Scott Beard, PAR Leader
Posted Courtesy of The Post and Courier (http://www.charleston.net)
Published on 11/04/00
BY SUSAN HILL SMITH
Of The Post and Courier Staff
He's the only man in South Carolina to head a rape crisis center, and by the very position he holds, he challenges many people's attitudes about sexual assault.
But that's what Scott Beard strives to do. Challenge attitudes. Change misconceptions. And encourage compassion for victims who are often overlooked.
The way he sees it, sexual assault and related problems such as domestic violence are not just women's issues. They are issues for society to solve together, men included.
Beard took over as administrator of the tri-county area's People Against Rape in February 1996 after taking time off from law to sail across the Atlantic. His background included work on victim's issues in Washington and at the grass-roots level, so the position seemed like a natural fit to him. But some questioned why a man would want the job.
"People were kind of puzzled about that because it's so unusual," says Vicki Bourus, executive director of the S.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. "Not that there aren't men out there who are advocates and allies, but there are very few who become actively involved in the movement."
Looking back, Beard realizes that there were misgivings about a man being hired instead of a woman. "It took a while for me to establish credibility with women in this field, but I think when they saw I was going to stick around for a while and that I had knowledge in this field, many of them came to accept me, and some of them are now very good friends of mine."
Forensic pediatrician Dr. Betsy Baker tries to have lunch with Beard on a regular basis. Baker directs the CareAlliance Health Services nurses who examine children and adults for evidence of abuse and assault and also does examinations herself. She says the Lowcountry is lucky to have someone with Beard's public-policy background and political savvy standing up for victims, locally and at the state level.
That he's a man should not make a difference, she says, but it still does to some people, and it may be impossible to change their minds.
"I think he has faced an awful lot of prejudice regarding his sex, and I just think that's such a shame," she says. "... If you care, if you're compassionate and your heart's in the right place, I don't think it matters if you're purple."
Pressing for solutions
Beard is not the only man in the room, but he's clearly in the minority as he prepares to speak before Gov. Jim Hodges' task force on domestic violence.
The task force has gathered at Charleston City Hall for the last of three meetings in South Carolina as it prepares to submit recommendations to the governor. Beard is third in a long list of advocates who have signed up to speak, and he winds up following a survivor who reads a dramatic poem about her struggle to overcome abuse.
By contrast, Beard's presentation is more down-to-business, more lawyerly. Dressed in a crisp suit and tie, he starts off standing in front of the podium until the task force chairwoman asks him to step back and use the microphone so his comments can be recorded.
He smiles. "I'm one of those people who likes to move around."
"See if you can restrain yourself, Scott," she replies.
Beard explains that People Against Rape recently started a center in North Charleston for victims of sexual assault as well as domestic violence. In addition, he chairs a legislative committee that deals with both issues for the S.C. Victim Assistance Network.
Throughout his remarks, he urges a more comprehensive approach to domestic violence with law enforcement and other related agencies working together instead of in a vacuum.
Domestic-violence victims should undergo forensic exams, just like rape victims do, he says, with a team of professionals responding together to offer help. And there should be continued training in abuse issues for law enforcement, as well as an independent report card for judges on their handling of domestic violence cases.
Moreover, the state needs to do a better job of sharing success stories. "We need to take the programs that work and replicate them in other places," he says, "and I don't think we're doing that righ now."
Once he finishes his presentation, he heads to a fund-raising reception for Darkness to Light, a local support group for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
Much of his energy is consumed by his work for crime victims. In addition to his full-time schedule with People Against Rape, he keeps a separate law practice representing victims in civil lawsuits. A committed Christian, he recently started volunteering as the local executive director of Spiritual Dimension in Victim Services, an organization devoted to training clergy.
Much like the country's criminal justice system, churches often are too focused on the perpetrator, he says, either in hopes of saving a sinner or rallying behind someone thought to be falsely accused. The victim, meanwhile, may be left out in the cold, even disbelieved.
It doesn't have to be that way, Beard says, and some religious groups such as the church-based program Neighbors Who Care out of Columbia are taking progressive measures that he calls "the wave of the future."
Studies he has seen show that anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of crime victims go to someone in their church first, "so that person needs to know how to respond and not revictimize them."
Driven by injustice
Many of the women and men involved in the victims' rights movement are motivated by horrific events in their own lives. Maybe they lost a son or a daughter, maybe they suffered violence themselves.
Beard does not have a dramatic personal story to tell. The worst crime he ever suffered was a burglary. Instead, he was two years out of Clemson University working as a civilian for the Navy in Washington, D.C., when he started looking for a cause.
He sent out 200 resumes. He smiles as he reveals that the only response he got was from the National Organization for Victim Assistance where he landed a job as a public-affairs specialist.
He loved it.
"I was going up on the Hill lobbying for funding. I was working with all 50 states on getting laws passed. I was talking to the media all the time, trying to get our issue out there," he says. "It was just a lot of fun because it had a lot of impact and always had a lot of variety.
"And once you get into this field," he adds, "it's really kind of hard to get out."
He was inspired by others - for example, Roberta Roper, who successfully pushed for victims' rights laws in Maryland after her daughter's murder. And he was outraged at the horrendous stories he heard of how victims had been treated by the system. "That's probably what still keeps my juices flowing," he says.
He stayed on Capitol Hill for two years, followed by a short stint doing grass-roots work for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In 1989 he started law school at the University of Denver where he lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and paid for tuition with a variety of odd jobs, even as a whitewater rafting guide.
He wasn't at the top of his law class, he admits, but he did have a knack for landing adventurous internships. One summer he stayed at the U.S. Olympic Committee training facility in Colorado Springs where he helped research drug testing. The following year he spent several months working with the environmental watchdog group Trustees for Alaska.
He got his law degree in 1993 and returned to South Carolina with the Charleston firm Ness Motley Loadholt Richardson & Poole, which already had scored big against asbestos companies. He spent most of his time traveling across the South on follow-up asbestos claims and later represented victims of alleged sexual abuse by two priests in settlements with the Catholic Church.
"I realized that was really the area where I wanted to concentrate," he says, and even now most of the civil cases he takes on as a lawyer involve representing victims of sexual crimes.
'My own typing'
As a beginning lawyer at Ness Motley, Beard had his own secretary. As executive director of People Against Rape, he doesn't even have his own office. His desk sits with several others in the nonprofit agency's small Charleston office, located downtown in the creaky Blake Tenement Building. "I do all my own typing and copying," he laughs.
He doesn't deal with many victims directly, and at the request of his board, he does not go out on initial calls, for example, if someone has just been attacked or is reporting abuse for the first time.
Instead he is a leader and resource for the PAR staff, which serves Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties. Many times, his background in law comes in handy not only for PAR advocates, but also as he works on state issues and legislation.
Last year, PAR logged 877 cases either through phone calls to its hot line or in response to police reports of sexual assaults, in which case PAR is called in as part of a team that also includes law enforcement and medical personnel.
What many people probably don't realize is that more than half of PAR's cases involve children who have been sexually molested, typically by someone close to them. And while rape may be thought of as a women's issue, many of the younger victims are boys.
Under Beard, PAR has expanded its staff from three to 12, stepped up education efforts in schools, and started a network of seven support groups across all three counties.
Beard recruited Pam Giesick, herself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, to work with the support groups full time. As an adult, Giesick successfully pursued criminal charges in Florida against her stepfather, who got her pregnant when she was 12.
Men often had trouble understanding what she had gone through, but Beard was different, she says. "He's both my employer and also my friend," she says. "He's been very, very supportive."
Beard, for his part, still sees much work to be done, both on a case-by-case basis and in addressing the bigger picture. After all, he points out, the first rape crisis center in the United States was founded a relatively short time ago in 1972, followed by the first domestic violence shelter in 1974.
"My perception," he says, "is that people in the general public do not understand what victims of crime go through or how poorly they are treated until they go through it themselves."
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