After Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Kansas can break the patterns of abuse | Opinion
For decades there have been intentional efforts during the month of April, designated as Sexual Assault Awareness Month, for people to talk more openly about the occurrence of sexual violence. During this month, advocates educate the public about ways to support victims and survivors and what changes are needed to better hold perpetrators accountable.
As the executive director of the Kansas Coalition against Sexual and Domestic Violence, this April I joined advocates and volunteers from the state’s 25 accredited victim service providers to talk about the everyday realities of sexual violence. However, talking about the issues and raising awareness about the prevalence of sexual violence does not do enough to move forward our critical goal of preventing the impacts of sexual assault on individuals, families, and each of our communities. What can we do, not only during April, but for the rest of the year?
It can be too easy to forget that when someone is sexually assaulted, the impact of that trauma is not felt only by that person. While certainly the victim experiences a depth of trauma that is often hard to describe in a way that others can fathom, by focusing only on the individual person as being impacted we often leave the responsibility of preventing or stopping sexual violence to that one person as well.
The impact of sexual violence can have ripple effects through many aspects of our lives, and can even have an impact on generations of people who are connected to the original victim of the assault.
A family secret revealed
Take for example, an intergenerational impact of sexual violence that happened in my family many years ago. In 2002, as a graduate student at the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare, I was assigned a project standard at the time for social workers to explore the generational behavior patterns in their own family, by mapping out a genogram. This family tree-like exercise led me to interview various members of my family to lay out a map of who was born when, who was related to whom, and who navigated social problems such as alcoholism or depression.
During this exercise, some inconsistencies for the date of my grandparents’ wedding came to the forefront. Sparing you the details of the family discussions that ensued, I learned that my grandparents had concealed the actual date of their marriage to protect the fact that my grandmother had been sexually assaulted as a teenager, which resulted in the pregnancy and birth of my uncle before her marriage to my grandfather.
This assignment had blown the lid right off a family secret that had brought my grandmother immense shame and pain. In this case, once the information came to light, we had many critical conversations, ultimately leading to clarity, grace and healing. The ripple effect of my grandmother’s assault was significant, but not only for her.
This is one of the reasons why I am motivated to declare that the time has come to work towards the prevention of sexual violence in the first place. This year’s them for Sexual Assault Awareness Month was “Building Connected Communities,” which focused on the prevention of sexual assault and sexual violence by highlighting how community-level interventions can reduce harm and prevent sexual violence. While I am deeply grateful for the progress made in the intervention systems — such as law enforcement, prosecutors, the courts, and health care — the work in Kansas to address sexual violence must place prevention as a priority.
We know prevention is a critical piece of the solution because we see this in the data. According to the 2023 Kansas Bureau of Investigation statistics on sexual violence, more than 78% of sexual assaults committed in Kansas were committed by someone who knew the victim. While random acts of sexual violence exist as a risk, overwhelmingly, sexual violence perpetrators target people in their own families, social circles or communities. They often work to gain their trust, isolate the victim and then keep them from feeling safe enough to report.
Involve men and boys to change culture
So, how do we prevent sexual violence, if this is the reality? For starters, we face the fact that we have relied upon strategies that focus on the individual response to sexual violence as a sole means of prevention, and this is not enough to broadly end sexual violence. Individual strategies, such as teaching self-defense or providing alcohol education courses, can be effective, but only in reducing the risk on a small scale. We must add layers of prevention, including community-level approaches to make a wider societal impact.
One community level approach that has been identified for many years, yet seems to struggle to gain mainstream traction, is mobilizing men and boys. For one, men and boys are also victimized sexually, and like all sexual violence, these incidents are severely underreported. Second, encouraging men and boys who are not primary victims to become allies can prevent sexual violence by reducing the acceptability of sexual violence as a societal norm.
Prevention means recognizing difficult truths about how different factors in our community impact whether someone will be targeted for sexual violence. Predators look for vulnerabilities. They consider factors such as lack of education, financial hardship, lack of safe and stable housing, social inequities, power differentials, a lack of believability and a lack of robust social supports for their targets. A predator uses this knowledge to gain access to victims, abuse them, and then leverage those factors to flip the script so that the victims are to blame.
But we can change this. By creating stronger individual, community and societal safety nets, we can collectively build the protective factors that can counteract the maneuvers of those who are causing harm. “Building connected communities” is not just a catchy slogan, nor is it a call to action only for the month of April. The public health approach provides a road map to significant reductions, and by my belief, the elimination of sexual violence in all Kansas communities. These strategies should get the appropriate resources to do so.
The Kansas Coalition against Sexual and Domestic Violence is committed to expanding this work, in partnership with our member programs and allied professionals. Our organization is expanding training and technical assistance for those who want to join us in this mission. We invite all Kansans to build connected communities by contacting their local sexual assault victim service provider or our agency to create a future where sexual violence is only a relic of the past.
Michelle McCormick is executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence.
