Services for Survivors and Families Affected by Homicide & Community Violence
Free and confidential support and services for survivors
Support for Survivors of Violence
Community violence often affects young men of color, but anyone can experience or witness it. Violence can cause collective fear and trauma especially after a homicide. That’s why Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) offers free support to those who are left behind. Our Center for Violence Prevention and Recovery (CVPR) helps improve the health and well-being of those affected by violence.
What is Community Violence?
Community violence can be a wide variety of interpersonal violent acts. You may be a victim of violence, know someone who has experienced violence or witness violence yourself.
Community violence includes:
- Bullying: Causing intentional or repeated injury or discomfort to another person.
- Homicide: Causing the death of another person.
- Workplace assaults: Acting on or threatening physical violence during work.
- Youth violence: Intentional use of physical force among individuals between the ages of 10 and 24 years.
Get Help for Homicide & Community Violence
The CVPR provides free services to:
- Non-familial victims of random acts of violence.
- Co-victims (significant others of a homicide victim or community members where a murder has occurred).
- Witnesses to violence.
If you’ve been affected by community violence, we offer you a number of services, including:
- Crisis counseling and trauma focused therapy.
- Emergency department services 24 hours a day offering medical care and crisis counseling.
- Homicide bereavement services.
- Consultation with health and medical providers.
- Support groups.
- Victim advocacy and consultation.
All services are private, confidential and free.
More About Homicide & Community Violence Services
Each person reacts differently in a crisis. It is normal to experience a wide range of emotions. Some common reactions are:
- Shock, numbness and confusion, perhaps not fully aware of your loss.
- Staying constantly on guard, worrying about another attack.
- Being easily startled, losing your temper over small matters or be unable to concentrate.
- Intrusive memories and random distressing thoughts that distract you from daily tasks.
- Reliving the experience, feeling as if you’re back in the time and place you witnessed or learned of the loss.
- Anger toward those who committed the crime, often taking your anger out on those around you who are innocent.
- Guilt over being unable to protect your loved one, or simply for having survived.
- Physical complaints like headaches, sleep and digestive changes, nausea, fatigue and lowered immune function.
- Being withdrawn and avoiding activities you used to enjoy as well as avoiding reminders of your loss.
- Fear, anxiety and panic as if the world is no longer safe or predictable.
- Pessimism about your future, your life span or reaching normal milestones such as graduation.
- Disorganized and distracted, unable to perform routine, daily activities.
- Sudden, temporary grief with intense sorrow that overwhelms you months or years after your loss, sometimes triggered by anniversaries, smells or sounds.
The Homicide Support Services Project (HSSP) is a unique collaboration between the BIDMC Center for Violence Prevention and Recovery, Bowdoin Street Health Center and Louis D. Brown Peace Institute. We work together to support people and communities affected by homicide.;
Our program provides supportive services to community members, family and friends of homicide victims.
Services include these and others:
- Community/school-based Health, Hope and Healing Circles
- Community events
- Criminal justice support, advocacy and accompaniment
- In-hospital and community-based acute crisis response
- On-going individual and family counseling support groups
- Service coordination between agencies
For referrals, please call 617-667-8141.
Louis D. Brown was a 15-year-old high school sophomore honor student and aspiring community leader. Louis was killed in a crossfire shootout near his home in Dorchester, MA, in December 1993. Joseph and Clementina (Tina) Chéry co-founded the Peace Institute in 1994 to honor their son's legacy of peace. Its mission is to serve as a center of healing, teaching and learning. The institute is open to families and communities impacted by murder, trauma, grief and loss.
Grounded in racial justice and equity, we formed a partnership with the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute. We work together to:
- Advocate for compassionate and equitable health care, criminal justice and societal responses to homicide.
- Prevent violence.
- Strengthen communities.
The partnership's innovation stems from both organizations' deep investment in reflective practices and intentional teamwork to meet the needs of survivors of homicide victims.
We coordinate immediate crisis intervention after a homicide to proactively address the immediate, complex and long-term needs of survivors. The Peace Institute supports survivors by providing guidance for:
- Making decisions.
- Making funeral arrangements.
- Navigating interactions with health care providers, medical examiners, law enforcement and the media — all while managing the shock, trauma and grief of losing your loved one.
- Understanding your rights and options.
The clinicians in our Center for Violence Prevention and Recovery:
- Participate in team meetings.
- Provide counseling, healing circles, creative arts groups and advocacy services on-site at the Peace Institute offices in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood.
- Support staff and survivors.
