Montpelier — When she started in 2004 to write a state plan for preventing sexual violence, University of Vermont Professor Susan E. Roche was laboring, if not in obscurity, then at least under the radar.

Yesterday, Roche watched Gov. Jim Douglas kick off the unveiling of the five-year plan, which she assembled for the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, in a hotel ballroom right across State Street from the capitol, where the Vermont Senate the day before had unanimously supported overhauling the way the state deals with sex offenders.

What a difference two years makes.

"I had no idea we'd be here today, like this," Roche told the roomful of statewide leaders in social work, health care and law enforcement, after Douglas' introduction.

As Roche worked with a variety of public and private agencies on drafting the plan, called The Vermont Approach: A Strategic Plan for Comprehensive, Collaborative Sexual Violence Prevention, more and more sexual-abuse cases gained public attention, and the state legislature began spending more time — particularly during the current session — debating ways to prevent sex crimes and to crack down on sex offenders.

Then came yesterday's unveiling.

"The timing and the synergy was really wonderful," Roche said during a break in yesterday's discussion of the plan at the Capitol Plaza Hotel.

Timing and synergy are the name of the game in The Vermont Approach, which calls for private and public agencies to work together more closely during the next five years to help victims of sexual abuse, to head off abuse through treatment and education, and to avoid competing for money to support their programs.

"We don't want to reinvent what already exists," said Rose Pulliam, statewide coordinator of the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. "We want to optimize it."

Existing programs include the Vermont State Police's posting of a detective at every barracks to investigate sexual-abuse cases, said Maj. Bruce Lang, commander of the Vermont Department of Public Safety's criminal division.

"We have 12 specialized people out there," Lang said in an interview. "We've been fully staffed since December. It gives (victim) advocates someone to work with."

Those 12 detectives are kept busy enough that Lang welcomes any preventive efforts that keep the officers' workload from growing. At the same time, he hopes that the recent momentum toward addressing sexual violence can be sustained. "You always wonder how much money will be available," Lang said. "The question is, is a program going to have the funding to address the real problems?"

Assistant Attorney General Cindy Maguire, chief of the criminal division of the State Attorney General's Office, said that in her 15 years as a prosecutor, often of sex crimes, she can't remember all branches of state government showing so much focus on the issue.