Sexual violence can affect many aspects of a survivor's life, including safety and health, family and work situations, and finances. These challenges often lead to perplexing personal and legal questions. To receive basic assistance, victims often must navigate a maze of governmental and community agencies.
Sexual Assault Response Teams (SARTs) help survivors through the maze of community services available to them, and uses the experiences of survivors to improve those services.
SART Discussion Group
The National SART Discussion Group promotes ongoing dialogue and information sharing among community and professional organizations/agencies that respond to sexual violence.
Goals for the Discussion Group
- Support the safety, justice and autonomy of all victims and survivors of sexual violence.
- Work to meet the needs of underserved and marginalized communities and their service providers in the development of SARTs.
- Create a forum to enhance the response to systems advocacy and sexual violence prevention initiatives among sexual assault response teams.
Group Membership
This is an email-based discussion group that is open to current members of Sexual Assault Response Teams and individuals working to develop a SART. To join, follow these instructions:
- If you have a Google account associated with your email address, make sure you are logged-in to that account in the browser you are using to view this page.
- Go to this website: https://groups.google.com/g/sart_team
- Click on the "Ask to join group" button near the top of that page.
- In the "Reason for joining" box, please tell us:
- Your work title;
- The name of the organization you work for (as relates to your work with SARTs); and
- Why you are interested in joining the group.
- If you do NOT have a Google account associated with your email address, click here to fill-out an online application form.
If you have any difficulty joining the group or do not receive a response to your application with a few days, please contact us.
SART Toolkit
With funding from the Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) and assistance from a national advisory committee, the NSVRC created the first a Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) Toolkit in 2011 to promote the development and implementation of a coordinated, multidisciplinary, and victim-centered first response to victims of sexual assault in communities across the United States and U.S. Territories. The Toolkit Project provides resources to help communities customize their outreach and expand services.
The SART Toolkit was updated in 2018 and is now available on our website.
A list of current Protocols and Guidelines for Sexual Assault Response Teams is also available for reference.