Katie Powell Rachid – The Experiences of an assault case manager

Katie Powell Rachid, who manages assault cases, consults her clients and talks about their experience with assault, as it is really helpful for the victims of assault to express their grief to others. She discussed many interesting topics, but the one that intrigued me most made me think tangentially to the main conversation: the fact that one of her clients felt that she was being abused every night, but the fact was that she had been assaulted months ago – she said that the most likely cause for this was PTSD. I started to delve into multiple hypotheticals and recognized an interesting dilemma regarding trusting your clients. Ms. Rachid trusts her clients, but I think that if the client were lying, not only is the reputation of the person accused of the crime harmed (in the case where this dispute goes public) but also, I think the manager would most likely feel betrayed too. However, if the client turns out to be proven by a flawed justice system as guilty but they are actually innocent, then not only may they be isolated by the rest of society and called a liar, but the accused person would also be scarred by a case and the case manager might also wrongly feel betrayed by their client. There are many different scenarios with this, which really makes me think about any possible feelings of guilt or regret that a case manager for an assault case might feel if either of these scenarios occurs.