15 Ways Communities Should Address Sexual Assault

Promoting social norms that recognize and respond to risks for sexual assault can help prevent it from happening. This means mobilizing allies, including men and boys, to understand the signs of potential sexual assault; responding to the signs safely; reaching out to potential victims; and knowing when to call in authorities.

Both girls and boys (and women and men) need to learn how to recognize sexual violence. Children and teens should learn the norms of healthy and safe dating and intimate-relationship skills. Schools, as well as community and religious organizations, should introduce programs that teach healthy sexuality and self-empowerment.

Women ages 18 to 24 are at an elevated risk for sexual assault, whether or not they're on a college campus. While victims of sexual assault should not be blamed, these elevated risks make it imperative that girls and women be trained in self-defense and empowerment. In addressing assault, rather than challenging the statistics, communities should provide quality self-defense training for everyone around the 18- to 24-year-old age range. Men are at higher risk of assault in these ages, too, and should know how to protect themselves as well.

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention identifies strengthening economic supports for women and families, as well as strengthening leadership opportunities for girls, as key steps that communities can take to address sexual assault. Women who are assaulted on the job often feel they cannot report their assaults for fear of being fired.

Schools, campuses, work environments, religious insitutions and other communities should work to improve their safety and monitoring, as well as general policies that aim to prevent and deal with assault. Communities should invest in improving the safety and security of their environments, which includes better lighting, security, volunteer escorts or putting more adults on hall-watch duty. Wherever assaults have occured or could potentially occur should be studied and considered for improvement.

Conversations about sexual assault are not easy, but survivors should have space to safely share their experiences and feelings where they will be believed, supported and in control.

Adolescents, teens and young adults need to learn that consent cannot be assumed. Communities' sexual education programs should encourage affirmative consent practices, which the University of Michigan defines for its students as "a clear and unambiguous agreement, expressed outwardly through mutually understandable words or actions, to engage in a particular activity." Moreover, girls, boys, men and women should understand that at any point consent can be withdrawn, and the request to do so must be respected.

It is not only up to the individual, especially for women, to protect themselves from sexual assault. Communities need to engage in conversations to change behaviors and expectations that lead to sexual assault. Men can model for adolescent boys the language, behaviors and expectations connected to intimacy. Communities can encourage this and help provide language for how those conversations can go.

Survivors of sexual assault need continued empathy, support and safety. They do not need to convince you that what happened was not what they wanted. Women are still often blamed for their assaults through clothing choices or the fact that they had been drinking. Communities that wish to address assault must unconditionally support women who have been assaulted, remind them that they are believed, that it is not their fault and that they are not alone.

Professional help for sexual assault survivors should not be limited to those with the means to pay for it. Communities that wish to address the problems should find ways to ensure that professional help, in the form of counseling or group therapy, is available to anyone who needs it. Professional support should be focused on survivors and their needs, and independent of the community for whom it supports. In other words, it's not there to defend leaders or avoid lawsuits.

Sexual assault, like many traumas, can have lasting effects on survivors. There is no term limit on the emotional effects, and professional support and therapy should accommodate all survivors, no matter when they experienced assault. Some survivors might feel the need to reach out for help even decades after their traumas, and communities that wish to address the problem should ensure this support is available.

Communities can encourage bystanders to safely intervene in potential assault situations, but this requires training in how to recognize the signs, and not escalate a situation or put the potential victim at greater risk. Community training can be a safe way to avert potential situations.

Communities can expand the way they address sexual assault by expanding education to perpetrator prevention. While it's important to focus on victim safety, a comprehensive training program can teach individual skills on how to prevent sexual assault from happening.

Schools are responsible for providing safe environments for students, including those who have experienced sexual assault on campus. Many survivors fear returning to school and drop out rather than go back. Schools and other communities where someone has experienced assault should work to find ways to support victims in making them feel safe, welcome and necessary.

Community leaders can only address sexual assault if they know, understand and uphold the laws regarding reporting assaults and investigations. Responding only to individual complaints is not enough. Those in charge must respond to all reports, particularly those reportedly perpetrated by the same student or in the same location.