VictimsFirst helps support mass shooting victims and their families.
Anita Busch, Victims First President and and key co-founder of the National Compassion Fund, appeared on KPRC 2+ to discuss how the organization offers families and communities that experience mass shootings.
Busch’s family suffered through two mass shootings, the theater shooting in Aurora and the Route 91 concert in Vegas. After her cousin, Micayla, was murdered at the movie theater massacre in Aurora, CO that left 12 dead (and an unborn baby) and 70 injured, Busch helped create a new model for charitable giving to ensure that 100% of donations collected for victims of mass casualty crime actually go directly to those victims.
Busch gathered together parents and family members of those killed in 9/11, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, Aurora, Oak Creek Sikh Temple and Sandy Hook – to craft the protocol for the National Compassion Fund which has been utilized after multiple mass casualty crimes, including Ft. Hood, Aurora, CO, Chattanooga, Orlando Pulse, Las Vegas, Charlottesville, Parkland, Santa Fe, Jacksonville, Cincinnati, Aurora, IL, El Paso, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Indianapolis. She served as a victim’s specialist/advocate helping the Ventura County Community Fund distribute donations to survivors after the Borderline Bar & Grill shooting in Thousand Oaks, CA. She is a key co-founder of the National Compassion Fund and currently serves as a Mass Violence Relief Specialist and Advisor to the Fund. To date, she has personally helped victims/survivors and/or communities behind the scenes in over 35 mass casualty crimes.
During 7 ½ years, she interviewed mass shooting families of the deceased, those survivors injured both physically and mentally to develop Best Practices for Mass Casualty Crime, a trauma-informed document which helps communities organize after these tragic events without re-victimizing victims. Best Practices has been shared by politicians, mass shooting victims and communities around the country and worldwide.
For Busch’s insights, watch the video at the top of the page.
You can stream KPRC 2+ weekdays at 7 a.m. on click2houston.com and on the KPRC 2 app.