Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is a form of child sexual abuse. It is sexual activity involving a minor in exchange for something of value, or promise thereof, to the child or another person or persons. The young person is treated as a commercial and sexual object.
Often when schools and communities request a CSEC program this is connected to increased media attention of CSEC or in response to a recent incident. Programming that defines the violence and focuses on…
This summer, WCSAP released a support statement for the #blacklivesmatter Movement as a recommitment to our anti-racism work and allyship with African American communities. In that statement, we committed to being transparent about our ongoing process and to sharing tools that we find helpful along the way with our membership. We don’t have all the answers, but we want you to come along with us as we continue and deepen…
Most detention facilities are required to comply with PREA. This includes state and federal…
Three agencies — Disability Rights Washington (DRW), the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs (WCSAP), and Washington State Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program (LTCOP) — came together as the Alliance to End Sexual Violence in Long-Term Care. Alliance partners created this handbook as a result of their collaboration to develop technical assistance for advocates working with residents of long-term care facilities in Washington State.
This handbook celebrates the combined…
This training is intended for trained and experienced sexual assault advocates. It explores the roles and responsibilities of hotline sexual assault advocates with two or more years of experience. Participants will explore the unique needs of survivors and address the specific challenges that may arise when advocating. Through sensitive, intentional and informed interventions, advocates will be equipped to offer survivors resources, options and crisis intervention, supporting their healing…
Advocates come from all walks of life and advocate for a variety of purposes; but the purpose of these training materials is to provide information and support for advocates who work with residents of long-term care, specifically, long-term care ombuds, sexual assault program advocates, or disability advocates.
Building advocacy where disability, sexual violence and long-term care meet is nuanced and important. The intention of this booklet is to assist in the development of…
This tip is about consent-now I know you might be thinking, again? But hear me out.
Yes, consent is a fairly common topic area in sexual assault prevention, and there are good reasons for that. Far too often though we come up with reasons why we CANNOT teach consent. Things like the kids I'm working with are too young for that, or the school doesn't let us talk about sex. And this is why this Tip is about consent... without sex.
A recent…
Around the nation, and now in Washington State, there has been a push for more comprehensive prevention efforts by providing saturated resources. This model allows for more robust staff and agency time and resources to invest in prevention. With this shift there may be questions about how to design this type of comprehensive prevention programming on the ground.
This webinar will provide an overview of the guidance within our state and share stories from other states about local…
I recently read a comment from a child advocate that speaks to the core of why advocacy is such an important service for young survivors of sexual abuse in our communities: "I've been working for decades now with children who have experienced significant harm. Each of them expected nothing more or less from life than what they'd experienced." Ultimately, our goal in child advocacy is to help young people envision and pursue a life that is more than and different from the trauma they have…
The Office of Crime Victim's Advocacy (OCVA) has developed one service standard for prevention work conducted under the Community Sexual Assault Programs Core Services, Marginalized and Native American Communities, and the RPE program. This Primary Prevention Standard outlines the goal of the standard, eligible activities, participants, and the training required for participating staff. This is current for the 2021-2022 Fiscal Year.
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This training will help advocates learn more about the role of the sexual assault nurse examiner and better understand the sexual assault medical exam. Included will be help in understanding general anatomy, medical findings and forensic evidence collection. Additionally, this training will include information on the collaborative roles of advocates and SANE nurses in the care of sexual assault patients.
A trauma-informed approach to advocacy with parents of children who have been sexually abused means considering the range of stressors that families encounter. Specifically, we must recognize the possibility that parents may also have experienced sexual abuse as a child. In conjunction with the services offered to children, supporting the healing of parent-survivors helps both generations. Advocates have an excellent opportunity to help parent-survivors focus on their strengths. While their…
The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) was signed into law in 2003 and in 2012, the Department of Justice standards that govern its implementation in most types of detention facilities were finalized.
The purpose of these standards is to tell facilities that are covered under PREA, what they need to do in order to be compliant. A number of these standards relate to a facility's responsibility to provide incarcerated survivors with access to sexual assault advocacy services. It was…
This audience for this brochure is corrections professionals. The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) requires correctional facilities to provide access to confidential community based sexual assault advocacy services for incarcerated people who have experienced sexual assault.
This means that correctional facilities will be reaching out to community based sexual assault programs for assistance in meeting this requirement. However, many corrections professionals are unfamiliar with…
In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention included Findings on Victimization by Sexual Orientation. These findings are the first of their kind, and they have opened the door for advocates and agencies to have more conversations regarding the needs of their respective communities.
The purpose of this review is to show how advocates can utilize these findings and make services more accessible. We focus particularly on the Bisexual population.
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This 1.5-hour training is an introduction to working with child victims (12 and under) who have an intellectual and developmental disability (IDD) and their non-offending parents/guardians. The training will be valuable to service providers who want to expand their knowledge about this unique and pervasive disability and develop skills in working with this underserved population. The training will include the following information:
Sometimes a video is worth a thousand words! Some of these videos are intended to demonstrate techniques for therapists, and some can be shown directly to child clients. If you like a particular video, do a search to see if it is part of a series by the same person or group, as several of these are. The duration of the video is in parentheses after the name.
In our work to end sexual violence, sometimes best practices in prevention and what communities want to hear about (i.e. awareness and education) are not the same thing. Large school assemblies and tips for staying safe at parties are often welcomed by our communities — these make them feel safe and don't ask too much of them. With limited resources to do our prevention work, it is important that we are able to distinguish between primary prevention and awareness or risk reduction activities…
Even though we work in the anti-violence field, we sometimes overlook the need for workplace violence prevention and intervention plans for our own programs. While agencies may be well aware of the risk of violence from an abuser who is connected to a client, we may not consider the possibility of employee-to-employee violence, risk from someone who is stalking or abusing a staff member, or threats from a worker whose employment is being terminated.
Managers could use the following…
Without My Consent, a nonprofit organization that seeks to combat online invasion of privacy and empower individuals to stand up for their privacy rights, recently released the findings of its survey about online harassment. Although this survey focused on online harassment in general, a large focus of the organization's work is nonconsensual pornography, sometimes referred to as "revenge porn."
Without My Consent's definition of this…
This training is geared towards individuals and organizations that see the need to take a bold move to improve the way our Movement provides services to survivors of color while also supporting advocates of color. Sexual violence is greatly impacted and made more complex by all other forms of oppression, but issues of racism have long been swept under the rug within our Movement. Many organizations promote anti-oppression work but aren't able to describe or demonstrate how they are…
WCSAP prioritized gathering information about sexual assault legal advocacy practices because we have heard from advocates that sexual assault survivors face many challenges within the legal system. This means that legal advocacy is also challenging and that advocates need support for their work in this system.
A particularly successful method of working with survivors of sexual assault and trauma is by bringing survivors together in groups. Groups are an effective tool in providing support, validation, connection, healing, empathy, and giving hope. At the core of all sexual assault is disempowerment and disconnection. To assist in recovery, empowerment and connection is key.
It is amazing to witness the transformation that many survivors make because of these groups — because they realize…
Keane, Guest, & Padbury (2013) explored issues of sibling sexual abuse in their recent article. According to the authors, there must be a balance of concern for victims of sibling sexual abuse, as well as those who offend. They rejected the feminist framework that prioritizes victim rights (specifically in the instance of youth offending) in order to look at it from a developmental framework.
Adult theories of offending are located in research that suggests the…
Community sexual assault programs may receive inquiries from parents, caregivers, and professionals about how to understand and respond to children's sexual behaviors. It may be helpful to think about children's sexual behaviors as existing on a continuum — some sexual behaviors are healthy and normal, some are problematic, and others may become abusive. The resources below can help parents and professionals identify which behaviors are developmentally appropriate, which behaviors may be…
