West Jordan’s Victim Assistance Program (VAP) is a critical resource for those impacted by crime, domestic violence and sexual assault in the community. Yet this essential service is being shouldered by just three advocates — all of whom joined the team within the past year.

Advocates are city employees, umbrellaed under the city prosecutors’ office, who do a variety of things to help victims in the community, by attending court hearings with them over abuse, being called to crime scenes, answering phone calls and more.

With the variety of care, long hours and heavy caseloads, burnout seems to be a bit of a pandemic among the budding professionals of the new advocacy career field created in the past 50 years, said Jodi Petersen, West Jordan’s victim advocate coordinator.

Petersen has been in the field for 20 years and considers herself an “advocate for the advocates.”

With every new conference for advocates she attends, she recognizes an increasing number of new faces that she chalks up to people burning out of the field and new ones replacing them.

“Victim advocacy is such a new field, and it started out as such a grassroots movement, and it is predominantly women,” she said. “Since the dawn of time, women have been banding together, helping other women to get out of abusive situations.”

She remembers that as a freshly graduated advocate, she thought her four-year degree would be the entrance to “have the better life,” but became disillusioned that it took her 15 years in the industry to make as much money as she was waiting tables.

Although the field requires the same background education as social work, Petersen said advocates are “entirely underpaid” for having a bachelor’s degree and preference to be bilingual.

“It’s really hard to get compensated in a way that’s fair, especially when you consider we work 40-hour weeks and then we run a crisis line, 24/7, holidays included,” she said.

“It’s easy to burn out if you’re literally sitting in court five days a week and things or just making calls all day,” said Maquel Oswald, one of West Jordan’s three advocates on staff.

Oswald said it’s common for advocates to take several hiatuses from work in the field because it’s not an easy profession. 

It takes its toll.

Petersen gave an account from two weeks ago when she was called out on a death call by the police department, with which the program works closely.

“I had to sit in the living room with a deaf lady at my seat for four hours while I was helping her family,” Petersen said. “So the trauma is real, and it really does impact us.”

With the inherent challenges of the victim advocacy profession, the West Jordan Victim Assistance Program faces an additional burden due to its limited staffing. With only three new advocates on the team, the program is struggling to keep up as the local population continues to grow and the caseload steadily increases.

“West Jordan is growing so the case loads can get a little bit high, which makes it a little bit tougher to give everyone the due attention and keep it within a manageable time,” Oswald said.

On a typical Monday morning, the victim advocates at the West Jordan program are faced with an influx of over 50 new cases accumulated over the weekend.

According to research Petersen has done using 2020 census data, West Valley City had 23,000 residents for each advocate they had on staff while West Jordan has closer to 39,000 residents for each advocate.

Moving forward, the two advocates said they hope to have more interns and volunteers in the city’s program to expand efforts to public education and community outreach.

“I would hope that people would understand that we’re here to help, and that there’s no shame in when this happens to them,” Oswald said. “I feel like that’s a really big thing that people who come in for help feel.” λ