gets state and private funding.
“Elected officials take a lot of criticism. But the Minnesota delegation has supported this in a bipartisan way. Preventing child sex abuse isn’t something you get elected or re-elected for. Here’s an example where our state delegation did something that won’t help them politically, but it helps the country.”
Walz led the drive for increased funding in the House, while Sens. Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar pushed it in the Senate.
Indeed, Vieth is right.
After scolding Walz for not bringing home enough bacon for the First, GOP hopeful Dick Day has now decided that earmarks are bad things. Even when one of the earmarked appropriations helps teach law enforcement, prosecutors and others how to catch people who do bad things to children.
The Austin Daily Herald reports Rep. Walz visits with border agents. Though short, it's a more accurate snapshot of the press call than the MPR muddle. A sample:
Rep. Tim Walz, who represents southern Minnesota in the U.S. House, said he is returning from a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border with a clearer picture of what Homeland Security is doing right there and what still needs improvement.
“In just the short amount of time we were there it was very apparent that they have a heavy presence, they’re doing the work they need,” Walz said.
Speaking to reporters via teleconference from El Paso, Texas before flying back to Mankato Saturday morning, Walz said the one-day visit with border security agents was focused mostly on border security, and not as much on illegal immigration ramifications back in his district. . . .
The New Ulm Journal reports Walz returns from border. A sample:
Federal agents charged with enforcing the American border with Mexico got a ‘thumbs-up’ from a Minnesota congressman on Saturday morning. . . .
. . .The congressman said Saturday morning that he thinks federal agents in El Paso have a unique perspective that he believes should be highlighted.
Before Sept. 11, the U.S. Border Patrol agents had neither radios nor gas for their vehicles, Walz said.
“...Now they’re on the front line,” he said.
These days, that agency has also added 3,000 new agents. It has video cameras and radar working along the border as a deterrent and it has newer technology, like the biometric fingerprint, which can identify a person’s fingerprint automatically and give agents access to files from many different law enforcement agencies.
The border inspection station that the delegation visited sees 175 million border crossings each year. Walz said he was stunned at the amount of narcotics uncovered at the border that were found by K-9 units. He saw whole shopping carts full of packages of marijuana that were removed after the dogs had found them hidden inside vehicles attempting to cross the border. . . .
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