# The Abby Honold Act: Understanding Better Police Response to Violence

This bill creates a new training program to help police officers, school administrators, emergency responders, and other officials respond better to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. The key idea is teaching these professionals to use a "trauma-informed approach"—basically, understanding how trauma affects victims and adjusting how they interact with them accordingly.

Right now, when someone reports abuse or assault, they might be interviewed in ways that accidentally make their trauma worse. They might be asked to repeat their story multiple times, questioned in accusatory ways, or treated insensitively. This bill funds demonstration projects in different communities to test better methods. Officers would learn how to interview victims in ways that get useful information without re-traumatizing them, understand how trauma affects memory and behavior, and recognize that abuse cases look different depending on the victim's background, gender identity, disability status, or whether they're dealing with substance abuse issues. The training also emphasizes working as a team—getting police, prosecutors, victim advocates, and community organizations on the same page.

The bill authorizes the Department of Justice to give grants to police departments and victim service organizations for two years to implement these trauma-informed practices. Each program would be studied to see if it actually improves how cases are investigated and prosecuted, and whether victims feel better treated by the system. The goal is to gather evidence about what works so other communities can learn from these pilot programs. This doesn't change anyone's legal rights—it's purely about improving how professionals respond to people who've experienced violence.

Abby Honold Act

Emmer, Tom

Abby Honold Act This bill directs the Office on Violence Against Women within the Department of Justice to make competitive grants to law enforcement agencies and victim services organizations to implement evidence-based, trauma-informed approaches in responding to and investigating domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking.