Victim Services/Advocates Archives - Center for Changing Our Campus Culture

Category: Victim Services/Advocates

Faculty/Staff, Leadership/Administrators, Sexual Assault, Student Conduct Personnel, Victim Services/Advocates

Community Collaboration for Comprehensive Campus Sexual Violence Prevention

For colleges and universities to effectively address and prevent sexual violence, collaboration with community resources, including local rape crisis centers, is essential. This web conference addressed specific examples and research related to collaboration to strengthen sexual violence prevention on college campuses. Drawing on the recent report UC Speaks Up: An Assessment of the Climate for Sexual Violence Prevention, Education, and Response on Three University of California Campuses this web conference provides a foundation to understand the current needs and highlight how strong partnerships between community agencies and campus advocates can contribute to preventing sexual violence. In a panel discussion with college campuses and community Rape Crisis Centers, sexual violence preventionists and advocates provide unique examples of the strategies they implement to support the advancement of sexual violence prevention in their collective communities. Watch Webinar

Health Professionals, Sexual Assault, Victim Services/Advocates

Bridging RCCs and LGBTQI+ Communities to End Rape Culture

LGBTQIA+ activism has been central to upending gender norms, and in so doing, challenged long held beliefs of dominance, power and control, and gendered identities. As a result, LGBTQIA+ communities are ideal allies with the anti-rape movement in the fight to end sexual violence. This web conference is for advocates who provide services, support, education, and so much more in the LGBTQIA+ community to co-create an understanding of how sexual violence can be eliminated through collaboration with our local rape crisis centers. Watch Webinar

Sexual Assault, Victim Services/Advocates

Faith Centered Approaches to Fighting Sexual Violence

Culture and community are an integral part of a victim/survivor’s support system following a sexually violent experience, and spirituality can be an essential part of someone’s healing process. While it’s important to acknowledge that many survivors do not choose to lean into faith to cope with trauma, those who do greatly benefit from a strong relationship between sexual assault providers and spiritual healers. Faith traditions and communities are diverse and so is how they approach addressing sexual violence within their communities. It is important for spiritual leaders to understand the impact of sexual assault on the people they support and to feel comfortable joining and activating the survivors’ support networks, which often necessitates the awareness of local resources. Co-facilitated with Sikh Family Center, this web conference is for faith-based organizations and advocates who are interested in expanding their tools, offering community-based support, and joining the anti-sexual violence movement in disrupting and preventing sexual violence. Watch Webinar

Health Professionals, Law Enforcement, Leadership/Administrators, Sexual Assault, Victim Services/Advocates

Campus-Community Partnerships: Coordinating a Comprehensive Trauma-Informed Response to Sexual Violence

Sexual violence on college and university campuses is a complex issue requiring collaboration and integrated approaches to support survivors. Approaches that engage the entire community in addressing sexual assault on campus are essential. Partnerships between various campus programs and departments and community-based resources help ensure access for members of the college community, including those who have experienced sexual violence, to much needed resources, strengthen the accountability of institutions to the community, increase knowledge about the impact of sexual assault on campus, and link community-based advocacy resources with campuses. This web conference is for campus administrators and advocates interested in expanding their partnerships to support survivors and address sexual violence both on and off campus. Watch Webinar

Law Enforcement, Sexual Assault, Stalking, Student Conduct Personnel, Victim Services/Advocates

Restorative Justice: Exploring Alternative Ways of Achieving Justice for Sexual Assault Survivors on Campus

Sexual assault survivors have long desired alternatives to the criminal justice system which often leaves them feeling unheard. Accountability for those who do harm is the core of what survivors want. The Restorative Justice approach provides survivors with an alternative justice process that depends on an acknowledgement of harm from the perpetrator from the beginning. It facilitates communities coming together for collective solutions to address sexual violence. Spanish recording: https://youtu.be/I362ZrPmUec Watch Webinar

Sexual Assault, Victim Services/Advocates

Advancing Equity Through Collaboration: Human Trafficking and Sexual Assault

Since the 2000 passing of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), many organizations who previously had little or no interest in forced labor and who had otherwise held no anti-oppression principles realized the value of the anti-trafficking momentum to further their own agendas. Because of this, many anti-trafficking organizations claiming values of survivor-centered, trauma-informed, and empowerment-based programming engaged in coercive intervention and other strategies that did not center the consent and bodily autonomy of survivors. Additionally, many components of these strategies rely on policing tactics that place people from marginalized communities (including trans people, immigrants, and BIPOC) at increased risk of harm through engagement with the criminal justice system, target vulnerable sex workers, and do not address the root causes that leave people in the sex trades without access to safety and support. “End Demand” has been a popular part of the anti-trafficking narrative since it’s early days, and “Demand Reduction” prioritized as a “prevention” strategy. Meanwhile, demand reduction has been criticized by labor rights organizers as antithetical to the labor organizing practices that can keep workers safe (working together, increased screening, organizing for safety), and by anti-trafficking advocates for its incongruence with what is shown to reduce exploitation in […]

Continue Reading

Sexual Assault, Students, Victim Services/Advocates

The Cost of Reporting: Perpetrator Retaliation, Institutional Betrayal, and Student Survivor Pushout

This Know Your IX survey of more than 100 student survivors who formally reported sexual violence to their schools found a massive failure on the part of schools to fulfill their obligations under Title IX. These educational interruptions occur not because of sexual violence alone, but because of sexual violence exacerbated by schools’ inadequate or otherwise harmful responses to reports of violence. Survivors describe being blamed for the violence against them, being told the school could do nothing, facing name calling by school officials when seeking support, having their cases drawn out for years, and getting punished for their own assaults after seeking help. Download Report

Male Survivors, OVW Blogs, Victim Services/Advocates

Acknowledging Domestic Violence Against Men

About one in ten men experience domestic violence in their lifetime. Although that number is much lower than the approximately one in four women who experience domestic violence, it is nevertheless a reality we should acknowledge and address during Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM). We may not immediately thing of college-aged students when we discuss domestic violence. However, the definition of domestic violence shared by the Office on Women’s Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services broadens the understanding of the term to encompass intimate partner violence, which includes “physical, sexual, or emotional abuse by a current or former intimate partner.” The United Nations refers to domestic violence as domestic abuse or intimate partner violence, describing it as a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Thinking about domestic violence in this way makes it quite clear that many college students are at risk, including men. Of the men who are domestic violence survivors, more than half (56%) experienced violence before the age of 25—a period when many young adults are navigating life on a college campuses. How domestic violence impacts male college students […]

Continue Reading

OVW Blogs, Sexual Assault, Students, Victim Services/Advocates

Supporting Hispanic Survivors is Honoring Hispanic Heritage

From September 15 to October 15, communities and campuses around the country celebrate culture and history of Hispanic people are celebrated and honored. September is also Campus Safety Month for colleges and universities, making it a perfect time to shed light on the importance of campuses providing culturally competent resources and support to Latinx and Hispanic students. Creating a safe campus starts with affirming every students’ cultures and lived experience, and that starts with understanding what certain terms we use mean—and what terms students prefer. Though Latinx and Hispanic are often used interchangeably, “Hispanic” broadly refers to people of Spanish-speaking descent, while “Latino/a” (or the more gender-neutral term “Latinx”) refers to residents of the U.S. who trace their ancestry to Latin America. The Impact of Gender Roles Understanding these and other cultural touchstones of Hispanic, Latino, and other communities, campuses can provide effective and culturally appropriate support and resources for Hispanic survivors. A student’s country of origin and generation may have a significant influence on how they respond after experiencing dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking. Traditional gender roles, machismo, and marianismo, strong family values called familismo, fear of shame, and law enforcement all play significant roles when […]

Continue Reading