Although the Wellness Center’s website states that it has a victim advocate on staff, the position has been vacant since two weeks after Sara Spowart submitted her resignation July 31. Whitney Elfstrom | The Crow’s Nest
By Anna Bryson
When a former boyfriend began stalking and harassing her last fall, a female student says, she sought the help of Mandy Hines, the on-call victim advocate at the university’s Wellness Center.
Hines “went out of her way to help me,” said the student. “Without her, I would have been alone.”
Hines accompanied her when she went to court to get a restraining order, the student said. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. She stood between me and (him) … so I wouldn’t have to see him.”
Hines, who had been the on-call victim advocate since August 2006, departed in June. And the woman who was hired to replace her resigned on July 31.
That means the university hasn’t had a victim advocate for more than two months – which another female student learned to her surprise this month. The student, who believed she was being stalked and harassed by a former boss at an off-campus job, said she went to campus police.
“He (chief David Hendry) tried to connect me to our victim advocate and then realized we didn’t have one,” the student said.
“He still helped me get information and assured me that I could come to him with questions, but having a victim advocate would have been nice.”
The Crow’s Nest is not naming either female student. It does not identify the victims of sex-related misconduct.
The director of the Wellness Center, Dr. Anita Sahgal, declined to discuss the vacancy with The Crow’s Nest.
But in an email through assistant director Suzanne Stambaugh, Sahgal said that the Wellness Center is “in the process of hiring a new victim advocate soon.”
In recent years, confronting gender-based crime has become a top priority on America’s college campuses.
Like other colleges and universities, USF St. Petersburg pledges that it will work to provide an environment free from sexual discrimination, sexual assault and harassment, and dating and domestic violence.
Professors are required to describe the university’s policy on gender-based crimes in their course syllabi, and professors and staff who learn about violations are required by law to report them.
On its website, the Wellness Center says that it has a victim advocate “to provide information, community referrals, and crisis response to all USFSP students who may be victims of crime (i.e., date rape, assault, domestic violence).”
But Sara Spowart, who was hired June 4 to replace Hines at a salary of $48,000 a year, resigned on July 31.
Spowart said that she got sick from black mold in her apartment and was repeatedly hospitalized.
“One of my supervisors wrote an email saying she didn’t want me to take any more unpaid time off and she said I wasn’t allowed to, so I had to keep going to work sick,” Spowart said. “I wasn’t getting the support I needed.”
Spowart said she was in intensive care twice.
The victim advocate job is “really well-paying and it doesn’t really make sense that they haven’t hired someone yet,” said Spowart. “It probably has to do with some political things, maybe HR or some internal issues.”
Hines said the vacancy concerns her. “That would be detrimental to students who don’t have access to that help,” she said.
