0:00:00.2 Laura Palumbo: Welcome to Resource on the Go, a podcast from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center on understanding, responding to and preventing sexual abuse and assault. I'm Laura Palumbo, and I'm Communications Director at NSVRC. On today's episode, we're reflecting on 20 years of sexual violence prevention. Since our opening in 2000, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center has served as a hub for advocates, researchers and educators who are on the front lines to support survivors and to build communities free from sexual assault, harassment and abuse.

0:00:37.1 LP: Today, I'm joined by three guests to mark the occasion of NSVRC's 20th anniversary: Yolanda Edrington, NSVRC's Executive Director who recently celebrated her four-year work anniversary on our team; Nancy Hoffman, the State Coordinator for the West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information and Services, who also happens to be a former NSVRC Advisory Council member and chair; and Karen Baker, CEO of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, NSVRC's sister organization and founder. Yolanda, Nancy and Karen will be reflecting on some of the big moments that shaped the culture, our movement and our work over the last 20 years.

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0:01:32.1 LP: So each of you has had a pretty unique vantage point for this conversation, and I'd like to have you start out by sharing a little more about your background and where you got your start in the movement to end sexual violence. Nancy, we'll start with you.

0:01:45.5 Nancy Hoffman: Well, Laura, when I started preparing for this podcast, I realized that October 2020 actually marked my 40th year in the anti-violence movement. I was hired in 1980 to open a shelter for domestic violence victims in North Central West Virginia. Then in 1982, we expanded those services to include working with victims of sexual violence. And then in 1983, I also became involved in coordinating the work of our, what was then our fledgling Sexual Assault Coalition, which I did on a very part-time basis until transitioning to the coalition work full-time in 2001. So I've been doing this work for a few decades.

0:02:27.0 LP: That's amazing. Karen? 

0:02:28.0 Karen Baker: Yes, well, I'm a social worker by training. And so for the first half of my career, I was working in Kansas with teenagers who were in the foster care system and their families, and many of them had been removed from their family due specifically to sexual abuse. Others were there for other reasons, such as running away or self-harm, getting in trouble with the law, but even many of those had experienced sexual abuse. So I saw the severe damage that it caused. And also in the 1990s, Kansas was privatizing its foster care services, and I was working for a large residential treatment provider who received a contract from the state to manage the systems involved. And so I was doing a lot of thinking about the role that schools, courts, therapists, etcetera, were playing in this problem, and about root causes, and I decided that I wanted to find an opportunity to do more on the prevention side of things. So imagine how thrilled I was in 2000 when I was offered the position to set up the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

0:03:39.2 LP: Now, Karen, we've worked together a long time, but actually I've learned a few things in hearing you share all that. Now, Yolanda, it would be great to hear from you.

0:03:46.0 Yolanda Edrington: So I come from different helping systems. Over the last 20 years worked in community corrections, alternative education, healthcare, and during that time, like Karen, some of the clients that I served were survivors of sexual assault. So that was my first introduction is helping survivors connect with resources in their community that's associated with different needs that they have. My first official job in this field was in 2012 when I started working for a local rape crisis center, and that's one of the YWCAs in our area. So that was my first time within the field. And then coming to 2017 working full-time for NSVRC, coming on to the team there.

0:04:39.4 LP: Thank you all. So to get us started looking back and reflecting, Karen, can you tell the origin story of NSVRC? And it would be great if you could also answer what is one of our all time most frequently asked questions, which is why as a national organization are we headquartered in Central Pennsylvania? 

0:05:00.5 KB: Sure. Well, first of all, PCAR is one of the oldest and largest state sexual assault coalitions in the country. And this is partly due to a strong group of Pennsylvania feminists back in the early 1970s, including Eleanor Smeal, who later went on to become president of the National Organization for Women. Then fast forward into the mid-1990s, there were a few things converging at that time. PCAR had a strong CEO, Delilah Rumburg, and she was working with the network of rape crisis centers throughout Pennsylvania to develop a visionary strategic plan for the next few years. And one of the goals that they established was for PCAR to create a centralized location to collect and organize resources, statistics, articles, etcetera, to assist the centers in doing their work, because at that time funding was very scarce and it was just not efficient for every center to be recreating similar communication tools and resources for their common work.

0:06:04.3 KB: And also in the mid-1990s, the first Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, was passed by Congress, and for the first time there were resources for every state to have a sexual assault coalition. So as new coalitions were being formed across the country, they also identified the need for centralized resources on the topic of sexual violence, and the CDC was named as the entity to distribute the VAWA prevention funds, and they also wanted help with organizing all the resources. So when VAWA was reauthorized in 1999, there was money set aside to fund a National Sexual Violence Resource Center. And CDC had been talking with advocates in the field for a few years, and they wanted the center that they funded to be grounded in the history and philosophy of the local and state-level work that had been occurring for a few decades at that time. So when the CDC released its first RFP, or Request for Proposals, they limited the eligibility to state sexual assault coalitions, and of course, this matched up with PCAR's strategic plan, and so they applied.

0:07:23.5 KB: And after a lengthy review process, PCAR was selected to create the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. That funding was first awarded to PCAR in 1999 for a five-year period, and the first thing PCAR did was to form a national advisory council of leaders from throughout the country to guide and inform the work of the NSVRC, and to ensure that it would be inclusive and reflective of the needs and resources throughout the United States, including the US territories. So the NSVRC celebrated its grand opening. We had a big fun party in July of 2000, and we have continued to receive the funding to manage the Resource Center for the past 20 years, although the process is opened up for competition every few years. So we know that we have to keep getting better and continue to be relevant and responsive in order to continue having the privilege of managing the NSVRC.

0:08:21.6 LP: Thank you so much, Karen, for that great background. And Nancy, you've already mentioned that you've been in this field for decades, so can you help us look back a little further and reflect on some of the big shifts that had already been happening in the field before NSVRC was established and shed some light on what the field was like before 2000, and maybe some of the gaps that existed at that time? 

0:08:50.0 NH: Gladly. I do think it really does help to appreciate that void that the NSVRC filled by understanding the rape crisis movement at that time. And Karen touched on some pieces of that, so I'm gonna go maybe just a little bit deeper from my personal experiences. I think it's important that we recognize that each generation has built on the work of our foremothers and our allies, starting in no small part with the Women's Suffrage Movement 100 years ago in 2020, and the Civil Rights and Women's Rights movements in the '60s. Most of the rape crisis centers in this country developed in the '70s and '80s out of grassroots movements, and a grassroots movement means that there was no real federal funding for services at that time. VOCA, which is such a huge source of funding for services now, wasn't even authorized until 1984. And those funds early on were very limited. Our centers relied heavily on volunteers, technology was very limited in the '80s and early ;90s, there was no Internet that was in widespread use for email, that made it easy to share resources among with centers.

0:10:11.3 NH: DNA forensic testing wasn't used until 1987. Policies that actually did exist were reflective of that time. It wasn't until 1983 or 1993 that Congress actually passed a law outlawing marital rape to ensure that that was illegal in every state. We didn't have data to base our practices on so, and I'm sad to say this, but for years, our prevention efforts focused on stranger danger because that's who we thought the offenders were. And most of our awareness programs at that time targeted churches and women's groups. We weren't in the schools because talking about rape really made everyone in the room uncomfortable. So it was a difficult barrier to pass.

0:11:00.0 NH: And so when I say that out loud, it almost sounds like we lived out on the prairie times or in the wild wild west, but it really shows how disconnected our field was early on, and the huge expectations that we really placed on these little independent, private non-profit rape crisis centers that had no resources or limited resources. And it also shows, I think, how the different forms of technology have advanced the field pretty quickly in the past 15, 20 years. When we didn't have DNA testing, a case automatically, the suspect, with no suspect became a cold case. Without the internet, every rape crisis center basically had to create its own resources, its own training materials, its own prevention campaigns. And as Karen said, that's not realistic for every small entity to do.

0:12:00.5 NH: We couldn't easily learn about model policies that were existing in other states or legislation, so we all really felt like we were starting from scratch in just about everything that we did. We didn't have an easy mechanism of determining the prevalence of sexual violence, or determining who was most at risk, because most victims, as we know, don't report victimization. So the only offender data that we had was on the rapists who were actually caught, and we all know that that's a very low percentage. So by the year 2000, there came a time when a repository of information and of data and of resources on sexual violence was needed, and it finally realistically could be created due to technology. With the Internet, quite honestly, most of us then in 2000 were beginning to see what other centers and coalitions and programs and across the country we're doing, and we were inspired to do more as well, if we could be equipped to easily do so. And that's when the NSVRC entered the picture.

0:13:07.7 LP: That is just amazing to hear, Nancy. I think that it helps me have a new appreciation for just how much even in the recent history it's easy to take for granted. I really appreciate you reflecting on all of that. Fast forwarding a bit, Yolanda, since you joined NSVRC in our more recent history, can you give us a sense of how much you knew about the topic of sexual violence before you started here in 2017, and what the national conversation outside of our field looked like at that time? 

0:13:41.2 YE: Sure. As I was saying before, coming from different systems, the most that... In my experience working in education and healthcare and community corrections centers, the most we talked about when... About sexual violence is child sexual assault, incest, stranger danger, as Nancy mentioned. Even though that seems so far away, in the outside field, it's not... That's what I recognized coming here is we are taking so many steps forward, feeling internally taking so many steps forward within our field, but in outside conversations in different helping systems, I keep saying that because that's usually the start and then moving on to corporate spaces, we're still sometimes seeing the same thing and saying the same thing.

0:14:32.6 YE: So child sexual assault, incest, still the image of stranger danger, and also specifically rape. I didn't hear a lot of conversations on making the connection that sexual assault, sexual harassment are under the umbrella of sexual violence. When we hear the term sexual violence before coming here, it automatically connected to rape or to stranger danger, but somehow someone that you did not know assaulted you, not the... More of that monster in the bush thought process has been my experience outside of working here at NSVRC. And I should even back up, outside of my first experience working at the Y is when I started to hear something very different. But prior to, that's the only time that we would talk about sexual violence was in that space. A client told us that this happened, a teacher reported that they heard this conversation, something like that, but it was always wrapped there.

0:15:47.5 YE: So it was a brand new thought process coming to NSVRC and making the connection that it's a wide gamut of things that fall within sexual violence, from verbal harassment to rape and so many things in between, that we must talk about, and that it's not swept under the rug and things that people kinda dismiss as okay behavior or just part of being a part of your world, like when you're walking and someone catcalls you. That's wrong too. That's sexual violence too. That's verbal assault, and that's not okay either. But in the outside fields, that's what the conversation was more wrapped around, and a lot of things were more so tolerated in my experience, and not so high up. It was like if it wasn't rape or a child sexual assault, it's like it's so far down the gamut that we're not talking about it on a regular basis. Or even... And I'll say this, even thinking that we can stop it. That really in society, that we can actually stop it.

0:17:00.1 YE: So one of the things about our messaging work that we do that, and this is gonna bring me forward to when I started here, is getting involved in our messaging work and learning more from BMSG, which is Berkeley Media Study Group, is learning where people are starting from and the knowledge around sexual violence. Do you even think that we can prevent it? So I came from that outside world, so when I would watch people's interviews, I'm like, Yeah, I was right there thinking the same thing like, "Oh, is this really preventable?" In my mind before I started, No. Within six months to a year of being at NSVRC it's like, Yes, yes, if we're all involved, if we all do our part, 'cause there's so much to be done and so much to learn, and there's all these little things that we can do, but we just don't know 'cause no one's talking about it, except for us. Not as much as us in the field.

0:17:57.7 YE: So that's one of the major things that I'm learning since 2017, is like to watch on the news or in tv shows and people talk about consent now, where before, or maybe my mind just wasn't open before working here to notice people talking about it, but now it is so much more prevalent, commercials and things like that, whether you're streaming or you have regular cable that commercials are talking about prevention, sexual violence, places you can call. So that's the what I see as in current working in the field. But on the outside looking in, it wasn't part of conversation. And still in many places, 'cause I still do a lot of volunteer work with HIV/AIDS awareness in my community, it's still not the first part of conversation, it's usually when someone says sexual violence, it's connected to rape.

0:18:55.4 LP: Thanks, Yolanda. So recently we published a blog, 20 events that shaped sexual violence prevention in the last 20 years. The blog was written by Susan Sullivan and Megan Thomas from NSVRC's communications team, and profiled significant milestones from the time frame that brought about pivotal shifts in public consciousness about sexual assaults, some of that consciousness that everyone has been talking about how they've had the opportunity to see those shifts in progress during... Throughout their work. We were honored to have the blog re-published by Ms Magazine, and we'll be drawing a little bit from that piece in our conversation today. One of the events from our early history that I'd love to hear each of you speak about is looking back at the first national Sexual Assault Awareness Month campaign in 2001. Karen, since you were getting your start at NSVRC at this time, can you help us look back at what role NSVRC was trying to play in SAAM, and what was happening across the country before then, and if there was anything particularly memorable about our first campaign? 

0:20:08.5 KB: Sure. Well, as I recall, this was one of the first activities that NSVRC got involved in, and we worked with the Resource Sharing Project to survey the field. And we were asking them, "Do you celebrate Sexual Assault Awareness Month? If so, when? Do you have a color or a theme?" And we discovered that there was no consistency in when and how different coalitions were celebrating Sexual Assault Awareness Month, although most were doing something. And since several of the programs were dual, meaning that they addressed both sexual assault and domestic violence, some states were raising awareness of both topics together in October, several others were using either March or April, and there were a variety of colors being used to signify the cause of sexual violence. White, yellow, teal, and purple were most common. But NSVRC thought that it was really important that we establish more consistency in order to get momentum.

0:21:10.2 KB: So we worked with the field and with an advisory group, and ultimately selected April as the month and teal as the color. And it took a few years for all of the states to get on board with that, but they eventually did. Also, in that first year, we didn't have the staff capacity that we do today, so we used an outside consultant group called PR Solutions to help us put together a resource book to assist coalitions in their Sexual Assault Awareness Month activities, using examples provided from our advisory group from across the country, such as Take Back the Night events and poetry contests and things like that, many of them things that were happening on college campuses. And I also remember that at that time, we had not yet made our strong pivot towards prevention. So the primary purpose of SAAM, in those early days, was mostly about raising awareness about the problem and encouraging people to talk about sexual violence because, as we've said before, it was just not talked about. And then in later years, we focused more on prevention strategies and specific actions that people can take.

0:22:28.2 LP: Now, Nancy, from the perspective of a coalition, can you speak to the significance of NSVRC's annual SAAM campaigns throughout the years for those who are working in the field at the state or local level? 

0:22:41.8 NH: Yes, but I also want to say to Karen, you make that sound, the work that you did in that first year, a lot simpler than it had to have been. Because I know if we look at the historical context of that first campaign, there were a lot of hurdles you had to overcome. We have had to remember that that first federal funding for sexual assault coalitions didn't even exist until 2001. So when you talk about contacting all those coalitions, it couldn't have been an easy task. And lots of states to even have a coalition, and if you would have had one strong enough that anyone would describe as being a robust coalition. So that would have been a challenge. The federal sexual violence prevention funds through the Rape Prevention Education through CDC weren't even disseminated until after 1995 with the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in '94. So at that time, we didn't have a National Sexual Assault Coalition. There was no real infrastructure for that sexual violence messaging or doing campaigns, so a few of the coalitions, and ours would be one for sure, had the capacity to develop a full-fledged campaign, and very few rape crisis centers would have had trained prevention staff to actually implement it.

0:24:05.0 NH: So the foresight that Karen and Delilah had in recognizing the need and the potential impact of a national campaign was huge at that time, and the fact that you were willing to step in and actually fill that gap was truly a game changer, I think for the field. The NSVRC recognized early on that the local rape crisis centers don't have that capacity. They don't have the time, they don't have the money or the skills to really develop an effective marketing campaign. That's not what we train folks to do. But they're outstanding in implementation. So when we talk about needing to change social norms about sexual violence, and Yolanda, you really emphasized that, it takes a consistent message across all the sectors of the population: The communities, our schools, our college campuses. And at that time, early on, email and Google were just gaining that widespread use. So we still had areas that had dial-up internet access, not everyone had websites. So as that access to the Internet and our electronic methods of communicating increased and finding that we didn't have to create everything ourselves, that's a huge game changer. But if you don't have the access to the information in a usable format, you're still lacking the capacity to do a campaign.

0:25:35.2 NH: And that was true across the country. I remember early on, the CDC decided they would bring, and they did, all the sexual assault coalition directors together to talk about prevention and how you can change social norms. And when they did that, they didn't even have data and resources on how do you prevent sexual violence. So imagine all of coalition directors pilgrimaging to Atlanta for this meeting on how you're gonna... To learn how to change social norms regarding sexual violence. And the marketing campaign that they actually shared with us as a prototype was a campaign on preventing ulcers, because that's what they had available as an example to change society's understanding on a public health issue. And it was really left to all of us to kinda take that and try to figure it out. So that's the climate that the NSVRC was in to try to navigate this void of information in the field and all of the transitions that were occurring, and then trying to stay ahead of that curve.

0:26:47.2 NH: So when the NSVRC began creating these Sexual Assault Awareness Month tool kits and other resources, we were thrilled on the state and local levels. Our local centers would have struggled to develop a county proclamation or writing a PSA, but having those tools already in place, having posters and templates provided, they were very skilled in implementing those and sharing those. So the NSVRC's resources exponentially increased the likelihood then and now of Sexual Assault Awareness Month being observed annually in our communities and on our campuses across the country. And I think we also need to note that the Sexual Assault Awareness Month campaign is constant messaging for changing social norms because it permeates society, but it also has other impacts as well. It changes social norms, for sure, working towards that end, but also reaching victims and also educating jury pools. So there are multiple benefits from that campaign.

0:27:55.9 LP: Yolanda, this April will be NSVRC's 20th SAAM campaign. And last year, in the midst of a global pandemic, was our first ever fully virtual campaign. Can you reflect on how the campaign has continued to adapt and what you can look forward to for the future? 

0:28:13.5 YE: Yes. 2020 was devastating and amazing with things that we learned so quickly. With the devastation of the pandemic just coming in so fast and having to change how we do our work, how we connect with our constituents and our other partners, had to happen so fast and from our kitchen tables. We weren't able to sit in a room full of each other where we're used to that physical connection and go back and forth and figure out what to do next. The pandemic, as much as Nancy said "access" easily probably 10 times. I tried to keep track, Nancy. But it hit me in the head because in 2020 with the SAAM campaign, we also learned more about the gap that we were still facing with access. 20 years later with Google, huge Google, social media is a big deal, all of these things are here for us, and we still have the capability to be able to mail flyers and mail all these different things, access is still a problem.

0:29:33.4 YE: And that's one of the things I remember so much from 2020 with the SAAM campaign during the 2020 year is because of access, is us turning around pretty quickly and trying to figure out how do we connect people? How do people still... How can our partners still talk about sexual assault awareness and bring information to their communities and to society at large in this day when we are at home and we have our stay-at-home order? What do we do now? So those are the things that we learned, is how to be resilient around these things that are happening to us every day in our lives, and also to still be kind to ourselves, and as we said in our one blog, to remember that we are human beings, and that we can't do it all today. And that's the beauty of the SAAM campaign is because it's throughout the year. Yes, we talk about it very heavily in April, but the great thing about the SAAM campaign, it takes you through out the year with the toolkit that Nancy mentioned that you can use in all different spaces. So throughout the pandemic, throughout 2020, we continued to work with our partners, open up lines of communication so people can tell us how are they using the toolkit, what are some tips that they learned, like a campus learned, on what to do now the kids are learning from home? How do you plan or connecting with your students, and what are you allowed to do? 

0:31:12.3 YE: 'Cause there's so much red tape around that, so let's help you work around it and then let's share what we learned quickly. So it was like, you learned it, you told it, we shared it. And it was like that quick, within days of trying to stay in communication, and share those things. And even with our 30 day of SAAM, which is a cool Instagram challenge where people get to send in their pictures of the different ways that they're bringing awareness through social media, so people were able to take pictures at their kitchen table and send to us how they... What they're doing with the campaign. Having their teal ribbons out during conference calls, with their Zoom. And so still bringing information to their community when a lot of SAAM activities are grassroot, are person to person and face-to-face and made us think about other ways to reach different parts of our community. So that, you know, was kind of a bad thing for us to learn that we still have this gap of access, but it was also a great thing for us to learn that so we can start to work towards filling that gap or bridging that gap, making it much smaller as we learn more and more. So that's what I picked up a lot from this previous SAAM campaign with I Ask, which is one of the slogans that I absolutely adore, so I'm always happy that we ran twice with it, and that's our consent.

0:32:46.9 YE: And going through my own neighborhood and seeing signs in people's windows, 'cause I started walking way more, and just walking through and seeing I Ask in the window, walking past a dry cleaners and seeing I Ask, or seeing magnets on the side of something. So we got creative, trying to bridge that gap of access, we got creative in how do we get our message out? So thinking quickly, thinking broad, and then also thinking together.