Many Voices, One Movement: 2014 National Sexual Assault Conference Reflections

The National Sexual Assault Conference (NSAC) is an annual conference that brings together over 1000 people to share information, advance learning opportunities, and support professional growth to those who work to address the needs of survivors of sexual assault, to raise awareness about sexual assault, and to prevent sexual violence. The 2014 event, “Many Voices, One Movement”, was hosted by the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center in Pittsburg, PA August 20-22.

Presenting at the conference

At the conference, I worked with Kathy Smith of the Rape and Abuse Crisis Center to present a case study on the community environment change efforts of the It’s Everyone’s Business: Summit to Prevent Domestic & Sexual Violence. The summit brought together 177 community leaders from different sectors of the community, and 86 college student leaders from 5 institutions of higher education to provide education on social norms, and focus on calling individuals to action to prevent sexual violence.

To prepare for and evaluate the outcomes of the summit, the Improve Group partnered with staff members of North Dakota’s Rape Prevention Education Program to create an engaging experience that would encourage community action. Fifty community leaders were recruited and we utilized a facilitated leadership Technology of Participation approach to assist them in planning the community and college summit.

For the purpose of the evaluation, we used audience response technology to capture the responses of the participants. By the end of the summit, the amount of attendees committed to participate in primary prevention and activities increased, as well as their knowledge about social norms that contribute to violence against women and how to change them.

Other great work in the field

It was exciting to see all of the innovative work that is being done to prevent domestic violence and sexual assault. A conference a highlight was seeing my friend and colleague Eileen Recktenwald, the Executive Director of the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs Inc. (KASAP) receive the Gail Burns-Smith Award. The award recognizes people making significant contributions to preventing sexual violence through their work to facilitate effective partnerships between advocates working on behalf of victims and survivors and those working in the area of sex offender management and treatment.

Under Eileen’s guidance, Kentucky established the State Prevention Team that created a statewide sexual violence prevention plan.  In 2009, Eileen recruited Kentucky’s 13 rape crisis center staff to work with researchers at the University of Kentucky (UK) to recruit 26 high schools across the state to participate in a randomized intervention trial, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Half of the schools were assigned to receive an intervention called “Green Dot” and the others agreed to serve as the study’s control group. Green Dot interventions were conducted by trained rape crisis staff educators from KASAP-affiliated regional centers.

The Green Dot strategy is a comprehensive approach to violence prevention that capitalizes on the power of peer and cultural influence across all levels of the socio-ecological model. Informed by social change theory, the model targets all community members as potential bystanders, and seeks to engage them through awareness, education, and skills-practice, in proactive behaviors that establish intolerance of violence as the norm, as well as reactive interventions in high-risk situations – resulting in the ultimate reduction of violence.

Findings have recently been released from Ann Coker at UK’s Center for Research on Violence Against Women (CRVAW).  She found a reduction of greater than 50 percent in the self-reported frequency of sexual violence perpetration by students at schools that received the Green Dot training, compared to a slight increase at schools that did not.