Deb Wiederhoft will take on a new victim witness coordinator position with the county. The new role comes as a result of a grant obtained by county attorney Troy Timmerman.

Without further ado, more victim services help is here.

A little more than two months after Faribault County attorney Troy Timmerman revealed his plans to obtain an Office of Justice programs grant, that very funding has paved the way for the arrival of Deb Wiederhoft the newly hired victim witness coordinator.

And Wiederhoft, who has served as a county advocate for Mankato’s Committee Against Domestic Abuse (CADA) since 1999, is coming to Timmerman’s office from just a few blocks away.

“I’ve always been the Faribault County coordinator here,” says Wiederhoft, who was born in New Richmond, Wisconsin. “But now I’ll be working with victims of all crimes, not just domestic and sexual assault.”

Before Timmerman sought and acquired funding from the annual grant, which he says provides $65,209 per year for the next five years, the county had used an outside agency for much of its victim services, including counseling, emergency assistance and other supportive measures.

Now, however, with Wiederhoft aboard, set to move into the old chief deputy’s office in the county attorney’s building, those kinds of services will be on hand at a moment’s notice.

“My understanding is I’ll be on call, as I was with CADA,” Wiederhoft says. “Whether to scenes of domestic or sexual assault or to the hospital, or attending hearings and relaying information to victims, my main focus is making sure victims are aware of what rights they have.”

If anyone knows how to relate to the victimized population of the county, too, it is probably Wiederhoft.

“Twenty-five years ago, I had gone through my own experience with domestic violence,” she says. “Police were helpful, and social workers were helpful, but it made me start volunteering, and it’s what led to being hired by CADA.”

Wiederhoft’s transition from coping with her own past to helping others has been exemplified since she moved to Blue Earth in 1988.

In the last service year alone, she says she worked with more than 130 victims, not to mention around 100 children and other secondary victims in the county. And her relationship not only with local law enforcement but with Timmerman and city attorney David Frundt was strengthened as a result.

“We keep busy in Faribault County because the service gets utilized,” she says. “I may be working more with criminal cases now and not so much civil, but anyone can feel victimized, so we make sure there is someone to help.”

The grant that fuels Wiederhoft’s addition to Timmerman’s office calls for an annual county contribution of $12,173, but with an expectedly strong working relationship between Wiederhoft and local prosecutors, the expenses are worthwhile.

Dealing with victims on a daily basis is, of course, not always the most stress-free responsibility, especially when Wiederhoft says that it takes an average of seven incidents for a victim of an abusive relationship to actually remove him or herself from the relationship.

But whether it is dealing with those types of problems, something she has done for nearly two decades with CADA, or addressing victims of burglary and other crimes, Wiederhoft also knows her job is a necessity both in the county and well outside of it.

“Because if there’s one person that hears what you’re suggesting and that one person gets out of an abusive relationship or whatever they’re dealing with, it’s worth it.”