Although Marshall has only been a courthouse dog for Thurston County since last December. He’s already having an impact by providing comfort and support to crime victims and their families.
Experts have found that having a dog in the room actually counters the effects of a hormone that can prevent a crime victim from talking about abuse he suffered.
In extremely stressful situations, the body releases a hormone called cortisol.
High cortisol levels cause the higher functions of the body, like speech and memory, to shut down.
Courthouse dogs helps calm a crime victims by allowing crime victims to verbalize what happened to them.
The idea of using dogs to help calm crime victims originated with Former King County Prosecutor Ellen O’Neill-Stevens.
Because of her work King County was the first jurisdiction in the country to have a dog specifically trained to help crime victims and work full time in a prosecutor’s office or with any government agency.
After she left the Prosecutor’s office O’Neill-Stevens started Courthouse Dogs, a nonprofit with a mission to “promote justice with compassion through the use of professionally trained facility dogs to provide emotional support to everyone in the justice system.”
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