Point of View: Oklahoma voters got this one right

Oklahoma's vote to expand crime victims' rights through State Question 794 represents a significant and hard-won victory for the architects of victims' rights.

That treating crime victims and their families with the common decency routinely extended to defendants is so novel an idea it requires a vote is shocking and informative.

The passage of SQ 794 is an appropriate time to recognize some of Oklahoma's earliest champions for victims' rights, whose tireless efforts created the foundation to pass such landmark legislation.

In 1977, Sheri Farmer and her husband packed up their 8-year-old daughter, Lori Lee Farmer, off to Girl Scouts camp near Locust Grove. In a crime that shocked the state, the bodies of Lori, Doris Denise Milner, 10, and Michelle Heather Guse, 9, were found bludgeoned, raped and strangled near their tent.

While on call at St. John Hospital in Tulsa, Sheri's husband, Bo, received a phone call from the director of the Girl Scouts informing him simply that Lori had died in the night. The parents were not given any details about her death and only learned through a friend that their daughter had been murdered.

Long before there were support groups or victims' rights, Sheri founded the Oklahoma chapter of Parents of Murdered Children to honor Lori's life and to make the journey better for future families.

Michelle Guse's father, Richard, helped pass the Oklahoma Victims' Bill of Rights and to form the Oklahoma Crime Victims Compensation Board to meet practical needs of victims and their families.

In 1979 in Okarche, Brooks Douglass and his sister, Leslie, watched as two men murdered their parents, the Rev. Richard and Marilyn Douglass, and assaulted and tried to kill the children. In response, Brooks became a state senator and introduced legislation to benefit crime victims.

In 1990 in Yukon, the body of 7-year-old Kathy Busch was discovered in a Dumpster after she was reported missing. Her grandmother, Judy Busch, returned home that night only to learn the horrific details of Kathy's murder on a local newscast.

Judy started a one-woman crusade to change the course of victims' rights in Oklahoma. She began the Homicide Survivors Support Group to extend emotional support to other murder victims' families and to guide them through the legal process.

Judy sat with countless families through grueling courtroom testimony to make sure they did not have to navigate the system alone. She worked with Sen. Brooks Douglass to pass groundbreaking legislation that afforded crime victims' families some of the rights her family did not have in 1990.

Today, crime victims benefit from the trailblazing work of these early champions of victims' rights in Oklahoma, many of whom don't even know the names of Sheri Farmer, Richard Guse, Brooks Douglass or Judy Busch.

When Judy began her work for victims she stated, “I am going to do these things so that Kathy is never forgotten.” Twenty-eight years later with the passage of State Question 794, she never will be. Neither will other murder victims who are long overdue the rights and dignity afforded defendants.

Well done.

Quillen, of Oklahoma City, is a licensed professional counselor and victims' advocate.