For Sexual Assault Survivors and their Family and Friends
Sexual Assault Prevention
In addition to funding services for sexually abused adults and children, the City also funds supportive services and community mobilization efforts aimed at preventing sexual assault. These programs target specialized communities who are particularly vulnerable to sexual assault, such as teen moms, women with disabilities, and immigrant and refugee communities who face language and cultural barriers.
- Communities Against Rape and Abuse provides support to victims/survivors of sexual assault who are teen mothers and women with disabilities. This program mobilizes communities and develops safety circles of trained and knowledgeable friends and allies who help teen mothers and women with disabilities decrease isolation, increase safety, and prevent sexual assault and abuse.
- Refugee Women’s Alliance provides community mobilization services around sexual assault issues to the Vietnamese community in Seattle. The key features of this project are the recruitment of Vietnamese women from faith-based religious groups such as temples and churches in the Vietnamese community to enroll in educational workshops about sexual assault conducted in Vietnamese; identifying and recruiting Natural Leaders to assist in further community mobilization efforts in Vietnamese communities; and developing a support group for Vietnamese women survivors of sexual assault.
- Asian Counseling and Referral Service’s Teen Peer Advocate Program provides community-based prevention services led by Asian Pacific American young women. ACRS works to mobilize a youth’s identified community with the goal of ending violence, including sexual assault. The goal of the program is to foster healthy non-violent relationships and educate the community about sexual assault, prevention strategies, and available resources. This is done through peer advocacy, outreach, education and community forums.
In 2007, the City invested $200,000 in these three agencies to conduct community mobilization and prevention efforts. The 2008 allocation is $207,500 of City of Seattle General Funds.
Reports
Promising Practices in Sexual Violence Prevention and Community Mobilization for Prevention: A Report to the City of Seattle, by Erin Casey, Ph.D., MSW.
This report was commissioned by the Seattle Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Division within the City of Seattle Human Services Department. The report is an overview of the current state of the literature related to effective and promising approaches to sexual violence prevention. Additionally, current knowledge regarding best practices and critical elements of community mobilizing as a prevention strategy are reviewed. The goal of the report is to assist the City and its community partners in identifying sexual violence prevention-related activities that are likely to carry the greatest impact given limited resources.
Information
For more information, call the Seattle Human Services Department’s Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention program at 206-233-2774, or e-mail endviolence@seattle.gov.
For more information about our partners and other programs and services, visit:
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