Washington State has embarked on the implementation of a contemplative, systematic plan focused on moving us toward our ultimate goal. Prevention, and more specifically, social change work were identified as essential components to include in our range of activities.
All of us together have designed service structures, implemented new strategies (community development) and provided services to survivors in addition to educating ourselves and communities about the multi-faceted issue…
This edition of the "Research and Advocacy Digest" focuses on the issue of prison rape and sexual coercion behind bars. While hard data on sexual assaults in prison is sparse, most of us in society and within the anti-rape movement know that the rape, torture, brutality and sexual assault of inmates by other inmates and staff are part of the fabric of everyday prison life.
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Those of us working in the anti-rape movement know that, statistically, the majority of sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knows, including intimate partners. According to sociologist and author Raquel Kennedy-Bergen,
Intimate partner sexual violence is abuse or assault of a sexual nature perpetrated by someone in an intimate relationship to the survivor. It includes a wide variety of offenses including rape, coercion, forcing the partner to perform…
This issue of "Partners in Social Change" is intended to provide an overview of public health theory that is relevant for anti-rape advocates, and to provide the inspiration and desire to engage in the collaborative effort.
This issue of "Partners in Social Change" explores the ecological model of health behavior. As the word "ecological" implies, this structural model explores the relationship between human behavior and the environment. The beauty of the model lies in its assertion that our natural environment includes not only our corporeal surroundings, but also social and cultural forces, making the model particularly useful in program planning. It gives us a systematic approach to determine the appropriate…
This issue of "Connections" presents relevant information and dialogue on the parallels of racism and a rape culture for those of us who work in the anti-rape community and who advocate on behalf of victims and survivors.
It is important that we break the silence and begin and continue dialoguing about these parallels to ensure that we continue to strengthen and cultivate a path that leads to social change and social justice.
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The theme for this issue is "integration" — integration of direction from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, integration of lessons learned from the field and integration of promising practices. When we weave together these elements with our current prevention strategies, we begin to create best-practice sexual violence prevention plans for our local communities.
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In this issue of Partners in Social Change (PISC) are articles on two public health methods that are useful for re-evaluating and goal setting — Needs and Resources Assessment and Outcome Evaluation. Both methods are valuable to prevention planning, however they are also the two methods most often bypassed due to lack of knowledge, funding, time, and other resources.
Despite these limitations, it is important for us to be familiar with them and to creatively think of ways to…
Around the state of Washington we are working to promote social change by encouraging communities to take an active role in identifying the root causes to sexual violence in their community and taking steps to address these conditions. In this issue of Partners in Social Change are articles on community development, logic models and the statewide prevention planning meetings.
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The articles and featured interview in this issue explore long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) to adult survivor wellbeing and functionality.
Upon filtering through the research and critically thinking about reported effects to survivor well-being and functionality, three challenges become quite apparent. These include,
