Published in USA Today

By Tanya Coke

My understanding of crime and its survivors was transformed the day my sister was murdered.

Late one August evening, in 2013, a man that she had dated 20 years before strangled her and dumped her body in a wooded ravine not far from her Oakland home.

Until then, I hadn’t thought very deeply about the emotional toll that crime takes on victims (or their family members) despite the years I had spent as a lawyer defending and advocating for men and women who had been accused of victimizing so many.

I saw crime survivors through a very narrow lens of retribution — they were out to make my clients’ lives more difficult. In court, I felt twinges of pain and sadness as emotions flooded the other side of the room. But I was always apprehensive about interacting with victims directly.

I never thought of them as experiencing anything in common with my clients, until I became a crime survivor myself. And then I realized that everyone who sits in a courtroom — the accused, their victims and the family members who love them both — need the same thing: healing. And for black survivors of crime, the struggle to get that healing can be much more difficult.