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.
…
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.
…
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…
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…
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.
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…
The Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs (WCSAP) recently had the privilege of working with the Washington State Supreme Court Gender and Justice Commission, judicial officers, and the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center (KCSARC) to develop the first edition of the "Sexual Offense Bench Guide for Judges."
The purpose of a bench guide is to educate judicial officers (judges or commissioners) who decide particular types of cases about the law, and also about the…
