Dear Colleague:

Today the National Center for Victims of Crime launched VictimLaw , a comprehensive, on-line database of state, federal, and tribal victims' rights laws and protections, developed with funding from the Office for Victims of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

VictimLaw is a unique and groundbreaking resource, offering free, user-friendly access to information that until now has been difficult to locate. The database ncludes more than 15,000 victims' rights statutes (state and federal), tribal laws, constitutional amendments, court rules, and administrative code provisions. Future additions to the database will include state attorney general opinions and summaries of court decisions related to victims' rights. VictimLaw will offer regular updates to the information in the database.

Researchers can search under each of the following rights: the right to attend, to compensation, to enforcement, to be heard, to be informed, to protection, to restitution, and to the return of property. VictimLaw offers four ways to search: by topic, legal term, jurisdiction, and citation. Visit at www.victimlaw.info .

The launch of VictimLaw coincides with National Crime Victims' Rights Week, April 22-28, an annual observance commemorated in communities throughout the country.

For more information about VictimLaw and opportunities to promote use of the database, please see www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbID=DB_VictimLaw170 .

If you have a story of a loved one that has lost the fight against Domestic Violence, please share it with us.  We would like to continue sharing the stories in hope that others will see just what Domestic Violence is, a travesty that must end.

Enough is ENOUGH!!  Together we CAN and WILL make a difference!