The Tribune

APRIL is Sexual Assault Awareness Month — a period for raising awareness and educating the public on sexual assault in parallel with advocacy for laws, policies, programmes, and services to prevent it, effectively respond to it, and ensure access to justice for survivors.

RAINN defines sexual assault as “sexual contact or behaviour that occurs without explicit consent of the victim”. Some examples are unwanted touching, attempted rape, and rape.

According to the National Crime Victimisation Survey in the US, eight out of ten perpetrators of sexual violence are known to the victim, and 93 per cent of children and teen victims knew the perpetrator.

Sexual violence is not limited to strangers; on the contrary, predators often prey on people they know and use their vulnerabilities against them. Our response to sexual violence has to take this into consideration.

In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and Division of Violence Prevention developed a resource for the prevention of sexual violence.

STOP SV: A Technical Package to Prevent Sexual Violence is a 48-page document that lays out the strategy, the approach, and the evidence supporting the approach. At the beginning, it clearly states that sexual violence is a public health problem, it is highly prevalent, some groups are disproportionately impacted, and preventing sexual violence is a priority.

It also identifies risk factors which include experiences of physical abuse as a child, exposure to violence between parents, gender norms, hypermasculinity, poverty, gender inequality, and inadequate laws and policies. It makes connections between sexual violence and other forms of violence, health consequences, and economic consequences.

Importantly, it states that sexual violence can be prevented, and this requires a comprehensive approach that includes the individual, relationship, community, and societal levels.

The strategy is divided into five areas with accompanying approaches.

1. Promote social norms that protect against violence. The approaches for this strategy are bystander approaches and mobilising men and boys and allies.

This means men and boys have to step up and interrupt unsafe interactions.

They have to be trained to recognise these situations and safely, effectively stop them from escalating.

The social norm that is street harassment, for example, has to be understood as not only an uncomfortable or annoying experience for women and girls, but one that induces fear and is on the continuum of sexual violence.

This strategy is aimed at changing indifference to violence. People convincing themselves and each other that violence does not matter results in too little intervention and the indifference observation of violence can lead to participation in it.

By engaging men and boys and guiding them to become allies, there are more people to name and interrupt acts of sexual violence, demonstrating less acceptance within and among peer groups. They become leaders and encourage others to help create a protective environment.

1. Teach skills to prevent sexual violence. The approaches named are social-emotional learning, teaching healthy, safe dating and intimate relationship skills to adolescents, promoting healthy sexuality, and empowerment-based training. These approaches require sex positivity. It means addressing issues of sexuality and equipping young people with the tools to navigate it in safe, healthy ways.

That includes understanding their bodies, asserting their bodily autonomy, understanding consent, and respecting “no” from other people.

Comprehensive sexuality education is critical to building a healthy society and preventing sexual violence. In addition to this, we need to teach communication skills, empathy, problem-solving skills, and conflict management.

Sexual violence is not about sex, but a way to exert power and control. By teaching social-emotional skills, we give people ways to express themselves that do not harm other people, and help them to understand that the control they need to exercise is of and over themselves.

The empowerment-based training focus on self-determination, risk assessment, and bystander intervention.

1. Provide opportunities to empower and support girls and women. Strengthening economic supports for women and families and strengthening leadership and opportunities for girls are the approaches for the strategy.

This strategy is a response to the disproportionate impact of sexual violence on people who are unemployed, underemployed, experiencing poverty, unhoused, or have limited parental supervision, all exacerbated by gender inequality.

Support can take the form of subsidised childcare, ensuring there is equal pay for work of equal value, and making paid family leave accessible. These measures can increase women’s economic stability and decrease poverty of women and children, thereby reducing risk factors for sexual violence.

1. Create protective environments. The approaches for this are improving safety and monitoring in schools, establishing and consistently applying workplace politics, and addressing community-level risks through environmental approaches.

There are changes that need to be made at individual and familial level, and there are changes that must take place at the community level, through institutions.

Changes to the physical environment, such as the installation and maintenance of proper lighting, can increase the feeling of safety while it reduces the risk and rate of sexual violence.

Institutions also have a responsibility to contribute to the change we need to see. The technical package says, “Women in workplaces with proactive sexual harassment policies were less likely to be physically threatened or to be the targets of unwanted sexual behaviour or comments. Women also responded more assertively to unwanted sexual behaviour when the workplace implemented policy, complaint procedures, and training to prevent sexual harassment.”

International Labour Organization’s Convention 190 on the Elimination of Violence and Harassment in the World of Work is one example of an international treaty that can make workplaces safer environments, reducing the risk of sexual violence.

1. Support victims/survivors to lessen harms. The approaches for meeting this strategy are victim-centred services, treatment for victims of sexual violence, and treatment for at-risk children and families to prevent problem behaviour, including sex offending.

There are long-term effects of experiencing sexual violence, and there is often limited or no provision of care for survivors. It is important to have support built in to any plan to address sexual violence. Support services include support groups, crisis hotlines, therapy, medical advocacy, and legal services. Making these services accessible helps to reduce the effects of sexual violence on the survivor, reduced risk for perpetrating sexual violence in the future, and improvements in family life.

The stop SV technical package notes that a multi-sectoral approach is necessary to address sexual violence.

Health, education, justice, media, and social services must all work together to prevent sexual violence. The strategies require the participation of various institutions and the engagement of leaders of various fields in order to reach individuals and families.

The government has a responsibility to protect people and their human rights. This does not mean the institutions within which people spend most of their time and money should do nothing. They also have an obligation to ensure the safety and well-being of the people within their spaces. This must include protection from sexual violence and appropriate responses to it when it occurs.

Sexual violence is an issue that is not being appropriately addressed in The Bahamas. Sexual violence is not just a crime to be punished. It is a constant fear that limits the lives of the people at the highest risk.

It alters the lives of survivors and, in many cases, their loved ones. There has to be a plan to prevent it, and it requires participation of all institutions and social groups. Responses to it must include accessible resources and services for survivors, and they must respond to their specific needs.

Work on this has already started. We have had the Strategic Plan to Address Gender-based Violence since 2015, and it has yet to be implemented. We continue to react to horrific stories of sexual violence and call for specific actions.

We need to remind the government of the work that has already been done, call for it to be updated, properly resourced, and implemented.

Several Members of Parliament and the Senate have expressed their concern and promised to do all they can to address this issue.

It is easy to read the report, to meet with the people who conducted the research and developed the plan, and the people who have been working on this issue within communities to move it forward. That is what is required, more than any speeches or social media statements of support. Action, now.