Action

Women & Girls in Georgia Conference

2007: Violence

Sarah L. Cook, Ph.D.

Georgia State University

October 14, 2007

Speaking last at a weekend conference has mixed blessings. On one hand, one has the opportunity to reflect on the conference as a whole and this one has been particularly impressive. On the other, one gets to reflect to only a precious few who hang on to the very end. Regardless, I am happy to be here with you, who I will consider to be among Georgia’s most committed.

My name is Sarah Cook, and I am an associate professor of psychology at Georgia State University. However, I was asked to speak at the conference when I was serving as volunteer interim director of GNESA – the Georgia Network to End Sexual Violence. Shortly after the invitation, however, the GNESA Board of Directors hired Shawn Paul, as the GNESA’s new president and chief executive officer. So, as I was asked to give a statewide perspective on violence against women and girls, I thought a first way that I can fulfill that request would be to present her to you. Although I invited her to join me for this talk today, she was unable to attend.

So let me tell you about her. Shawn came to Georgia from Minnesota, where she earned a Master's degree in Sociology with an emphasis on Human Services, Administration and Planning and a Bachelor's degree in Sociology.  She was awarded the Social Justice Award from the College of Behavior Sciences at Minnesota State University, Mankato in recognition of her ability to connect her academic education to the world around her.  She graduated magna cum laude and is inducted into the Golden Key National Honor Society.   She was selected by the Blandin Community Leadership program as an "up and coming" community leader and participated in a week-long community assessment and development program with 19 other community leaders.  She is trained as a Neutral in conflict resolution. 

Shawn has been in the victim services field for over 10 years starting as a volunteer at a local battered women's program in MN.  She job-shared her position as advocate while attending college.  Upon completion of her coursework she took the position of Executive Director of Crime Victim Services, Inc. who was funded to offer services to sexual assault, domestic violence and general crime victims.  She held that position for four years just prior to coming to GNESA.  Shawn held the position of Nominating and Membership Committee Chair with the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women.  She sat on the MN Victim Assistance Academy Steering Committee and was a trainer for the Academy.  She has taught as an adjunct professor and an online instructor in the areas of victim issues. 

Shawn comes to us with an extensive background that makes her more than qualified to lead GNESA, but she says it is her experience as a survivor of childhood incest that makes her most qualified.  She has spoken publicly about her experiences and uses them to offer hope and inspiration to those with similar experiences.

I can state clearly that after observing her in action for just over a month, I can safely say that the statewide perspective improves daily.

A second way that I can provide a statewide few is to talk about what kind of action we need across the state of Georgia. I decided to title my talk, “Action,” because after we have listened and discussed for a day and a half action is imperative. Our bodies need it, our minds need it, our souls need it, and most importantly, our sisters need it. My remarks will be focused around the topic of sexual assault because that is my passion and what I know best. I believe, however, that they apply to all forms of violence discussed at this conference.

So what kind of action do we need in Georgia? I want to discuss with you three types of action; personal, professional, and political. These are all interrelated, but let me try to explain them separately.

First, the personal. The second wave of feminism brought us the phrase, the personal is political. Many women entered the movement because of personal experiences with rape and sexual assault. My case is different. I began working in the movement at age 20 during college by forming a five-campus organization called CARE – Campus Alliance for Rape Elimination, becoming a rape advocate and running a support group. Seven years later, when I was a graduate student in psychology studying violence against women, Derrick Jones, a 19 year-old man broke into my home, beat me with a tire iron, and tried to rape me. For me, the political became personal. Eventually, after tremendous efforts and support to recover physically and psychologically, I wondered how I would incorporate my new personal identity as a survivor with my developing professional identity as a violence against women scholar.

Now I realize this crowd is likely to hold a sympathetic perspective to what I arrived at, but remember that I was just beginning my career and uncertain about the implications of being public about my experience on the ability to be perceived as a solid academic. Over time, however, my identity as scholar-survivor emerged.

I realized that I was in a pretty unique position to speak publicly about sexual assault. I also realized that it is a lot easier to find women willing to talk about other stigmatizing experiences than to talk about sexual assault. My opinion is rooted in my experiences with GNESA where it was very hard to find a face willing to be identified with the issue. When the media would call and we would send out a plea to rape crisis center we were often met with silence. True, good reasons exist to be wary of speaking to the media, but it is more than this. To identify one’s self as a victim of sexual assault is to say that you have experienced the most feared, most stigmatized violation of a person. And you join the most blamed class of victims across the globe.

My personal decision to speak publicly is my own way of waging against stigma and blame. And it is a political act. If I don’t talk about my experience publicly, I take on shame and blame. And whenever I talk or write publicly, as most of you will not be surprised, I get responses that range from simple thank yous to disclosures, either verbally or sometimes later via email. Some women, years later, have contacted me about the impact of my personal story on their lives. Never have I had a negative response. In fact, the only person I have felt blame from, ironically, was the director of the CVC in Virginia – but that is a story for later. Without exception, feel validated and victorious after I speak.

Granted, I am a person of relative power and prestige. I am white, well-educated, and employed in a position that carries status in society. I am also fortunate because Derrick Jones was immediately apprehended, arrested, prosecuted, and served a sentence. The cjs worked for me. And, I got great medical, psychiatric, and psychological intervention and support from my family and community.

So, what is the point? Many women are in this room today with stories of survival – because they (you) are survivors. And, we are probably among the most privileged survivors in terms of abilities and resources. If this describes you, I urge you to consider speaking or writing publicly about your personal experiences – particularly if you are reasonably sure to suffer no negative consequences as a result. Contact your local rape crisis center and offer to speak about your own experience. They will help you and support you. Pen op-eds for your local paper on pertinent issues. I wrote my first op-ed in 2005. I rejoiced at its acceptance and then cringed when the AJC asked for a picture. A picture, so readers could recognize me? I admit, I had some trepidation about that one, but again, was validated when folks on campus did recognize me, approach me, and offer to contact their GA legislator on the matter of ultrasounds and EC for rape survivors.

Consider too, asking survivors to share their stories and provide them support. Too often, we treat survivors as too fragile – reifying the idea that they have been forever damaged. Through the course of my research, I have asked over 600 women for their stories about violence and survival. Only a few have declined to participate. Instead, many shared my experience of validation, tell us that no one had ever asked to hear their story and no one had ever listened. That we asked them to tell us about their lives in a non-judgemental way meant a great deal to them. Sometimes, the women said our questions led them to understand their experiences differently, others said they had never told anyone before and were greatly relieved to have told someone. Most thanked us for listening. We didn’t expect this. We planned to thank them for sharing their lives. And, most of these women were incarcerated. In contract to myself, these women had no privilege, few to no resources, no power, and no prestige behind which to hide. I like to think that the research process might have given them back some power.

Another piece of the personal for me is my use of language when I talk about my experience. You will note that I don’t talk about, “my assault.” It was not mine, it was his. And, I don’t use the passive voice to say, 14 years ago, I was assaulted. I state actively and plainly, “Derrick Jones assaulted me.” He is the subject, I am the object – it is OK to say I am the object in this case, I think. I can say this without fear of course, because he was tried and convicted, so again, in an odd way I am privileged over my sisters assaulted by men who still move among us. I can name him without fear of being accused of libel or defamation. In these ways, I maintain a focus on the person who perpetrated against me. He is the noun and his actions are the verb. I want him in the first part of the sentence.

Second, the professional. I would like to talk about mentoring women in the movement. I have benefited tremendously from mentoring by women senior in the field, in practice and in academia. My first mentor was Lauren Eslinger, of Madison Center’s Sex Offense Services in South Bend, IN. Lauren gave me opportunity to train as a rape advocate, middle school prevention program presentor, and later, support group counselor. She treated me as a professional and as a colleague, making time for me, giving me resources and opportuntiies. My second mentor was and is, Mary Koss. One of CARE’s first events was to bring Mary to campus after the publication of her groundbreaking study on aquaintance rape – the study that yielded the “1 in 4” statistic. She gave a talk to a standing room only crowd and I was awestruck by her, even though she turned out to be quite human. She left me with an autographed copy of her book with Mary Harvey: The rape victim: Clinical and community approaches that began to treasure, probably almost pathologically.

Four or five years later when I was at the University of Virginia, the Women’s Studies Institute wanted to bring Mary to campus. I hesitated but offer to contact her on behalf of the Institute. Still, with a great deal of awe, I called Mary. Would she remember me? Much to my relief she did, and at the conclusion of her visit in Charlottesville, on the way to the airport, she asked me to co-author a chapter responding to critic an Berkely social welfare professor Neil Gilbert. Of course, I accepted immediately, dropped her off at the airport, and shook with excitement the entire way home. Only later did a wave of anxiety hit me when it dawned on me that I would actually have to write it –. But it turned out well, we wrote a revised chapter for a second edition, and have continued to write together. In fact, we are both part of a feminist collective of 9 sexual assault researchers who together are working to revise and research the Sexual Experiences Survey. She has done for me what Lauren did – treat me as a professional and colleague, made time for me, and gave me responsibilities and opportunities for success.

These women were crucial to furthering my interest in sexual assault as a social and political issue, and to advancing my career. I am indebted to them.

What and how are senior women in the movement and in academia doing in terms of mentoring up and coming young women in the field? My experience in a few states is that a generational split has occurred, particularly in rape crisis centers. Senior women, and by that I mean those who fought and struggled to make sexual assault a bonafide issue and focused on social change as the primary vehicle, conflict with younger women, who are finding new ways of doing feminism and activism related to sexual assault that expand beyond rape crisis centers. In Georgia, this conflict sadly resulted in a split in rape crisis centers where 8 centers left the Network, I believe, to the detriment of the movement in Georgia. Will these conflicts result in the loss of collective wisdom of the founding mother of the movement being passed to younger women? I hope not. In Georgia, I find hope in GNESA’s work to to pair strong existing centers with new and emerging centers to facilitate their growth and solidification. We have three new members since some members left, will be opening more centers in areas not served in the coming months. Conflict is unavoidable – that is true. But it is also opportunity for growth. I hope the movement can find ways to manage conflict so that mentoring relationships, and with it wisdom and history, are not lost.

I turn to academia and ask how well are we mentoring young women? Are we open to new ideas? Are we willing to be pushed in new directions to expand our definitions of gender and what the gendered character of violence in relationships really means? I know I am being pushed by one very bright woman in our program, Carrie Lippy. It is hard. I don’t want to leave the comfort of my current framework to consider the wide range of violence present in all relationships. Doing so will make me rethink, even rewrite. But if I don’t, my work is not valid.

My point here is that I urge us all to think about mentoring as a form of activism and as an integral part of what we all do, regardless of our settings. Mentoring doesn’t just spontaneously happen. It takes a degree of intention and purpose, openness, and direction. At the same time, it takes a degree of letting go, agreeing to be led, allowing new ways of working, knowing, being, to come forward. And to potential mentees in the audience, mentoring is a two-way relationship. Being a mentee takes commitment, responsibility, and openness. Finding a good mentor and developing a mutually enriching mentoring relationship takes chemistry, time, and devotion from both parties. Let’s begin to think of it as a form of activism.

Last, the political. We need political action because violence against women, among other things, is a political issue. I won’t try to be coy about this – when you talk about politics you have to talk about money. So, let’s talk about money and sexual assault.

In 2004 I penned the following in a letter to Governor Perdue:

We ask you to include in your 2006 budget $600,000 to support the ongoing work of 23 centers and to establish 7 new centers.

Rape is a pervasive problem in women and children’s lives. The National Violence Against Women Survey (Tjaden and Thoennes, 1998) estimates that 18 percent of women surveyed said they had experienced rape in their lifetime. Of these women, 22 percent reported they were under 12 years old and 32 percent reported they were between 12 and 17 years of age when they were raped. About 2% of women are victimized annually. Other national surveys show that about 20% of women higher education students reporting having been raped, but these estimates generally exclude rapes where alcohol incapacitated the victim (Cook & Koss, 2004). Georgia is not exempt from these generally conservative estimates. These studies suggest that a minimum of 791,646 women in Georgia have been the victim of rape or attempted rape in their lifetimes.

Rape is considered one of the most severe forms of trauma, extracting a great toll on physical and mental health. The economic cost of rape is staggering. Per rape, scholars estimate that out-of pocket medical and mental health treatment averages $5,100. When victim compensation, employment and worker productivity, psychological costs, lost earning, and opportunity costs of time are included, that figure jumps to $87,000 in 1993 dollars excluding costs to the criminal justice system.

Rape crisis centers are a community level response to this staggering problem. Currently 23 centers provide a range of intervention services to 60% of Georgia’s counties including:

· 24-hour crisis lines for victims and their families

· 24-hour accompaniment to hospital for forensic examinations

· SANE – Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners

· Victim Advocacy through criminal proceeding

· Support groups for rape and incest survivor groups

These services are not just for victims in immediate crisis. They are services for victims and their families who confront the far-reaching consequences of rape that occur over the lifespan. Many centers also provide a variety of prevention and risk reduction activities such as Good Touch/Bad Touch, bullying, sexual harassment, and date/acquaintance rape education and awareness, self-defense classes, and training for the variety of professionals who serve victims.

Last year, Georgia supported rape crisis centers by approximately $110,000 in state dollars. Based the 2003 census figures and the most up to date national estimates, this amount of funding is equivalent to $0.14 per adult woman for ongoing support, or $.79 per woman victimized in the past year, or $ 0.17 per child for education and awareness interventions. Although centers augment state funding through private fundraising and grant proposals, they are often unable to meet the needs of their communities without increase resources.

Therefore, we ask you to provide $20,000 per existing center for a total of $460,000 and $20,000 to establish 7 new centers in underserved areas for a total of $140,000. Our combined request is for $600,000.

When we wrote that letter, conventional wisdom in advocacy told us our request was too late, came the wrong way, and in the wrong format. We were undeterred. We made our request and tried to make it known we had. In the end, the budget included $300,000 new monies for RCC in the FTY 05-06 budget. We were ecstatic! Now, success like this can rarely be attributed to one organization’s success. Rape crisis centers advocated with their senators and representatives, board members too. We never really learned who championed our request, but are thankful to whoever heeded our plea.

The good news was the governor tripled the state’s support of rape crisis center. The bad news was we still had a way to go.

In 2005, I recalculated my figures. Georgia still didn’t look good, even with the new monies. We wrote again to Governor Perdue, and asked Rob Teilhet, Rep. From Cobb County, to advocate for us. Centers advocated etc. This time, we received $225.000 to fund three the new centers I mentioned earlier.

In the span of two years GNESA was able to advocate for over half a million dollars in funds for victims of sexual assault. Even with these successes, Georgia has a way to go. Current issues that threaten the funding picture are the need for Georgia to certify that it is in compliance with VAWA. Without these certifications, GA is in jeopardy of loosing federal funding for rape crisis and domestic violence programs.

Learn to be an advocate and develop a grassroots network. We should advocate together for funds and laws that help victims. We can’t be undeterred by naysayers and fearful of political and ideological coalitions that oppose us.

We need to get over the differences that divide and attend to what unites us: our passion to end violence against women.

We can do it through personal, professional, and political action.

Stop VAW day is January 24^th, 2008. Go to www.gnesa.org for information.