Bloomington Herald-Times
April 22, 2010
New database offers links to resources for veterans, their families
Online tool created by Indiana Prevention Resource Center
By Bethany Nolan
April 21, 2010
A new online search tool is available for veterans who need help navigating assistance resources.
The Indiana Prevention Resource Center, in Indiana University's Research Park, recently created and unveiled its Veterans Resources Search Engine. The database -- https://www.drugs.indiana.edu/ -- is designed to quickly link veterans with national, regional and state resources, such as the Indiana Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Coalition of Homeless Veterans.
The database is searchable by subject, organization, audience, category and keyword.
"The IPRC has created a tool that provides access to a wide variety of resources available through the Internet to assist returning veterans, their families, their communities and all who provide services for the veteran, his or her family and children," Indiana Prevention Resource Center deputy director Barbara Seitz de Martinez said in a prepared statement.
Center officials said military personnel and their families can face many difficulties and challenges upon their homecoming, as well as prior to and during deployment. Deployment means separation from loved ones, loss of companionship and everyday support, while returning home presents challenges of reintegration into family and community due to lingering stresses of military life.
Studies show many soldiers return with mental health issues and substance abuse dependence. Seitz de Martinez said in a news release that organizations providing services to veterans are often overburdened and in need of tools to help increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their efforts.
According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, 4,199 returning veterans in Indiana sought post-conflict care after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan during 2008.
Seitz de Martinez said the center plans to keep improving its online tool and will add additional resources in the future. Suggestions for additions and enhancements can be sent to seitzb@indiana.edu.
The Indiana Prevention Resource Center is part of the Department of Applied Health Science in the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and is funded by the Family and Social Services Administration through the division of Mental Health and Addiction.
For more information, stop by the office at 501 N. Morton St. Suite 110, call 812-855-1237 or visit https://www.drugs.indiana.edu/.
DNA from saliva points to man accused of rape
By Laura Lane
April 21, 2010, last update: 4/21 @ 6:20 pm
Was it rape and deviate conduct or a sexual hook-up gone bad?
Monroe County Deputy Prosecutor Rebecca Veidlinger on Wednesday said a 27-year-old Indiana University graduate student awoke in the early morning hours last July 19 to find a stranger standing inside her home in the 700 block of Woodlawn Avenue. Veidlinger said the man bound the victim's wrists with the electrical cord from her hair dryer and raped her, sodomized her and forced her to submit to oral sex at knife point.
"This is about a woman who went to bed in the security of her own bedroom ... and awoke to a nightmare," Veidlinger said.
Monroe County Public Defender Michael Spencer said it wasn't like that at all. He said his 33-year-old client, on trial this week in Monroe Circuit Court, encountered the victim outside her house as he walked to his grandfather's home and that the two talked, went into her bedroom and decided to have sex.
"There was no threats, no intimidation, no weapon, no burglary -- two people met and had consensual sex," he said.
Jason A. Bridgewater is accused of climbing through the woman's kitchen window and repeatedly sexually assaulting her. The charges are rape, two counts of deviate sexual conduct and burglary. He was arrested four months after the attack when DNA from saliva on the woman's ear from her attacker licking her matched Bridgewater's DNA.
He has previous convictions for burglary and child solicitation and served time in prison, so his DNA is in a state data bank.
Wednesday afternoon, the victim told jurors she had been out drinking with friends and was intoxicated when they brought her home around 3 a.m. She said she was lying on the floor of her bedroom, after vomiting in a bucket her friends left by her bed, when she saw a man she identified as Bridgewater standing in the doorway. She said he picked her up off the floor, threw her onto her bed, tied her hands above her head with the hair dryer cord and sexually assaulted her.
When she screamed, she said he told her to cooperate or he would hurt her more. She said he held a knife from her kitchen to her face during the attack. "I was begging him to stop," she said.
The woman testified that Bridgewater covered her with a blanket and then left, taking her laptop computer, iPhone and purse with him. She then ran to her kitchen, saw the open window, grabbed a knife and knocked on the door to the apartment next to hers in the duplex. She said she was scared and screaming, asking the man who lived there why he had not heard the attack through a common wall.
Veidlinger held up stained sheets from the woman's bed for jurors to see and also showed them a composite sketch the woman drew of her attacker, which resembles Bridgewater.
When Spencer cross-examined her, the woman asked him to step away from his client, saying she was uncomfortable looking in his direction while testifying. She admitted to him she was intoxicated that night. He asked several questions about the mountain bike she used to get around town, implying that the vaginal pain she reported after the attack may have been caused by riding the bike.
The trial continues today, when jurors are expected to hear testimony from the neighbor and from the police detective who investigated the case.
IU event nets 350,000 pounds of e-waste for recycling
April 22, 2010
The e-waste recycling results are in. The second Electronic Waste Collection Days yielded an estimated 350,000 pounds of e-waste, according to preliminary results provided by Indiana University.
Some 2,147 cars and trucks dropped off old computers, monitors, TVs and other devices April 8-10 at the purple lot north of Assembly Hall .
The first Electronic Waste Collection Days program at IU Bloomington took place in April 2009, planned and carried out by interns with the IU Office of Sustainability. Response was strong again this year.
IU and campus sustainability officials will evaluate the need for similar events in the future. A new state law requires electronics manufacturers to pick up much of the expense of recycling e-waste, but it is unclear how widely electronics recycling will become available at little or no cost. Recycling services for this year's event were provided by Apple.
