As a police family liaison officer you’re not in the lead; you have to follow

Cases like the murder of Anne Faber or of 15-year-old Lisa from Abcoude, near Amsterdam, send shock waves through society. In such cases, the family liaison officer forms the link between the victim’s family and the criminal investigation. The Police Academy has a specialised course to train up family liaison officers. One of the lecturers on the course is Marije Versteeg, who was herself a family liaison officer for many years and now trains police officers to take on this role. ‘As a lecturer, too, I can enact my heartfelt support for victims.’

There is increasing attention for the victims of criminal offences, and 22 February has even been designated the annual European Day for Victims of Crime. The focus of this day lies on improving assistance to victims and their families and increasing their sense of justice. ‘I think it’s good that victims and victims’ families are being paid more attention in recent years. It’s important for us as a society to stop and think what’s been done to them. And what the impact on them is. They never asked for this’, says Marije.

Victimised all over again

‘Suspects have had rights for centuries, but for a long time victims were consigned to obscurity. If you’re pregnant and have a baby, you’re entitled to pregnancy leave, birth leave, and maternity or paternity leave. But if you lose your child to murder or manslaughter, you don’t get anything. Even though you may have to keep attending court hearings for years. Even though you’re destroyed by grief and completely lost in this world you’ve ended up in. So as a family liaison officer, you can play a very meaningful role in supporting these victims’, Marije explains.

‘As soon as I joined the police it was clear that empathy was my thing. I want to really get people, understand them, be there for them. In cases like that of Lisa or Anne Faber, you see that all sorts of people will express opinions. Who on earth would cycle home in the dark? Who on earth would wait in a tunnel just near a secure psychiatric hospital? This victimises the families all over again. As a family liaison officer, you can’t do anything to change this. But you can do your best to limit this secondary victimisation as much as possible: by warning the family about media reports in advance and by being available if they have questions. But I also went with people to an identification or when the victim’s body was released.’

Don’t fall into the ‘rescuer role’

‘As a family liaison officer, you’re right in the frontline where emotions are concerned: they’ll be spilled out all over you’, says Marije. ‘So the training course includes a component on mental resilience. How can you recognise when you’re reaching tipping point? And how can you ensure that you regain your equilibrium? We get students to think about these things. You get to know yourself better, partly by discussing what your strong points are and what things you need to work on. For example, do you find yourself above all wanting to ‘fix’ things and to adopt the role of ‘rescuer’? Or can you also simply listen? Not listening to find a solution, just listening to connect.’

Students also have classes on the legal aspects of this role and learn about victims’ rights and about cultural diversity. They participate in simulations with training actors to feel what it may be like in practice. But the students also learn how grief affects people’s brains. As Marije points out: ‘In situations of intense grief or stress, your IQ may fall by 15 points. Let’s say you normally have an IQ of 100: you can easily function in society. But an IQ of 85 qualifies as a mild intellectual disability. Keeping appointments, sorting through documents, arranging a funeral… all of these then become impossible tasks. Police officers are usually trained to act. But here it’s the victims or the bereaved families that determine the pace and the course. I teach future family liaison officers that they’re not in the lead here; their role is to follow.’

Family liaison officer and family support officer

The Netherlands Police Academy has two separate courses in this area: police officers can train as a family liaison officer (familierechercheur in Dutch) or as a family support officer (familieagent in Dutch). Although the names are quite similar, there is one major difference in their roles. ‘The loss that family support officers and family liaison officers come into contact with is often equally sudden and intense. But as a family support officer, you’re never dealing with a crime. So in these cases, no one is to blame. Examples here might be a traffic accident, a suicide, or a missing person case where no crime is involved. There’s no investigation team, because there’s no criminal investigation’, Marije explains.

‘Family liaison officers’ work always involves an investigation team, because they will always be dealing with a serious crime, like a completed homicide or aggravated rape. These are cases that send shockwaves through society. Family liaison officers have ‘the luxury’ of having other professionals at their side, like the case managers of Victim Support Netherlands (Bureau Slachtofferhulp) and victim lawyers. But their work is also more complex.’

During the court case, often all sorts of information about the victim is shared in the public domain. The way the victim was killed is described in extreme detail. ‘It’s distressing enough to hear about everything that happened to your daughter, but now the whole world is reading it too. The impact of that is really quite different from grieving. Added to that, the whole process of the criminal investigation and court case can take years. Which means it takes a very long time before people can begin processing what has happened’, Marije has seen.

Loss and grief after a crime

There are differences between ‘normal’ grieving and grieving after a crime. What are these differences? And what do victims’ families need? Marije carried out some research on this. ‘What emerged was that it’s very important for the bereaved families to learn to rely on their own network, and not the police network. We’re on the sidelines and will eventually step out of the picture. You have to give victims the right to recovery. We support them wherever this is the task of the police, but we remain police. I believe it’s important that students learn that.’

What’s the difference between murder and manslaughter? Why is someone sentenced to detention under a hospital order? How long does a criminal investigation take? What happens during the postmortem? In practice, Marije notices that victims’ families have all sorts of questions. ‘I want the family liaison officers I train to be able to answer those questions.’

‘Often these sorts of questions only surface when we’re no longer in the picture. And also questions like why parents no longer understand each other. How does the grieving process run, when you’re dealing with something so huge? I want this sort of knowledge to be available not only to police officers, but also to the neighbours, to schoolteachers, or to family doctors. So that’s why I’ve combined my experience as a family liaison officer and my knowledge as an applied psychologist in writing a book: Grief and recovery after loss due to a crime: where grief and the law meet (in Dutch: Rouw en herstel na verlies door een misdrijf; waar rouw en recht elkaar raken). In this book, I bring together two worlds: the interior world of loss and grief, and the external world of the police and the law.’

Passing on the baton

In 2021, a telephone call came in when Marije was on call that prompted her to think ‘I just can’t face all that distress again. Enough is enough’. Marije: ‘In that situation, it’s actually a strong step to stop. And to pass on the baton to people who do still have the resilience it takes. I enjoy teaching, passing on to students what has shaped me into who I am now. I can train them and coach them, so they can connect even better with bereaved families now I no longer do so. That’s a rewarding job.’