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A Conversation with Roberta Roper: The Evolution of Victims' Rights

NCJ Number
308403
Date Published
September 2022
Annotation

This podcast episode features a conversation between host Kristina Rose and Roberta Roper, founder of what was previously known as the Stephanie Roper Committee and Foundation but which is now called the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, about the challenges she and her family faced while trying to navigate the justice system after her daughter, Stephanie Roper, was murdered.

Abstract

In this Justice Today episode, host and director of the Office for Victims of Crime, Kristina Rose, talks with Roberta Roper about her advocacy for crime victims’ rights legislation in Maryland. The two talk about the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, which celebrates its 40th anniversary in the year of this podcast episode, and how the crime victims’ movement has evolved over the course of those four decades. Roberta Roper describes her family’s experience following the murder of her oldest daughter in 1982 and how she and her husband resolved to improve the criminal justice system’s treatment of crime victims; and discusses the incorporation of the Stephanie Roper Committee and Foundation, and its legislative victories, and the resulting improvements to the criminal justice system.