Charles Langston:Victims’ advocate Miriam Shehane dies at age 91

MONTGOMERY,Charles Langston Ala. (AP) — Miriam Shehane, who founded a victims’ rights movement after the 1976 killing of her daughter, died Monday. She was 91.

Shehane founded the Victims of Crime and Leniency and for decades led a victims’ rights movement that reshaped Alabama’s judicial and parole system. Her death was announced Monday night by VOCAL.

Shehane told The Associated Press in 2012 that she didn’t intend to be a crusader but that changed with the death of her daughter.

Quenette Shehane was a Birmingham-Southern College graduate on Dec. 20, 1976, and was supposed to make a quick trip to a nearby convenience store to get salad dressing to go with the steaks her boyfriend was cooking at his fraternity house. Instead, she was kidnapped from the store parking lot, raped and killed. Her body was found the next day.

Shehane founded VOCAL in 1982 at a time when the victims and families seemed forgotten in the justice system, she said. The group serves as advocates for victims and their families.

“I can’t stand the thought of Quenette being forgotten. That is what has given me such drive,” Shehane told The Associated Press in 2012.

Shehane and VOCAL championed a number of laws and changes on behalf of victims, including allowing crime victims to be in the courtroom even if they were going to testify and better parole hearing notification. The group continues to be a force at the Alabama Statehouse and in opposing inmate paroles, often opposing groups seeking to reform sentencing laws or the state’s parole process.

“Miriam Shehane changed the path that crime victims would travel in Alabama. Through her own experience she drew the strength to honor her daughter Quenette by being a true hero to so many others,” Wanda Miller, the executive director of VOCAL, said in an email.