How to Help a Woman in Your Life Who’s Been Sexually Assaulted
Especially if you’re a man — you can help more than you realize
Sexual assault can happen to anyone, at any time, and at any place. This is a fact.
These are also facts:
- The majority of sexual assaults that occur happen to women.
- The majority of the perpetrators are male.
I’m going to keep this simple and hope that the information I impart here can be adapted to situations that are more complicated than what is assumed here for brevity’s sake.
Sexual assault awareness is key
At the beginning of the new millennium, more than twenty years ago now, I worked at a women’s center on a college campus, as a program assistant and then as director.
During my time there, I started a program that was meant to train male students to talk to other male students about sexual assault, providing awareness.
We couldn’t get enough men interested in talking to other men. So instead, the program became students talking to other students.
We were able to train a passionate coed group of students to provide sexual assault awareness across campus. We adapted the…
