The Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ICADV) has named the Indiana Supreme Court the recipient of their 2012 Outstanding Judiciary award. Loretta Oleksy of State Court Administration (Division) and Anne Jordan of the Indiana Judicial Center (IJC) attended the awards luncheon on October 10, 2012, to accept the award on behalf of the Court. The ICADV has presented the Outstanding Service Awards at their annual conference for the past 17 years.
The Outstanding Judiciary award is ordinarily presented to an individual judge. This year, however, ICADV Legal Director Kerry Blomquist chose to deviate from that tradition by nominating the Indiana Supreme Court in recognition of the work done by the Division and the IJC to promote domestic violence awareness among the trial courts and to improve the judicial response to domestic violence. Over the past two years, these offices with support from Division Chief Deputy Executive Director Dave Remondini, have worked together to increase the educational opportunities available to judges on the topic of domestic violence. They have developed a day-long training curriculum that was presented at the Spring Judicial Conference and was repeated at three regional trainings this fall. The Division and the IJC are actively working on additional offerings for new judge orientation and for future judicial conferences. In addition, the Division has added a new staff position that is dedicated to domestic violence and related issues.