0:00:00.6 Louie Marvin: 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. My name is Louie Marvin, and I'm the training specialist at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. This podcast is part of our male survivor series. Today, Jeff Landers Nolan joins me in talking about reaching male survivors and especially considering a sexual assault program's name, in being accessible to male survivors. Jeff is a sexual assault counselor and therapist at Centre Safe, in State College Pennsylvania. [music] 0:00:49.0 LM: Jeff, thanks for being on the podcast. Can you introduce yourself and your work with Centre Safe? 0:00:55.4 Jeff Landers: Yeah, thanks for having me, Louie. It's great to be part of this project. I've been at Centre Safe full-time since 2017, I was a volunteer for three years before that, in 2014. I do the things that you mentioned, Louie, I respond to short-term crisis counseling for sexual assault survivors, I also have a case load of therapy clients, both DV and SA that I see, I also facilitate some of our sexual assault survivor support groups. And I'm glad to be here. 0:01:33.3 LM: Great, yeah, thank you. So for sexual assault centers, we know at NSVRC and in our field, that one barrier in reaching male survivors, has been a program name or an agency name that indicates that the services there are not for men. So today, our focus is Centre Safe's name, and how you all changed it from one that implied that services were only for women, to one that is more inclusive and non-gender-specific. So can you tell us about your old name and the process that you all took, to prepare for and to actually do the name change? 0:02:15.4 JL: Yeah, so for most of our history, our center was known as the Center County Women's Resource Center, which as you might imagine, was gender-specific, it communicated at a certain clientele, and our center had that name since 1975. So for three decades, that was the name that we operated under, and our center is located in State College, Pennsylvania, as you said, Louie. So in 2011 and 2012, we know the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke nation-wide, but it was especially impactful, given that our community is located where Penn State university is. So that event created some real shock waves in our community, it was a huge trigger for lots of men who are survivors of sexual assault, and whether people who had been victimized by Jerry Sandusky specifically or just folks who had their own victimization separately and were really triggered by that news, we knew that there was a lot of need in our community for men, who are experiencing this impact. But we weren't seeing a lot of men coming to us for services, and that was an area we wanted to be helpful in. 0:03:35.1 JL: At the time, and this was before I was part of the center, outreach efforts definitely stepped up, there was a lot of energy put into trying to make sure that everyone knew our services are accessible to men, but that didn't really change a whole lot, or at least not enough, it didn't get men coming to us and the numbers that we knew were experiencing distress, retraumatization or just needed someone to talk to, and the numbers we knew existed in the community. So through the processes that happened after the scandal broke, PCAR was doing some work with Penn State, as you might imagine to try to change and improve some things, and we were able to connect with PCAR, through that kind of a partnership as well. And we started thinking about what are the barriers to men accessing our services. We also as a center, got connected with 1in6, which is as people probably know, is one of the national organizations that's most focused on male survivors. 0:04:38.5 JL: And there was a particular talking session, there was a particular question that one of the 1in6 trainers asked our executive director, and I think the room at large, and the question was, "If your services are inclusive, don't you think your name should reflect that?" And that represented a little bit of a turning point. After that point, there were some community listening sessions, where we went out into the community and just asked people questions about, "What does our name communicate? Would you come to Centre Safe for services, depending on who you are and what identities you hold?" And we found that there were barriers for men around accessing our services based on our name, and that started the momentum, I think, to really have the will to actually change our name. And it took several years after that, but eventually, some committees were formed, composed of some board members, some staff members and some members of the community, to first, agree on the fact that we do need to change our name to make it more inclusive. 0:05:48.6 JL: Which was a difficulty for some folks who were really attached to the name that we'd had for 30-some years, and that did center women in the way that folks were afraid of losing if we changed it. But that group, after agreeing that we were going to change the name, then also eventually settled on the name Centre Safe. We started to roll that out, changed our materials to match, it was a slow process to officially say, "This is our new name," and not just get all of our internal stuff ready, but also communicate that to our wider community that, "This is our new name, yes, for the same place as the Center County Women's Resource Center. Just a different name." 0:06:30.6 LM: Thanks for talking us through that process and reminding people that it is a process that can take a long time, and that involves engaging a lot of different people, and that folks who are thinking about doing this should think about the legacy that they have in their community and honor that legacy and take a lot of care in thinking about this. Did you have anything else you wanted to say about any particular challenges or successes along the way throughout this process? 0:07:08.1 JL: Yeah, so, soon after we changed the name, we had been thinking consistently about trying to engage men more specifically and in greater numbers. Part of what we did shortly after rolling out the official name change, which again, even though it was official, still took a while to really feel official. We also undertook some outreach efforts that I think I'll go into a little bit more detail about later, but we did a screening of the Bristlecone documentary, and put together a panel of men to talk about their experiences as survivors to try and get the word out that, yes, our name has changed, but also we have some specific services for men, we're looking to get some men more interested in our services that we know are potentially in need and could really use our services in a helpful way. Since that name change in general, this is two or three years on from that. I think we, in my opinion, we have seen more men come to us for services. We've also seen more trans clients. We've seen more clients who are non-binary, and I don't know how much we can put specifically down to the name change, how much we can put down to the specific outreach efforts, but I think there's definitely a trend that we've seen in our services reflecting across the gender spectrum, more diversity since we've had that name change, there's certainly been some folks who are disappointed or sad that we have left the old name behind, and that makes a lot of sense. 0:08:54.2 JL: Our work does still mainly center around women because that's the population that tends to experience sexual and domestic violence most often, unfortunately. But I think in general, we have seen, especially as far as women clients go, we've not seen a drop or a change in the folks who are coming to us for help. We've not seen a change in those numbers in great measure. So I'm really glad that we've been able to, I think both, balance maintaining our tie to our history, in the ways that you referenced, Louie, and expanding our services to folks who deserve to have them. 0:09:32.3 LM: Yeah, thanks for that, Jeff. So you were talking about some of the different outreach activities that you did to specifically target men in your community or people in the community who would benefit from your services, did you have anything that you wanted to add about any specific outreach? I know that it involved some incorporating some key systems and different community partners. So could you just share with advocates listening about what you did and also could you... You mentioned the Bristlecone Project, could you tell us a little bit about what that is and specifically how you used it in your community? 0:10:12.6 JL: Yeah, definitely. So I'll start with the Bristlecone Project because that was the first thing that we... Not the first thing, the first big thing that we did, I would say. We put together a screening event. It was, I think, five different screenings, and the Bristlecone Project, if people are not aware, is a project by David Lisak to collect stories from male survivors. He does this for free, he takes photographs of them and video records them telling the stories, and it's edited together in this 30-minute documentary. There's also a poster display that can go with it. And so what we did, as a center, is that we picked five locations within Centre County, I think all at public spaces, at all the public libraries. We displayed the posters for a few days, to a week, and then we had an event to screen the documentary itself, and then had a panel of three service providers, myself, and two folks from Penn State, one from Psychological Services, one from the LGBTQ+ Center, and three male survivors from around Pennsylvania, of different ages, to tell their stories, and for all of us to respond to questions and comments from the community to, first, raise awareness and challenge some stigma around males survivorship, but also just to let folks know about our services, about Penn State services, that help is available in our community, specifically, for men who might have this life experience. So that was kinda the big thing in February of I think it was 2018. 0:12:03.3 JL: But I think what's important to recognize and what we found is that we were really hopeful that this event would kick off our first successful male survivor support group, and it did, but not as directly as we were thinking. What we found is that actually, we got one participant from the Bristlecone events, specifically. We also got one from radio ads. We got one for newspaper ads. We got one from calling the hotline. The lesson we learned is that lots of different methods of outreach were really key to reaching the men we wanted to reach. And this is true, I think for any population, not just men, but we really found that there's no one magic bullet, it's about consistency, and it's about a variety of approaches. Since the time that we've held our first successful group, we've continued to hold our male survivor group with very little interruption, and I'm really happy about that, but we've not had one source be the thing. That consistent outreach across multiple platforms is what's drawn people in over the long haul. And I think that's been probably the most important lesson for us. 0:13:24.3 LM: I think that's a really great lesson. Yeah, I think there's actually many lessons that are revealed through what you're saying, including that this is a process that... Any program who isn't seeing a certain group of survivors can go through, whether directly or just using the lessons you're mentioning, pausing and thinking about, "Why isn't someone coming in? What are the barriers?" That's just a good practice when you're thinking about anyone, so certainly we're not talking about, "Everybody, stop what you're doing and change everything, specifically for men." Definitely not more what we can learn from Centre Safe's example is just observing that male survivors aren't coming in and we're gonna go through an intentional process of thinking about why, listening about why, and taking our time and doing something that will reach our whole community. I really appreciate you sharing that. And that lesson that you just mentioned, that there's no snap-of-the-fingers solution to people coming in the door is you have to be consistent. That's really great stuff. So what other observations can you share? I'm thinking specifically about some of the differences that you and your colleagues have seen in reaching male survivors before and after you changed the name and did all this community engagement. 0:15:02.3 JL: Yeah, and I think, like I was saying in terms of outreach, it's hard to pin it to one particular thing, but that the name change was the thing. But I think if we want to look at that time period in terms of before and after, there is a really clear difference. We never could run a male survivor support group before, now we can consistently. We're seeing more numbers in terms of men, in terms of non-binary, in terms of trans folks, and I think the name change does have a fair bit to do with that. Part of what I think is interesting to think about locally for us, just one minor example, there's a place down the street called the Pregnancy Resource Center. And when we were called the Center County Women's Resource Center, we got a fair number of calls that were actually for the Pregnancy Resource Center, confusing us. And we don't do the things that they do and they don't do the things that we do. Since the name change, that's definitely dropped, so that's just nice in terms of people knowing where they wanna go upfront kinda thing. 0:16:17.2 JL: It has been... I don't know that I would say a challenge. It has been, at times, slightly confusing. How many different places in Centre County have Centre in the title. I can think of four right off the bat, apart from us, Centre Safe, that's us, and then there's Centre Helps, there's Centre Peace, there's Centre House, and those are very different services, depending on what you're looking for. So that's... I don't know that we've experienced that as much of a challenge, it is important to make sure your language is precise, I guess. But in terms of clientele, I think, like I said, we've seen a greater diversity, gender-wise at least, in terms of folks who are coming to us since the name change, and that's been really good. That fear, that worry about de-centering women and letting go of some of the services that we provided before, from my perspective, again, I think that's a valid concern for sure, but I think the name itself is... Or should not be the main determiner of that. 0:17:29.9 JL: I think when folks experience our services or see our outreach efforts or see our systems advocacy efforts, I think that's really where we choose and display whether or not we're centering survivors or not. And most survivors still are women, so that's critical to keep in mind. I think when it comes to clients experiencing our services, we haven't experienced a drop in the population that we were serving before, generally speaking. We have experienced an increase in populations we were not reaching before. The worry for me always is, what are the clients that we are missing and don't even know we're missing? The name Center County Women's Resource Center, just by virtual of having women in the title, can cause a question to come up on a person depending on their gender and their sex, when we never have an opportunity to talk with that person and say, "Yes, absolutely. Our services are for you, come on in, or please give us a call." 0:18:37.9 JL: We don't know how many folks we missed and that we were not able to serve for how ever many years because our name turned them away before we ever got to talk with them. Given the history of our center and the fact that we are and have been known for providing services to women, I think that's been really helpful in still having people who would come to us before, still coming to us, and they experience the same level of service, the same type of empowerment, the same type of consideration, for them and their well-being, and that tends to keep them engaged. So I think on balance, the name change, in my opinion, from my perspective, has really been in that positive in the sense that we still have a chance to engage with folks who would have come to us before, and now, I think the numbers tell us that we're reaching people who before would have just not even considered or had a really difficult question come up in the sense of, "Am I gonna be welcome there?" 0:19:43.4 JL: We still have to prove, as a center, that we are competent to serve populations that come to us, especially folks who before would have had a question about, "Well, if I'm not a White cisgender woman, am I welcome at this place?" If you fall outside that category, we still need to prove that we are competent to serve you, and that's what we try our best to do. But I think at least now our name is not communicating an unwelcome message to folks other than cisgender women, which I think is really important. 0:20:21.1 LM: Yeah, thanks, I love that you're sort of... Yeah, you're sort of repeating that lesson from before, if it's not just a magic bullet for getting people in the door, you have to do the sustained efforts and having the point that one of those sustained efforts is providing great services. So I really appreciate you mentioning that, just the reminder that there's no magic formula, there's no snap of the fingers, it's sustained good work and work that engages community and listens to community. So thank you for that. Jeff, do you have any other feedback or lessons that you wanted to share with advocates at sexual assault centers who are maybe listening to this discussion and who might be considering evaluating or changing their agency or program name? 0:21:09.5 JL: Yeah, like I said before, I think for us, it's generally been a positive. I think we're reaching more people than we would before, and even if we're not the right place for them, being able to connect them to where is the right resource for them. Something that we've learned, and I don't know if this is related to our name change or not, but especially over the last calendar year, I would say, we tend to get a lot of calls from men looking for services who are nowhere near State College Pennsylvania. I have a map up in my office with dots all over the country of men who have called in from Florida, from Texas, from Missouri, from Oregon, from New York, looking for services for men, specifically support groups. And sometimes those things are available in their communities, sometimes they're not, but whether or not they are, these men haven't been able to find them. So maybe it's our name change that's led us to pop up in Google searches that folks are now calling us and they're seeking resources. But I think part of what's been important, I have no data to say that this relates to us continuing to get these calls, but part of what we've had to get good at is doing resource searches for folks in their local communities, and that pretty much always starts by finding the state coalition, searching by county or city, and funneling down to their local program and seeing what's around them, and can we connect them with something right there in their own backyard. 0:22:44.3 JL: The fact that I and we have been able to do that has been, I think, really gratifying, even though we can't serve folks directly, to be able to connect them with places across the country. Again, I don't know if us being able to do that successfully has led to more men calling us for those kind of searches, they're different people, but I think the lesson there is we reduced or hopefully removed a barrier to seeking services. Even though people were not finding something in their community, the fact that we are now more accessible seems to have led folks to us. Now that that's happened, we have a responsibility to help however we can, even if that's doing some research beyond what I usually know. I have no idea what's available for male survivors in Los Angeles, but I'll look it up and just taking the time to do that, especially for a population that historically has been a little bit ignored by the movement, is really important. I think it's a big help and a big step in terms of moving us forward to being more inclusive, which is always the push for me to be moving towards. 0:24:02.1 LM: Well, thank you for joining us today, Jeff. We invite listeners to learn more about working with male survivors by checking out the links in the show notes. [music] 0:24:25.1 LM: And thanks for listening to this episode of Resource on the Go. For more resources and information about understanding, responding to and preventing sexual assault, visit our website at www.nsvrc.org. You can also get in touch with us by emailing resources@nsvrc.org.