6 February 22 - 28, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents As of Wednesday, Feb. 14, Underwood expected her team’s report to be complete by the end of February. When asked why she thought we had been greeted with only con- fusion and silence from the county commis- sioners, Underwood described the nuances involved between the local SART, which has operated since 2009, and a county Commis- sioners Court that has just been told to get involved in the SART with this new law. As a sexual assault survivor herself who has advocated for other survivors for more than 20 years, Underwood isn’t keen on how SB 476 placed so much responsibility for SART in the hands of county commissioners. “So, if you read the legislation itself, it re- ally does not do a good job of outlining or even explaining the role of Commissioner[s] Courts with SARTs, and again what it asks them to do is, in my opinion, a bit nonsensi- cal,” Underwood explained. “However, the commissioners did work with us on ‘formal- izing’ our SART per the statutes guidelines and have been very responsive. Since there really wasn’t anything for them to step in and actively do, there really hasn’t been a reason for their staff to be up to date on the SART.” Given that Underwood has been passion- ately and productively active in her advo- cacy mission for so long is more than enough reason to take her concerns about how the law was written into serious consideration. In her words, SB 476 “does not do a good job of outlining or even explaining the role of commissioner courts with SART.” It’s rather common for the politicians writing the bills to not exactly be the top subject matter experts in the areas for which they’re drafting legislation, but SB 476 wasn’t written merely by elected officials. Advocates and policy specialists helped shape the language as well. But the law is the law. And to that end, other large counties with concerns similar to those of Dallas County did manage to compile and submit their reports on time, or at least well before Dallas. Tarrant, Travis, Harris and Denton coun- ties all met the deadline, according to Haleh Hekmat, the systems change analyst for the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (TAASA). TAASA is a collection of survivors, advocates, rape crisis centers and associated professionals who assisted in getting SB 476 written and passed and continues to be a re- source and hopeful partner for county SART teams statewide. According to Hekmat, the association has “taken on the initiative of supporting com- munities as they develop SARTs and fulfill the requirements.” She says that Dallas and Collin counties are far from the only ones to have failed to turn in their SART report at this point. But Hekmat did note that the main reason the bill put the SART ball in the county commissioners court is because ev- ery county has one. Not every county in Texas has a rape crisis center or even a hop- sital, for example. Naming the commission- ers court as the lead entity helps provide uniformity to a statewide scenario that has long lacked streamlined efficiency. Underwood, understandably, doesn’t view the report’s tardiness as a sign that her group is lagging behind other counties, nor as an indicator that Dallas County doesn’t take sexual assault as seriously as it should. To her, getting it right is more important than turning it in first, which might have re- quired cutting corners or putting less than 100% into the effort. But not everyone has the same impression. State Rep. Dr. Lynn Stucky, a Republican from Denton, was a sponsor of SB 476, and when reached for comment, he pulled no punches. “While some hurdles in implementation are to be expected, I am not shocked to see that Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins is continuing to fail from a leadership perspec- tive,” Stucky said in an email. “The Commis- sioners Court is authorized to create the response team, but the County Judge should be the one driving these accountability and transparency measures. It is concerning that Judge Jenkins is not giving an issue as seri- ous as sexual assault and resources for survi- vors the respect and attention it deserves.” It might be easy to suggest at least some of Stucky’s reaction can be tied to political differences. After all, Democrat Lewis Jen- kins has been a favored target of the GOP for years, especially since 2020 when the judge served as the face of the county’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Stay-at-home or- ders and mask mandates made easy enemies out of those on opposite sides of the political divide even more than before. But there are people without any political battle to fight or office to run for who are troubled by what they feel is another alarm- ing sign that Dallas County doesn’t treat sex- ual assault reports with the dignity and consideration such allegations deserve. Lau- rie Chandlar, a noted mystery author from New York, was in Dallas for a writers confer- ence in 2019 when she says she was drugged and sexually assaulted by a fellow author and conference attendee. What followed for her was a harrowing series of frustrations, letdowns and unan- swered questions from Dallas police and the DA’s office as her case was closed in rela- tively short order, even in the face of evi- dence and witnesses. After her efforts were quashed by investi- gators, Chandlar wrote about her discon- certing experience in a series of posts on the website Medium. She sounded the alarm on X in December that she had doubts that Dal- las County would have its SART report com- pleted anytime soon. Now, in February, she continues to have questions about just how serious Dallas County law enforcement per- sonnel are about fighting sexual assault. “I am disgusted by the disregard of SART reporting in Dallas,” Chandlar wrote in an email to the Observer. “The citizens of Dal- las deserve a law enforcement and attorney’s office that don’t see themselves as above the law and mandates of the Texas Legislature. Unfortunately, this feels very consistent with the handling of my case and the lack of regard for oversight and protocols that I ex- perienced both with the DPD and the Dis- trict Attorney’s Office. I believe people that are proud of their work and have nothing to hide, don’t mind sharing their work. If someone is unwilling to do that, it should raise the question, ‘Why?’” But for now at least, such a violation won’t result in any penalties, and no mech- anism is in place to track which counties have and have not submitted their reports to their respective county commissioners courts. Stucky suggested to us that perhaps legislation for “accountability measures” should be filed. A member of the Collin County SART told us that its report had not yet been com- pleted, but explained why and updated the report’s progress. Wendy Hanna, the executive director for The Turning Point, a Plano-based advocacy center for survivors of sexual assault, told us her organization has taken the lead on pre- paring and submitting the biennial report. In an emailed statement provided to the Ob- server, she noted that her hope is to have the report submitted in March. “We have been working on the report for months,” Hanna wrote. “However, we re- cently had a major change in SART leader- ship, namely our SART Program Manager departing just prior to December, so we were unable to submit the report by the end of the year (2023). Our new SART manager, Jen Betts-Williams, is working diligently to pull together the data requirements … for the report, which has been a challenge, but we hope to submit it to the Commissioners Court no later than March 2024.” The intent of SB 476 and the SART report is to make it easier for municipalities to at- tend to areas that may have been lacking at- tention. In some ways, one can say that progress has been made in that SARTs across Texas are working toward a unified goal. But the stakes are high enough that slight improvements in processes aren’t good enough for those sexual assault survi- vors who feel they are not being heard. “When we worked to pass this law, our policy team was very intentional of the prob- lem that no, a lot of communities do not have an organized way to really streamline and ad- dress adult sexual assault,” Hekmat said. “In particular, there are laws that are in place for child sexual assault. There are things in place for domestic violence, but there was a gap with adult sexual assault, and it was seen in how survivors were treated in the process and how they often just fell through the gap.” ▼ POLITICS ALWAYS A CANDIDATE, NEVER THE ELECTED WHO IS JRMAR JEFFERSON, THE POLITICAL HOPEFUL WHO KEEPS CLAIMING FRAUD? BY SIMONE CARTER I t takes chutzpah to run for Congress, es- pecially if you want to beat a wildly popu- lar incumbent. Well, one such hopeful with a mega-dose of moxie is Jrmar “JJ” Jef- ferson, frequent candidate for pretty much any and every office. Jefferson’s name may ring a bell. He claimed fraud last February after being Unfair Park from p5 >> p8 Mike Brooks Haleh Hekmat tracks Texas communities’ SART reports submissions.