Sexual Violence in Disasters
From the Ntional Sexual Violence Resource Center

©2021 National Sexual Violence Resource Center. All rights reserved. 

This publication was supported by the Grant or Cooperative Agreement 
Number 6 NUF2CE002510-02-04, funded by the Centers for Disease 
Control and Prevention. Its contents are solely the responsibility 
of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views 
of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department 
of Health and Human Services.

Sexual Violence and Disasters
Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Defining Disaster
Contributing Factors to Sexual Violence in Disasters
    Risk Factors for Perpetration
    Risk Factors for Victimization
    Barriers to Support & Services
    Opportunities for Prevention
Examples of Sexual Violence in Disasters
    Intimate Partner Sexual Violence
    Child Sexual Abuse
    Sexual Abuse by Caregivers
    Sex Trafficking, Sexual Extortion, & Survival Sex
    Workplace Sexual Harassment
    Image-Based Sexual Abuse
    Sexualized Hate & Bias-Motivated Violence
    Sexual Assault in Confinement
    Sexual Violence in Shelters & Camps for Displaced Persons
Trauma & Healing in Disasters 
    Stress Related to the Immediate and Long-Term Effects of Disaster
    Re-Traumatizing Conditions of Sheltering
    Medical Anxiety
    Complex Trauma
    Historical Trauma	
    Unmet Needs for Healing
Survivor-Centered & Community-Centered Healing & Recovery
    Historical Resilience & Ancestral Ways
    Collective Care & Mutual Aid
    Emergency Response from Crisis to Stabilization
Strategies for Sustainable Prevention
    Organizational Change
    Coalition Building
    Policy Education
Moving Forward
Recommended Resources	
Glossary
References

Foreword 
In the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a rise in 
sexual violence became a tragedy within a tragedy. Prompted by the 
accounts of survivors and the knowledge that disasters worsen 
conditions that contribute to sexual abuse, harassment, and assault,
 both the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault (LaFASA) and 
the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) began to 
examine this issue. The two organizations partnered to produce 
Preventing and Responding to Sexual Violence in Disasters: A 
Planning Guide for Prevention and Response (Klein, 2008). The guide 
offered practical recommendations for victim advocates, emergency 
responders, disaster managers, and others to prepare for, prevent, 
and respond to sexual violence in disasters. 

For over a decade since its publication, the guide has remained one 
of NSVRC’s most-requested resources, and has been instrumental in 
helping communities develop plans to prevent and address sexual 
violence when disaster strikes. In that time, the frequency and 
severity of climate- and weather-related disasters have steadily 
increased, impacting regions across the U.S. and the world. 
Simultaneously, researchers, journalists, human rights organizations,
 disaster responders, and victim advocates have continued to examine 
and document the prevalence, causes, and consequences of sexual and 
gender-based violence in the context of disasters. This ongoing work 
has continued to deepen understanding and broaden awareness about 
the connections among oppression, disasters, and sexual violence.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread and stay-at-home orders 
went into effect across the globe, many community-based rape crisis 
centers and domestic violence programs reported a noticeable increase
in hotline calls and requests for services. At the same time, it 
quickly became clear that due to structural racism and long-standing 
health, housing, and economic inequities in the United States, Black,
Indigenous, and other communities of color were disproportionately 
impacted by the coronavirus itself, the financial crisis that came 
with it, and the subsequent risks of sexual violence victimization.

NSVRC recognized the need for updated resources that could help to 
highlight and carry forward the lessons learned from the COVID-19 
pandemic and other recent disasters, with particular attention to 
the racial and social inequities that shape both disasters and 
sexual violence. We convened an advisory group of organizations 
working at local, state, and national levels to support Black, 
Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian American and Pacific Islander 
survivors of sexual violence. These movement leaders have guided 
the creation of this resource.

Acknowledgments

NSVRC would like to thank the individuals and organizations who 
were instrumental in the development of this guide.  

When we began the planning process for this resource, it was 
imperative that we partnered with those working in and with the 
communities most impacted by disasters. We are grateful for the 
people who agreed to help us, who offered their expertise, and who 
consistently reminded us that meeting the needs of those at the 
margins of the margins and confronting the systemic, structural, 
and institutional racism that is the key contributor to disasters 
should always be at the forefront of our work. We are honored to be 
in community with these individuals. We extend deep gratitude to the 
following:

Sexual Violence in Disasters Advisory Group Members:

Sevonna Brown, Co-Executive Director of Black Women’s Blueprint

Farah Tanis, Co-Executive Director of Black Women’s Blueprint

Indira Henard, Executive Director of DC Rape Crisis Center

Chandra Dawson, LISW, LCSW

Strong Oak Lefebvre, Executive Director of Visioning B.E.A.R. 
Circle Intertribal Coalition, Inc.

Mira Yusef, Executive Director of Monsoon Asians and Pacific 
Islanders in Solidarity/National Asians & Pacific Islanders Ending 
Sexual Violence

Kimber Nicoletti-Martínez, MSW, LCSW, Director of Multicultural 
Efforts to End Sexual Assault

In addition, we could not create this resource without the many 
individuals who worked with our advisory group members to provide 
feedback, reviews, and stories to help us understand the impact of 
disasters on communities of color. We are honored to have shared 
sacred spaces to hear from these individuals:

Loretta Afraid of Bear Cook, Spirit Aligned Legacy Leader from the 
Lakota Nation

Katsi Cook, Spirit Aligned Legacy Leader from the Mohawk Nation

Stacie Fourstar, Chief Judge for the Fort Peck Assiniboine and 
Sioux Tribes

Orlene Gray Davis, Chief Program Officer of Black Women’s Blueprint

This guide was possible due to the dedicated work of the author, 
Annie Gebhardt, MPH. We are deeply grateful for her help in moving 
this project from vision to reality.

In 2020, the world was overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a global 
public health crisis of unparalleled magnitude. Within one year of 
the pandemic’s beginning, 30 million people had been diagnosed, and 
more than 500,000 had died from the virus in the United States alone 
(Wu & Chiwaya, 2020). In addition, the indirect social and economic 
consequences of the pandemic caused an estimated 30,000 additional 
deaths (Matthay et al., 2021). In an effort to limit the spread of 
infection, businesses and agencies across the country shut their 
doors as the entire country was directed to stay home. In the first 
month of the pandemic, more than 20.5 million people in the U.S. 
lost their jobs (Kochhar, 2020; Long & Van Dam, 2020).

While families and communities across the country struggled to 
survive the direct and indirect effects of the virus, the United 
States was also struck by climate- and weather-related disasters 
that were historic in both their number and severity. On the east 
coast, the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season brought a record-breaking 
30 named storms, with 11 making landfall in the continental U.S. 
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], 2021). On 
the west coast, states struggled to contain and recover from the 
worst wildfire season on record, with more than five million acres 
burned, thousands of buildings destroyed, and numerous lives lost 
(Migliozzi et al., 2020). Southern and central states experienced 
the second deadliest tornado season in a decade (Storm Prediction 
Center, n.d.).

In the midst of these acute disasters, the ongoing disaster of 
systemic racism was brought to the forefront of national 
consciousness. Countless people around the country and the world 
joined uprisings in every state to protest police violence and 
anti-Black racism following the murder of George Floyd by a 
Minneapolis police officer. As the COVID-19 pandemic continued, 
it became clear that Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people were 
dying from the virus at twice the rate or more of white people 
due to long-standing health inequities (Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention [CDC], 2021). At the same time, racist rhetoric 
about the virus from the highest levels of government coincided 
with a surge in hate violence against Asian Americans and Pacific 
Islanders (Tavernise & Oppel, 2021).

A Note about Language

Many of the key terms we have used in this guide are defined and 
discussed in notes on the pages that follow. We have also included 
a glossary with these terms at the end of the guide. Our goal is 
to use language in ways that are informative and inclusive, while 
understanding that language can also be limited and oppressive, 
sometimes simultaneously. We recognize that language is complex 
and constantly evolving, and words have different meanings for 
different people, communities, and cultures. We support individuals 
and communities in using the language they choose to describe their 
own identities and experiences.

Introduction

Disasters reveal and reinforce social, political, and economic 
inequities that exist in the United States and across the world. 
The immediate and long-term effects of disasters increase the 
overall prevalence of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault; worsen 
the frequency and severity of harm for victims experiencing ongoing 
sexual violence;1 and exacerbate barriers and obstacles for survivors 
in their healing. 

While the effects of disasters, including sexual violence, are 
widespread, hardship is not distributed equally. The history and 
continuing legacy of colonialism, institutionalized racism, 
hetero-patriarchy, and systemic oppression shape both the causes and 
effects of disasters in the United States. Underlying inequities, 
disasters, and sexual violence create a “collision of crises” that 
disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, and people of color 
(BIPOC);2 people experiencing economic and housing insecurity; 
documented and undocumented immigrants; people with disabilities; 
people in later life; youth; LGBTQ3 people; women; trans and 
non-binary people; and those who live at the intersections of these 
and other historically marginalized identities.

1Sexual violence is an umbrella term to describe any type of sexual 
abuse, harassment, or assault. This includes sex 
trafficking, sexual extortion, reproductive coercion, and unwanted 
sexual contact or exposure. People who commit sexual violence may 
use force, threats, manipulation, or coercion to commit these acts. 
They often know and are trusted by the people they abuse and may 
victimize people of any age or gender.

2BIPOC is an acronym for Black, Indigenous, and people of color. 
It is used throughout this resource and in some activist and academic 
communities to acknowledge and center the specific violence, 
cultural erasure, and systemic oppression experienced by Black and 
Indigenous people in the United States.

3LGBTQ is an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and 
queer or questioning. It is used throughout this resource as an 
umbrella term for people whose sexual orientation and/or gender 
identities have been historically marginalized.

The conditions of risk and inequity that lead to increased sexual 
violence and hardship for survivors during disasters do not 
materialize when disaster strikes or end when disaster recedes. They 
precede, are magnified by, and often become further entrenched by 
disasters. Alongside these conditions, during disasters and otherwise,
 are the individual and collective resilience and survival strategies 
of survivors and communities, especially among those already 
enduring a disproportionate burden of the underlying causes and 
long-term consequences of systemic oppression and sexual violence.
The work to eliminate inequity and injustice is an integral part of 
both disaster preparedness and violence prevention, and everyone has 
a role to play. Community members can share resources and social 
support, build coalitions, and advocate for equitable policies and 
programs. Service providers can build accessible, equitable, and 
holistic systems of care. Policymakers can prioritize equity in 
housing, health care, disaster management, and more. Strategies to 
meaningfully prevent and respond to sexual violence in disasters 
can increase equity, safety, and healing not only in times of 
disaster, but at all times.

This guide draws from research, reporting, and the lived experiences 
of survivors to explore the connections between sexual violence and 
disasters; the inequities that shape them both; the lessons to be 
learned from the resilience of survivors and their communities; and 
opportunities for all of us to prevent sexual violence before, 
during, and after disasters.

Disaster is commonly defined as:

a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society 
causing widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses 
and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or 
society to cope using its own resources (United Nations International 
Strategy for Disaster Reduction, 2009).

This definition includes disasters caused by natural hazards, such 
as hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, and 
epidemics and pandemics.4 It also includes disasters that arise from 
human action, such as war, terrorism, and political repression; 
nuclear explosions and radiation; and air, water, and soil pollution 
arising from commercial farming, manufacturing, oil and gas drilling, 
mining, and other industries. Disasters can also result from a 
combination of both natural and human causes, such as an earthquake 
destroying a nuclear power plant, a hurricane flooding a toxic waste 
site, or an epidemic made worse by structural inequities and 
discriminatory response. By definition, it is not the cause of an 
event that creates disaster, but its overwhelming consequences for 
people and communities (Zibulewsky, 2001).

While some events — such as hurricanes and earthquakes — may be 
natural and inevitable, the devastation they cause to people and 
communities is neither. The frequency, severity, and distribution 
of losses that define disaster are determined by the social, 
economic, and political conditions in which a potentially disastrous 
event occurs (Jacobs, 2019). These underlying conditions are the 
result of human decisions and actions related to investment and 
inequity that either bolster or undermine communities’ abilities to 
prepare for, survive, and recover from disasters. In this way, 
“there is no such thing as a natural disaster” (International 
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies [IFRC], 2020b; 
N. Smith, 2006).

BIPOC communities face disproportionate risks of disasters because 
of systemic racism and environmental injustice. Due to exclusionary 
zoning ordinances, racial bias in property values, discriminatory 
lending by banks and insurance companies (“redlining”), and other 
long-standing forms of housing and economic discrimination, BIPOC 
neighborhoods are disproportionately located near industrial 
facilities, oil refineries, landfills, and roadways (American Bar 
Association [ABA], 2020; American Public Health Association [APHA], 
n.d.; Squires, 2017). In fact, research shows that race is the 
number one indicator for the placement of toxic facilities in the 
United States (APHA, n.d.; Bullard et al., 2007; Clark et al., 2014; 
Commission for Racial Justice, 1987). In violation of tribal 
sovereignty and federal law, tribal lands are systematically 
targeted by private corporations for oil, gas, and coal extraction 
and pipelines while state and federal policymakers weaken regulations 
(Glick, 2019; Nelson, 2020; Osborne, 2018). During the Cold War, the 
United States conducted extensive weapons testing in the Pacific — 
detonating 67 nuclear bombs, launching a dozen biological weapons, 
and burying 3.1 million cubic feet of plutonium and other 
radioactive debris in the Marshall Islands — leading to widespread 
displacement, destruction of resources, and negative health outcomes 
that persist among many Indigenous Pacific Islanders today 
(Gerrard, 2015; Jose et al., 2015; Rust, 2019; Yam, 2020). The 
close proximity to these various facilities and operations increases 
risks to BIPOC communities from acute disasters such as industrial 
accidents and oil spills, as well as chronic exposure to toxic fumes, 
water pollution, and other environmental hazards that contribute to 
health disparities (APHA, n.d.; Berkovitz, 2020; Cliffton et al., 
2020). 

4An epidemic is an unexpected increase in the number of cases of a 
disease within a population or region. A pandemic is an epidemic 
that has spread to multiple countries or continents.

“Disasters are often depicted as great levelers, victimizing rich 
and poor alike. The effects of disasters on populations are anything 
but random… The same factors that disadvantage members of society 
on a daily basis also play out during disasters.” 
— Kathleen Tierney (Tierney, 2014, as cited in U.S. Federal 
Emergency Management Agency [FEMA], 2020, p. 12)

Past and present discriminatory housing practices also cause BIPOC 
neighborhoods to be disproportionately located in low-lying coastal 
areas that are ecologically vulnerable to hurricanes and flooding 
(Squires, 2017). For example, Black homeowners in New Orleans were 
more than three times as likely to have been flooded as white 
homeowners during Hurricane Katrina, due to their geographic 
location within the city and governmental failure to repair the 
surrounding levees (Cliffton et al., 2020). Despite the 
disproportionate risks and costs to BIPOC communities in disasters, 
people with the power to make environmental policy and implement 
large-scale disaster plans consistently exclude their experience and 
expertise (Sze, 2006). These are all forms of pervasive and 
entrenched environmental racism.5

Disasters expose and exacerbate pervasive inequities. Systemic 
racism, colonialism, nativism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, 
heterosexism, cissexism, and other oppressions leave marginalized 
communities exposed to higher rates of morbidity, mortality, 
unemployment, and housing insecurity, and greater barriers to 
evacuation, essential services, and recovery at every stage of 
disaster planning and response (Cliffton et al., 2020; FEMA, 2020).

The definition of disaster also offers a lens for understanding 
colonialism, white supremacy, institutionalized racism, and other 
oppressions as long-standing, human-caused disasters. Like other 
disasters, these result in “widespread human, material, economic, 
and environmental losses” to BIPOC communities, whose “own resources” 
have been simultaneously and systematically stolen, exploited, and 
deprived by governments, businesses, and other institutions. These 
institutions have even planned, sanctioned, and carried out disasters 
targeting BIPOC communities, such as slavery, massacres, forced 
relocation, and mandatory boarding schools for Indigenous children, 
with enduring effects on survivors and their descendents (University 
of Minnesota Extension, n.d.). Structural racism has been widely 
described as a pandemic itself, one that has generated health 
disparities, chronic illness, death, and trauma for BIPOC individuals 
and communities in the United States for centuries (Cheng & Conca-
Cheng, 2020; Krisberg, 2021; Laurencin & Walker, 2020; M. Singh, 
2020). This calls us to center, uplift, and learn from the 
resilience and strategies employed by BIPOC communities to resist 
and endure these historic and present-day disasters.

5Environmental racism is a form of systemic racism in which 
governmental, corporate, and other institutional policies and 
practices disproportionately expose Black, Indigenous, and people 
of color to health hazards such as pollution, toxins, and hazardous 
waste where they live and work.

Disasters are common in the United States and throughout the world, 
and at any given time many communities are struggling to cope with 
multiple disasters at once. When one disaster follows right after 
another, they multiply each other’s impacts. This makes it 
profoundly difficult for affected communities to survive and recover.

Overlapping disasters are expected to become increasingly common in 
the coming decades due to climate change and continued injustices 
(Flavelle & Fountain, 2020). Climate- and weather-related disasters 
have become more frequent over the last century. The number, 
intensity, duration, variability, and impact of these events are 
predicted to climb as increasing global temperatures lead to rising 
sea levels and more precipitation, flooding, droughts, and heatwaves 
(APHA, n.d.; IFRC, 2020b; Kaplan, 2020; U.S. Geological Survey 
[USGS], n.d.). The effects of climate change, including desert 
expansion, environmental degradation, and sea-level rise currently 
displace more than 20 million people each year, forcing them to 
migrate to other regions or countries (McDonnell, 2018; United 
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], n.d.). Researchers 
anticipate that many low-lying Pacific Islands, such as the Marshall 
Islands, will become uninhabitable by 2050 due to the direct and 
indirect consequences of wave-driven flooding (IFRC, 2020b; 
Storlazzi et al., 2018). Climate change may also increase the risks 
of infectious diseases with epidemic potential, as well as 
human-caused disasters associated with political instability, armed 
conflict, and terrorism around the world (APHA, n.d.; Hsiang et al., 
2013; IFRC, 2020b; United Nations General Assembly, 2009; Werrell & 
Femia, 2018; Worland, 2020). Without sweeping changes in public 
policy and allocation of resources, the consequences of these events 
will continue to disproportionately burden BIPOC, low-income, and 
other marginalized communities due to racial and socioeconomic 
inequities in a wide range of factors, including housing, health and 
health care, and disaster planning and relief (APHA, n.d.; IFRC, 
2020b).

“While natural disasters and disease do not discriminate, we know 
that people can and do. These ‘equal opportunity’ calamities have a 
way of exposing our nation’s greatest weaknesses bare to the world: 
pervasive and dangerous inequities across race, class, gender 
identity and sexual orientation.”
 — Pascale Leone (2020, para. 1)

Contributing Factors to Sexual Violence in Disasters

The immediate and long-term effects of disasters heighten risk 
factors for sexual violence perpetration and victimization. They 
also create and worsen existing barriers to safety and healing for 
survivors and accountability for people who sexually offend. As a 
result, sexual violence often becomes a tragedy within the tragedy 
of disaster. These factors contribute to a rise in sexual violence 
when disaster strikes and for a long time to follow. Importantly, 
these factors are not inevitable. By taking action to reduce risk 
factors, advance equity, and strengthen community support before 
disasters strike, community members, service providers, and 
policymakers can prevent sexual violence both in and out of 
disasters.

Risk Factors for Perpetration

Research has identified individual, relational, community, and 
societal risk factors that can increase the likelihood that a person 
will commit sexual violence (CDC, n.d.d). Many of these risk factors, 
which are prevalent even in the absence of disaster, become elevated 
due to the psychological, interpersonal, economic, physical, and 
other hardships caused by disasters. Notably, none of these 
conditions directly cause sexual violence, and not everyone who 
experiences these risk factors will perpetrate sexual violence. 
However, these heightened risks can increase the likelihood of 
sexual harassment, abuse, and assault in the context of disasters.

Individual

Disasters frequently cause significant trauma, stress, and major 
losses, including the loss of homes, jobs, and loved ones. These 
experiences can overwhelm an individual’s abilities to cope while 
simultaneously limiting access to their usual strategies for dealing 
with challenges. For some, this can lead to increased use of drugs 
and/or alcohol as a means to manage the trauma and stressors of a 
disaster. It can also contribute to depression, suicidality, and 
other mental health concerns (Czeisler et al., 2020). At the same 
time, disasters can make substance abuse and mental health treatment 
and other supports more difficult — or even impossible — to access. 
All of these factors — limited coping skills, drug and alcohol use, 
unmet mental health needs — may increase a person’s likelihood of 
committing sexual violence (CDC, n.d.a, n.d.b, n.d.d; Storey, 2020; 
Thurston et al., 2021; World Health Organization [WHO], 2005).

The conditions created by disasters may increase not only the 
likelihood, but also the potential lethality, of sexual and 
gender-based violence. Disasters can lead to spikes in gun purchases, 
and the presence of a firearm can drastically increase the likelihood 
of lethal violence in households with a history of intimate partner 
violence, elder abuse, or other interpersonal violence (Bettinger-
Lopez & Bro, 2020; Bleiweis & Ahmed, 2020; Makaroun et al., 2020).
 
Relational

As people struggle to cope with a disaster and its aftermath, 
dynamics can change and tensions can grow in families and other 
relationships (Bancroft, 2018). Family stress and conflict, poor 
parent-child relationships, and an emotionally unsupportive family 
environment can contribute to risk of sexual violence perpetration 
(CDC, n.d.a, n.d.d). People may seek shelter with extended family, 
friends, or acquaintances, which can increase the potential for 
child abuse (CDC, n.d.a). People may become increasingly financially 
and emotionally dependent on elder family members for whom they 
provide care, and more resentful of their caregiving roles amidst 
financial hardship and competing demands on their time and resources. 
This can increase the risk of elder abuse, including sexual abuse 
(CDC, n.d.b; Makaroun et al., 2020; Storey, 2020). Social networks 
beyond the family may also become compromised by disaster, 
increasing social isolation and decreasing social support, further 
contributing to risks of child and elder abuse perpetration (CDC, 
n.d.a, n.d.b; WHO, 2005). 

Community

Weak sanctions against people who sexually offend and a lack of 
institutional support from police and judicial systems in the 
community increase the risk of sexual violence perpetration. 
These systems are already lacking in terms of culturally responsive 
and accessible services, and are not helpful to many survivors of 
sexual abuse, harassment, and assault. In the wake of disaster, 
these systems tend to become even less responsive and accessible. 
Law enforcement may become overwhelmed with disaster response and 
unavailable to receive reports or pursue investigations related to 
sexual violence. Sexual offenses may also be assigned lower priority 
than other crimes in disaster settings (Klein, n.d.; Thurston et al.,
 2021; WHO, 2005). Systems such as probation and parole, court-
mandated drug testing and treatment, and mental and behavioral 
health services that provide accountability, supervision, and support 
to people convicted of sexual violence may also be interrupted during 
and after a disaster, increasing risks of recidivism (Yukhnenko et 
al., 2020). It is often necessary to release people from correctional 
facilities during disasters in order to protect their lives and 
safety, and this should be part of communities’ disaster planning 
and response. However, this can also increase risk to victims in the 
community unless there are clear protocols and precautions in place 
to facilitate safe release in the context of disasters (National 
Resource Center for Reaching Victims [NRC] & Women of Color Network 
[WOCN], 2020). 

Community-level risk factors for sexual violence perpetration also 
include poverty and lack of employment opportunities (CDC, n.d.d). 
These conditions also increase in disasters as businesses are 
shuttered or destroyed, unemployment rates rise, and incomes fall 
(WHO, 2005). The socioeconomic effects of disaster can extend for 
years or even decades after the disaster itself.

Societal

Weak laws and policies related to sexual violence and gender equity 
increase the likelihood of sexual violence perpetration (CDC, n.d.d).
While recognition of the intersections between disasters and sexual 
violence has grown in the twenty-first century, many disaster 
planning and response efforts on the local, state, and federal 
levels still fail to adequately account for and address the 
increased risks of perpetration and barriers for survivors. By 
integrating sexual violence prevention and intervention into 
practices and policies, emergency responders, shelter workers, 
lawmakers, and others can help to reduce the risks of sexual 
violence perpetration during and after disasters.

Risk Factors for Victimization

Sexual violence is rooted in oppression (Guy, 2006). People who 
commit sexual violence often target those who have less social, 
economic, or political power in the world, and who therefore have 
more real or perceived barriers to resisting, reporting, and 
mobilizing systems of support and accountability. Because of 
interlocking oppressions and inequities, Black, Indigenous, and 
people of color; people experiencing poverty or homelessness; 
people with disabilities; elders; children and youth; LGBTQ people; 
and women are among those who experience the highest rates of sexual 
violence. The risks of victimization are even greater for people 
with more than one of these identities, who face compounding layers 
of oppression. These individuals and communities also face 
disproportionate burdens and barriers, including greater economic 
hardship and significant disparities in health and health care, 
before, during, and long after disasters (IFRC, n.d.b). As disasters 
exacerbate and further entrench existing structural inequities, 
they multiply risk factors for sexual violence victimization among 
already marginalized communities (National Sexual Violence Resource 
Center [NSVRC], 2012b; Ruíz et al., 2020).

Economic insecurity

When people experience economic insecurity — such as uncertainty 
about whether and how they will be able to pay rent, buy food, 
cover expenses, or cope with an unexpected financial setback — they 
are significantly more likely to experience sexual violence 
(Breiding et al., 2017). Economic insecurity can increase dependence 
on partners, family members, caregivers, employers, acquaintances, 
and others for shelter, food, and other necessities, increasing the
 potential for abuse. People who commit sexual violence frequently 
exploit and perpetuate these conditions in order to coerce and 
control victims. This can make it profoundly difficult or outright 
impossible to escape a sexually abusive situation.

Disasters create staggering financial loss for individuals, 
families, and communities, heightening economic insecurity and 
vulnerabilities to sexual violence (Peterman et al., 2020; Thurston 
et al., 2021). Disasters often result in widespread loss of jobs, 
income, housing, and personal possessions, while generating enormous 
costs for health care, relocation, and recovery. At the same time, 
community supports and systems that might sustain some individuals 
through a personal financial crisis — such as personal networks, 
private organizations, and public systems — are often overwhelmed 
and inaccessible during the collective crisis of disaster. These 
losses expose and further entrench existing economic inequities in 
society.

The economic effects of disaster, and the accompanying rise in 
sexual violence victimization risk, disproportionately impact people 
who already experience economic marginalization, including Black, 
Indigenous, and people of color; documented and undocumented 
immigrants; people with disabilities; people in LGBTQ communities; 
women; low-wage workers; and people at the intersections of these 
and other historically marginalized identities (Evans et al., 2020; 
Mukherji, 2020; Polaris, 2020g). Due to structural racism and 
persistent inequities in employment, education, housing, and health, 
Black, Indigenous, and people of color have significantly less 
accumulated wealth than white people on average, are over-represented 
in low-wage jobs, and disproportionately work in industries likely 
to be most affected by unemployment in a disaster, such as 
restaurants, hotels, child care, retail trade, and transportation 
(Center on Budget and Policy Priorities [CBPP], 2021; Hamel et al., 
2017; Kochhar & Barroso, 2020). Other communities that face 
disproportionately high poverty rates, wage gaps, and employment d
iscrimination, including LGBTQ people and people with disabilities, 
are also disproportionately affected by the economic costs of 
disasters (Bleiweis & Ahmed, 2020).

“One thing we know about disasters is that they not only exacerbate 
the impacts of structural inequalities, they entrench them. They 
also remove many of the safety nets available and limit the exit 
strategies out of situations produced by interlocking structural 
oppressions.” (Ruíz et al., 2020, p. 18)

6Latinx is used throughout this resource as a gender-neutral and 
non-binary term when referencing people of Latin American culture 
or origin, regardless of race.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of jobs lost were in 
industries with low average wages, with disproportionate impact 
among BIPOC workers, immigrants, women, young workers, and workers
 with less formal education (CBPP, 2021; Falk et al., 2021; Kochhar, 
2020; Long & Van Dam, 2020). The intersections of racism and sexism 
are further evident in unemployment during the pandemic: data 
suggests that Black women experienced the largest number of job 
losses, while Latinx6 women had the highest overall unemployment 
rate one month into the crisis (Ruíz et al., 2020). Six months after 
the president declared the pandemic a national emergency, 72% of 
Latinx, 60% of Black, and 55% of Native American respondents 
reported that their households were facing serious financial 
problems, compared to 37% of Asian and 36% of white respondents 
(Chatterjee, 2020). This has been further compounded by the fact 
that unemployment benefits have been delayed for millions of people 
in the United States, and outright denied to households with 
undocumented or mixed immigration status and workers in informal and 
gig economies (NRC & WOCN, 2020). These disparities echo the economic 
effects that have been documented in previous disasters (Bernstein, 
2005; Campbell, 2020; Hamel et al., 2017).

Even without a disaster, survivors of sexual violence already face 
significantly higher burdens of economic insecurity, with lost 
earnings over their lifetimes and personal costs for medical care, 
counseling, and/or relocation (Doyle et al., 2020; Loya, 2014). 
Research suggests that people who have experienced rape earn an 
average of $5,000 less per year than people who have not, a 
disparity that can persist for years or decades following an assault 
(NSVRC, 2013). The economic hardship caused by sexual violence is 
further compounded for BIPOC survivors, low-income survivors, and 
immigrant survivors due to structural inequities in employment, 
education, housing, and public assistance programs (Loya, 2012). 
During the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly twice as many BIPOC survivors 
of sexual and gender-based violence reported high economic 
insecurity, compared to white survivors (Ruíz et al., 2020). 
Women who said they were likely to return to an abusive partner 
during the pandemic had less than half the financial resources 
($3,734 on average) than women who said it was unlikely that they 
would return ($8,322 on average) (Ruíz et al., 2020).

Housing insecurity

Housing insecurity is both a common cause and consequence of 
sexual violence victimization (NSVRC, 2020a). In a national study, 
around 15% of people experiencing homelessness had experienced 
sexual assault or rape, with higher rates of victimization among 
people who had experienced longer periods of homelessness 
(Meinbresse et al., 2014). Studies of youth experiencing homelessness 
have found that as many as 32% have experienced sexual violence 
while homeless, and as many as 42% have been involved in sex 
trafficking or survival sex. These rates are highest among LGBTQ 
homeless youth and disproportionately affect Black, Latinx, and 
multiracial youth (NSVRC, 2020a, 2020b).

Disasters contribute to widespread and worsening housing insecurity 
and homelessness directly through the destruction of homes and 
indirectly through effects on income and unemployment. When rental 
properties are damaged or destroyed by flooding, wildfires, or 
other natural hazards, landlords often raise rent prices 
significantly to recoup the cost of repairs and to increase their 
profits while demand for housing is high and supply is low 
(Bernstein et al., 2006; Breaux, 2019; Ortiz et al., 2019). 
In several cases, property owners, local officials, and federal 
agencies have decided to demolish affordable housing units that 
were damaged by disasters, rather than rebuild them (Bernstein et 
al., 2006; Ortiz et al., 2019; Seicshnaydre, 2011). Emergency 
shelters, already in short supply, may be forced to close due to 
physical damage from a disaster or limit capacity to prevent the 
spread of infection during an epidemic.

Before, during, and after disasters, housing insecurity and its 
associated risks for sexual violence victimization are experienced 
disproportionately by Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Out 
of approximately 3.5 million people who experience homelessness in 
the United States each year, 42% are Black (despite being only 12% 
of the overall population); 20% are Latinx (12% overall); 4% are 
Indigenous (1% overall); and 2% are Asian (1%) overall (National 
Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty & Los Angeles Community Action 
Network, 2014). Discriminatory housing and lending practices towards 
BIPOC communities over generations mean that Black and Latinx people 
are more likely to rent than own their homes, putting them at higher 
risk of eviction and making them more susceptible to exploitation 
by landlords (ABA, 2020). Research after Hurricane Harvey found 
that Black and Latinx residents in Texas were less likely to have 
homeowners’, renters’, or flood insurance; among those whose homes 
were damaged by the storm, 67% of white residents, 49% of Black 
residents, and 36% of Latinx residents reported having any type of 
insurance to assist with repairs (Hamel et al., 2017). According to 
surveys collected in February 2021, one year after the start of the 
COVID-19 pandemic, nearly one in five adult renters were not caught 
up on their rent, with inequitable impact by race/ethnicity: 29% of 
Black renters, 22% Latinx, 19% American Indian/Alaska Native/Native 
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and multiracial (combined), 16% of Asian, 
and 13% of white renters were behind in rent (CBPP, 2021).

Disasters can further exacerbate housing insecurity by making 
emergency shelters less accessible. During COVID-19, many shelter 
programs for survivors of intimate partner violence, trafficking 
victims, and people experiencing homelessness reduced their 
capacity, turned away new residents, or shut down and moved 
residents to hotels out of concern for possible virus transmission 
within the facility (Bosman, 2020; Evans et al., 2020). Some 
survivors of sexual and gender-based violence avoided shelters 
for fear of exposing themselves or their children to COVID-19 in 
a communal living environment (Mukherji, 2020). Shelter facilities 
can also be damaged by natural disasters (Gearhart et al., 2018), 
such as flooding and fire, creating barriers for new residents and 
compounding safety concerns for current residents. The decreased 
availability of emergency shelter in disasters can increase 
barriers to leaving an abusive home environment and contribute to 
prolonged and worsening abuse.

Disparities in Health & Health Care

Systemic inequities in health, health insurance, and health care 
further cause disproportionate illness and death, heighten trauma, 
increase vulnerabilities to sexual violence victimization, and 
exacerbate existing barriers to services among marginalized 
communities, both during disasters and otherwise. 

The combined effects of historical trauma,7 environmental racism, 
chronic stress, lack of access to health care, and racial bias in 
medicine all contribute to higher rates of chronic health conditions 
and negative health outcomes among Black, Indigenous, and other 
people of color (Berkovitz, 2020; Carron, 2020; M. Singh, 2020). 
In the case of COVID-19, higher rates of diabetes, asthma, 
cardiovascular disease, compromised immune system, and other 
underlying conditions have significantly increased the risks of 
serious illness and death from the virus among BIPOC communities 
(Fenway Health, 2020; Infectious Diseases Society of America [IDSA] 
& HIV Medicine Association [HIVMA], 2020). BIPOC workers are also 
disproportionately represented among “essential” industries during 
the pandemic — including jobs that require close physical interaction 
with others — which increases the risk of exposure to COVID-19. 

As a result of these inequities, Black and Latinx people are 
approximately three times more likely to be hospitalized and twice 
as likely to die from the virus, and American Indian and Alaska 
Native people are over three times more likely to be hospitalized 
and nearly 2.5 times more likely to die from the virus, compared 
to white people (CDC, 2021). Higher rates of COVID-19 infection 
and mortality have also been found among people with intellectual 
or developmental disabilities (Gleason et al., 2021, Landes et al., 
2021) and LGBTQ people (Fields, 2021; Heslin & Hall, 2021; Schmidt, 
2021), who also experience disproportionate risks of exposure, 
higher rates of underlying health conditions, and medical bias 
connected to structural oppression. Elevated risk of infection, 
illness, and mortality in an epidemic or pandemic can dramatically 
raise the stakes around leaving a potentially abusive home or work 
environment or seeking care related to sexual violence.

Racial disparities in health care insurance may further prevent
 many BIPOC survivors from seeking treatment for either disaster- 
or sexual violence-related health needs, with significant 
implications for health, safety, and economic security. As of 2019, 
the uninsured rate was more than 2.5 times higher among Latinx 
people and approximately 1.5 times higher among Black people, Native 
Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders, when compared to white 
people. American Indians and Alaska Natives were nearly three times 
more likely to be uninsured than white people (Artiga et al., 2021). 
Among immigrants in the U.S., an estimated 20% are uninsured, more 
than twice the rate in the overall population, and this percentage 
is likely higher among people who are undocumented (UN Women, n.d.a).

7Historical trauma is “cumulative emotional and psychological 
wounding over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from 
massive group trauma” (Brave Heart, n.d.).

Existing inequities in health care coverage are likely exacerbated 
in disaster by widespread unemployment and the resulting loss of 
employer-sponsored insurance, if it was provided (Bleiweis & Ahmed, 
2020). When uninsured people become ill or injured in a disaster, 
the out-of-pocket health care costs can further contribute to 
economic and housing insecurity, and subsequent risk of sexual 
violence. To make matters worse, many people who are uninsured rely 
on emergency room visits as their primary form of care, and these 
are important avenues for identifying and intervening in sexual 
violence, intimate partner violence, child and elder abuse, and 
human trafficking. When hospitals are overwhelmed during a disaster, 
these opportunities are restricted or eliminated, blocking access 
to clinical care and forensic exams (Evans et al., 2020; Johnson et 
al., 2020; Peterman et al., 2020; Todres & Diaz, 2020). Even in 
the absence of disasters, there is a shortage of health care 
providers in many BIPOC communities. In tribal communities, in 
particular, the federal government’s chronic underfunding of the 
Indian Health Service has resulted in a shortage of health care 
facilities, and many people in Indian Country live hours from the 
nearest health clinic or hospital (Belcourt, 2018; Burki, 2021). 
All of these factors reduce access to care and increase 
vulnerability to sexual violence.

Many people in BIPOC, LGBTQ, and disabilities communities have 
encountered and been harmed by bias among health care providers. 
This bias can discourage people from seeking care for health needs 
related to disasters and/or sexual violence, and can lead to 
misdiagnosis or lack of treatment when they do (Berkovitz, 2020). 
For example, due to racial bias, it is common for health care 
providers to dismiss symptoms and minimize pain among Black patients 
(North, 2020). During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, 
this was demonstrated in the life and death of Dr. Susan Moore, a 
Black physician who documented the racist treatment she received 
as a patient in an Indiana hospital just days before she died from 
coronavirus infection (Eligon, 2020). The pattern of health care 
providers dismissing Black women’s medical concerns and symptoms 
is also a major driver of the national crisis in Black maternal 
mortality, and Black women are three to four times more likely than 
white women to die from childbirth-related causes (Bobrow, 2020). 
During the COVID-19 pandemic, health care policies that restricted 
access to in-person visits and prohibited patients from bringing in 
support people who could advocate on their behalf exacerbated 
disparities for pregnant Black women, with dire and sometimes 
deadly consequences (Bobrow, 2020; North, 2020). These experiences 
are alarmingly common and profoundly dangerous. By discouraging 
care-seeking and contributing to substandard care, overt and 
implicit bias in health care can prevent identification, 
intervention, and treatment of sexual violence-related health needs.

Discriminatory Distribution of Disaster Relief

Institutionalized oppression has led to inequitable distribution of 
financial aid in the wake of disasters, further compounding economic
 and racial injustice and risks for sexual violence victimization. 
Research shows that as damages from natural hazards and the amount 
of federal disaster relief increase within a community, white 
residents gain wealth while Black and Latinx residents lose wealth 
due to structural racism (Howell & Elliot, 2018). Racial disparities 
have been found at every step of the federal disaster relief process.
One study found that after a disaster, people living in neighborhoods 
with higher percentages of Black residents were less likely to 
receive a home inspection, more likely to have their funding 
requests denied with no reason given, and awarded less money on 
average if their applications were approved (Flavelle, 2021). 
Disaster relief funding processes unfairly advantage homeowners and 
those who have the time, resources, and technological and linguistic 
access to navigate complicated federal, state, and municipal 
bureaucracies, while failing to serve communities with the greatest 
need. Immigrants who are undocumented, already systematically 
excluded from mainstream financial systems and safety nets, are not 
eligible to apply for most forms of disaster relief funding or 
services (Martin, 2015). 

Federal responses to several recent disasters have brought greater 
national attention to racial discrimination in disaster relief. 
Since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, recovery in 
predominantly white neighborhoods has far outpaced recovery in 
predominantly Black neighborhoods, due to systemic racial 
disparities in federal aid. As a result, nearly 100,000 fewer Black 
people lived in New Orleans a decade after the storm than before it 
(Williams, 2020). After hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria hit the 
Gulf Coast and Caribbean islands in 2017, then-president Donald 
Trump repeatedly threatened to withdraw disaster relief from Puerto 
Rico, while promoting federal aid to Texas and Florida. An 
investigation later found that the Trump administration created 
unprecedented bureaucratic hurdles that prevented Puerto Rico from 
accessing nearly $20 billion in funds that Congress allocated for 
disaster relief and reconstruction. The administration did not 
impose comparable restrictions on Texas, Florida, or other parts of 
the United States recovering from the same and similar disasters 
(Acevedo, 2021; Jan & Rein, 2021). In 2019, residents of the Pine 
Ridge Reservation struggled to get federal aid after a “bomb 
cyclone,” an intense blizzard followed by severe flooding, 
displaced approximately 1,500 members of the Oglala Lakota nation 
and stranded many without food or running water. Meanwhile, the 
White House quickly approved a national disaster declaration for 
Nebraska and Iowa, both affected by the same storm (Sainato, 2019). 
In a 2020 report, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) 
National Advisory Council acknowledges the long and ongoing history 
of government disaster aid benefiting wealthy white homeowners while 
further entrenching poverty among low-income and BIPOC families and 
communities. The report asserts: 

“Through the entire disaster cycle, communities that have been 
underserved stay underserved and thereby suffer needlessly and 
unjustly” (FEMA, 2020, p. 12).

Social Isolation

Whenever a disaster forces people to relocate or shelter in place, 
social isolation can increase (Inoue et al., 2014; Teasdale et al., 
2013). People who evacuate often end up far away from home and 
community networks. Schools, youth and senior centers, cultural 
centers, places of worship, businesses, and other spaces of social 
connection may be forced to shut their doors for prolonged periods 
of time, sometimes permanently. People who commit sexual violence 
may exploit victims’ disconnection from their existing social 
supports to further isolate, control, and abuse in the context of 
disasters. They may also do so with less accountability, as the 
lack of outside social contact reduces the likelihood that concerned 
bystanders will recognize abusive behavior or take steps to 
intervene.

Paradoxically, the measures needed to prevent the spread of an 
epidemic or pandemic like COVID-19 — such as physical isolation, 
reduced access to work and/or school, limitations on travel and 
services — are the very conditions that abusive individuals impose 
and exploit to inflict harm and avoid accountability for their 
actions (Bradbury-Jones & Isham, 2020; Mukherji, 2020). This has 
been referred to as “the pandemic paradox” (Bradbury-Jones & Isham, 
2020). As survivors spend more time at home with abusers and have 
less contact with potential sources of support, the danger grows 
while paths to safety shrink. Abusive individuals — which may 
include partners, caregivers, family members, traffickers, or 
others in the household — often use the circumstances of the 
disaster to further police a victim’s body, restrict their behavior, 
surveil their communications, isolate them from friends and family, 
and threaten their health and safety (Minnesota Coalition Against 
Sexual Assault [MNCASA], n.d.; Peterman et al., 2020).

Barriers to Support & Services

Even in the absence of acute disaster, there are often significant 
barriers that prevent survivors of sexual violence from accessing 
supportive, trauma-informed, culturally relevant services and other 
resources. These services, where they exist, are typically 
underfunded and understaffed (UN Women, n.d.b). During disasters, 
basic resources that may promote safety and support healing from 
sexual violence are even more difficult to reach. This is especially 
the case for survivors who experience discrimination and 
marginalization based on one or more of their identities, who are 
even less likely to receive the support they need. All of these 
factors can make it more difficult for survivors to escape sexually 
abusive situations and can have long-lasting effects on survivors’ 
safety, health, and well-being.

Manipulation & Threats of Abusers

Abusive individuals may persuade victims that systems are inoperable 
and completely unavailable or prevent victims from reaching out for 
help through constant surveillance and lack of privacy while 
sheltering together in a disaster (Mukherji, 2020). During the 
COVID-19 pandemic, survivors described their abusive partners using 
the threat of infection as a tactic of control and isolation, such 
as threatening to withhold medical care or personal protective 
equipment, cancel insurance, or lock them out of the home so they 
would get sick (Godin, 2020; Rowan, 2020). In institutional settings 
such as nursing homes and jails, where risks of COVID-19 infection 
and serious illness are particularly high, survivors of sexual 
abuse may fear that retaliation for reporting could include 
increased exposure to the virus and denial of life-saving treatment.

Health and Safety Concerns

During an epidemic, survivors may avoid seeking services for fear 
of infection, particularly among those most vulnerable to severe 
illness and death (Fraser, 2020; Kaszovitz, n.d.; Peterman et al., 
2020). In other types of disasters, survivors may face risks of 
exposure to air pollutants, radiation, flood waters, unsafe roads, 
or other health and safety hazards by traveling to seek care. These 
conditions can prevent people from accessing health care, legal 
services, counseling, or shelter related to experiences of sexual 
and gender-based violence (Mukherji, 2020). 

Digital Divide

Virtual counseling, support groups, workshops, and other services 
can offer invaluable lifelines to survivors during a disaster. 
However, the digital divide can prevent many survivors from accessing 
these services. When services are only available online following a 
disaster, they are unavailable to people who do not have access to 
devices or internet, or are unfamiliar with using the necessary 
technologies and platforms. Without the ability to connect online, 
many people are cut off from health care, education, disaster relief, 
and other critical resources. This disproportionately affects people 
in BIPOC and low-income communities, people in later life, and 
people with disabilities, all of whom experience heightened risks 
from disasters and correspondingly heightened vulnerability to 
sexual violence victimization (Human Rights Watch, 2020; Makaroun 
et al., 2020; Vera Institute of Justice, 2020). Online platforms 
with a high degree of data security, critical for protecting 
confidentiality, are often not fully accessible and pose additional 
hurdles that can discourage participation in services (NRC & FORGE, 
2020; Vera Institute of Justice, 2020). People who are being 
sexually abused by someone in their household face additional 
barriers to accessing services online, as the abusive person may 
restrict and/or monitor a survivor’s technology use. This can make 
it difficult or impossible to connect with service providers 
privately or safely from home, particularly for survivors who 
experience sexual violence in the context of intimate partner 
violence, child abuse, elder abuse, human trafficking, or abuse in 
institutional settings (Bradbury-Jones & Isham, 2020; UN Women, n.d.b).

Lack of Cultural Responsiveness

The practices and procedures of mainstream organizations often 
inhibit communities of color from participating. This lack of 
cultural responsiveness extends into services created or adapted in 
the wake of disasters (NRC & Common Justice, 2020). Without 
awareness of and attention to the cultural frameworks, customs, 
experiences, and assets of individuals and communities affected by 
sexual violence and disasters, service providers may fail to provide 
meaningful support and frequently perpetuate further harm. For 
example, among Indigenous communities, common policies and 
procedures that dictate the separation of families in emergency 
shelter, counseling, and other programs hearken back to historical 
trauma from white-run boarding schools and the forced separation of 
Indigenous children from their families and cultures (Strong Oak 
Lefebvre, personal communication, August 24, 2020).

Lack of Accessibility

Despite some progress towards increasing accessibility, many victim 
services agencies are not yet fully accessible to people with 
disabilities. Existing barriers persist and worsen as organizations 
try to quickly adapt their programming to respond to the 
circumstances of disaster. For example, concerns about COVID-19 
infection led some victim services organizations to prohibit 
survivors from bringing support people with them to shelter, 
counseling, or other in-person programming, preventing access 
for people with disabilities who require the support of personal 
care attendants (Vera Institute of Justice, 2020). Some written 
resources designed to educate community members about sexual 
violence and available services in the aftermath of disaster have 
not been made accessible in terms of formats and font size, type, 
or color contrast (Mwendwa, 2020).

Lack of Language Access

Disasters can expose and widen gaps in service providers’ abilities 
to provide meaningful access for people who speak languages other 
than English. This lack of language access can prevent survivors of 
sexual violence from obtaining vital support for their safety and 
healing. It can also block people from accessing disaster relief, 
public assistance, health care, and other benefits and services that 
might help mitigate the effects of disaster and decrease 
vulnerability to sexual violence victimization (Hamel et al., 2017). 
During COVID-19, interpreters have reported losing jobs due to 
closures of courts and other settings, and are often not called in 
to interpret when services are provided through online platforms. 
The digital divide also prevents many people from being able to 
utilize interpretation services online even when they are offered. 
In addition, departments of health and other agencies in many 
communities failed to provide information about the virus and 
related safety measures in languages other than English (NRC & Casa 
de Esperanza, 2020).

Transportation Barriers

Following a disaster, roads and rail lines may be closed due to 
flooding, downed power lines, collapse of transportation 
infrastructure, or other hazardous conditions. Public transportation 
is often compromised during disasters, creating additional barriers 
for those who do not drive or own a car. This can disproportionately 
impact people with low income, people with disabilities, and 
immigrants (Hayes, 2020; Mukherji, 2020). Personal vehicles may 
also be damaged or lost in the disaster, and they may be harder for 
low-income residents to repair or replace (Hamel et al.. 2017). 
These transportation barriers can prevent people from fleeing an 
abusive situation, seeking services related to sexual violence, and 
evacuating when disaster strikes. In addition, when shelter-in-place 
or curfew orders are in effect, people may face fines, arrest, or 
other sanctions for traveling to seek services or escape an abusive 
situation at home (UN Women, n.d.b). People may also fear legal 
repercussions from reporting sexual violence if they were assaulted 
outside their home while stay-at-home orders were in place 
(Koller, 2020).

Resources Diverted/Deprioritized

Counseling and mental health support, sexual and reproductive 
health care, substance abuse treatment, and other programs that 
are vital for sexual violence survivors’ coping and healing are 
often viewed as “luxury” or “non-essential” services in the wake 
of a disaster. Critical staffing, funding, and other resources 
that make these services possible may be diverted to other disaster 
response (Fraser, 2020; Johnson et al., 2020). Culturally specific 
organizations, already chronically underfunded by foundations and 
government sources, are disproportionately impacted by the 
diversion of these critical resources during and after disasters 
(Ujima, n.d.).

Services Delayed or Unavailable

Due to increased need and decreased resources arising from 
disasters, hospitals, law enforcement agencies, courts, child and 
adult protective services, and other institutions may only accept 
“urgent” cases. This can lead to delays in critical services for 
survivors and an “atmosphere of impunity” surrounding sexual and 
gender-based violence (Fraser, 2020). Hospitals and clinics may 
delay or cancel non-emergency appointments and services. Law 
enforcement and other first responders may prioritize needs related 
to enforcing evacuation or quarantine orders and responding to 
other crimes. Courts may postpone hearings, including civil 
protection order, family law, and immigration cases, and expert 
witnesses may be unavailable to testify in criminal hearings 
(Evans et al., 2020; Johnson et al., 2020; Mukherji, 2020; NRC & 
Casa de Esperanza, 2020). Child and adult protection services 
workers may postpone or be unable to conduct home visits (Substance 
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration [SAMHSA], n.d.a). 
Emergency shelters may close or operate at limited capacity. Victim 
services agencies may be severely understaffed, creating or 
lengthening waiting lists for counseling and other programs 
(UN Women, n.d.b).

Lack of Coordinated Community Response

While some essential services may be maintained during a disaster, 
coordination between service providers and sectors can be interrupted 
or curtailed due to downed communication lines, limited hours and 
furloughs, shelter-in-place orders and teleworking, barriers to 
transportation, and other limitations imposed by the disaster 
(Todres & Diaz, 2020; UN Women, n.d.b). This can prevent access to 
the comprehensive, coordinated care across multiple health, housing, 
financial, education, legal, social service, and other systems that 
survivors often need.

Service Providers Overwhelmed and Burned Out

Service providers in all sectors must also contend with the impacts 
of disasters on themselves, their families, and their communities. 
Both the direct and indirect effects of disasters cause staffing and 
volunteer shortages for many organizations, while at the same time, 
the number and complexity of requests from service users are likely 
to increase (National Alliance to End Sexual Violence [NAESV], 2020). 
As Mary Ellen Stone, executive director of the King County Sexual Assault 
Resource Center in Seattle, noted during the COVID-19 pandemic: 
We are getting everything from “How do I navigate the legal system 
now with the courts basically shut down” to “How do I do social 
distancing and still at the same time get the help and support that 
I need?” It’s a much more complicated environment, and people are 
under a whole other degree of stress (Kindelan, 2020, para. 17).
In addition, many service providers may be compelled to work from 
home during and after a disaster, blurring the lines between work 
life and home life, work time and personal time, office space and 
private space. This can interfere with personal boundaries and 
self-care practices that many crisis workers use to maintain their 
own health and wellness while providing support to others. It can 
also heighten experiences of vicarious trauma.8 Further, many 
counselors, advocates, and others who work with victims of trauma 
are survivors themselves, and some may also be vulnerable to 
violence both at home and at work (UN Women, n.d.b).

Limited Research and Resources Regarding Sexual Violence in Disasters

Although the many risks and barriers surrounding sexual violence 
during disasters are increasingly recognized and documented, little 
guidance, funding, or other resources exist to support programs in 
preparing for and overcoming these challenges. The limited body of 
research and lack of resources regarding best practices for 
preventing and responding to sexual violence in disasters create 
challenges for both the survivor advocacy and disaster response 
communities. 

Opportunities for Prevention

Sexual violence is preventable, both in and out of disasters. 
The risk factors, inequities, and barriers that contribute to 
sexual violence are not inevitable or unchangeable. Each of them 
presents an opportunity to advance equity, strengthen systems, and 
implement policies that will build and sustain safe and healthy 
communities free from sexual abuse, harassment, and assault. 
Reducing the risk factors for sexual violence perpetration and 
victimization will also build our collective capacity to survive 
and thrive in the face of past, present, and future disasters.

8Vicarious trauma refers to the cumulative effects on a person’s 
physical, psychological, and spiritual health from witnessing the 
suffering of others over time.

For more information about addressing risk factors and preventing 

sexual violence, visit:
STOP SV: A Technical Package to Prevent Sexual Violence from the 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: nsvrc.co/STOP_SV 

Continuing the Dialogue: Learning from the Past and Looking to 
the Future of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence Prevention 
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: 
nsvrc.co/ContinuingTheDialogue

Transforming Communities to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse and 
Exploitation: A Primary Prevention Approach from Prevention Institute: 
nsvrc.co/TransformingCommunities 

Sexual Violence and the Spectrum of Prevention from the National 
Sexual Violence Resource Center: nsvrc.co/SpectrumOfPrevention 

Engaging Communities in Sexual Violence Prevention from the Texas 
Association Against Sexual Assault: nsvrc.co/EngagingCommunities 

Engaging Bystanders to Prevent Sexual Violence Information Packet 
from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center: 
nsvrc.co/EngagingBystanders 

Examples of Sexual Violence in Disasters

Sexual violence includes any type of unwanted sexual contact, 
harassment, exposure, or abuse. People who commit sexual violence 
may use force, threats, manipulation, or coercion to commit these 
acts. They often know and are trusted by the people they abuse, and 
may victimize people of any age or gender (NSVRC, 2016). In order to 
effectively prevent and respond to sexual violence in disasters, it 
is critically important to recognize the potential impact across the 
full spectrum of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault.

Measuring the prevalence of sexual violence is always difficult. 
Sexual violence is the most under-reported crime, with only around 25% 
of all rapes and sexual assaults reported to law enforcement (Morgan & 
Oudekerk, 2019). Reports to employers, colleges and universities, and 
other institutions with internal investigation and accountability 
procedures are similarly low. Disasters create additional barriers 
to reporting sexual violence and intensify the existing ones. Despite 
these challenges, existing data, survivor accounts, and the evidence 
on risk factors for perpetration and victimization show that sexual 
violence, in all its many forms, commonly increases during and long 
into recovery from disasters.

Intimate Partner Sexual Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) itself is a public health crisis in 
the United States. An estimated one in five women and one in seven men 
have experienced physical violence, and one in five women and one in 
twelve men have experienced contact sexual violence, by an intimate 
partner in their lifetime (CDC, 2020). 

Advocates and researchers have documented increases in IPV in numerous 
disasters in the United States and around the world, including floods, 
hurricanes, earthquakes, oil spills, and economic recession (Enarson, 
2006; Thurston et al., 2021). For example, after the 1993 Missouri 
River Flood, domestic violence agencies reported a 400% increase in 
demand for emergency shelter (Enarson, 2012, as cited in Parkinson & 
Zara, 2013, p. 28). In Southern Mississippi, rates of physical abuse 
by intimate partners doubled among women after Hurricane Katrina in 
2005 (Schumacher et al., 2010). Rates of physical and emotional abuse 
by intimate partners similarly doubled among women directly impacted 
by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 (Lauve-Moon & Ferreira, 
2017). During the Great Recession of 2007-2009, rapid increases in 
unemployment rates were linked to increased abusive behavior towards 
intimate partners (Schneider et al., 2016). Where intimate partner 
violence increases, so too does intimate partner sexual violence: 
Research suggests that between 45 and 75% of women who are physically 
abused by a partner will also be sexually assaulted by that partner, 
usually multiple times (Center for Court Innovation & Safe Horizon, 
n.d.; National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 2018; Spiller et 
al., 2012).

In the first few weeks and months of the COVID-19 pandemic, as 
stay-at-home orders went into place to prevent the spread of infection, 
law enforcement and victim services agencies around the world 
documented spikes in reports of IPV (Bettinger-Lopez & Bro, 2020; 
Bradbury-Jones & Isham, 2020; IFRC, n.d.b; National Task Force to End 
Sexual & Domestic Violence [NTF], n.d.; Roesch et al., 2020). Across 
the United States, law enforcement agencies reported increases ranging 
from 10-100% in IPV-related calls and arrests following the 
implementation of stay-at-home orders (Arizona Department of Health 
Services [ADHS], 2020; Boserup et al., 2020). Many survivors who 
contacted the National Domestic Violence Hotline described their 
abusive partners “leveraging” the COVID-19 crisis to further control, 
isolate, and threaten them (Lee, 2020). In some areas, initial 
increases in calls to IPV hotlines and shelters were followed by sharp 
decreases, likely as it became more difficult for survivors who were 
sheltering in place with abusive partners to find a safe time and 
place to reach out for help (Bleiweis & Ahmed, 2020; Mukherji, 2020).
These rising rates of IPV in disasters, combined with declining access 
to contraception and abortion services, may contribute to reproductive 
coercion,9 a form of sexual violence that often occurs in the context 
of IPV (Marie Stopes Australia, 2020; Porter, 2020; Randell et al., 
2020). Research suggests that in general, around one in three women 
who have experienced IPV have also experienced some form of 
reproductive coercion (Hathaway et al., 2005; Miller et al., 2010), 
and that rates are disproportionately higher among Black and 
multiracial women and young women (Holliday et al., 2017; Rowlands & 
Walker, 2019).

Child Sexual Abuse

An estimated one in four girls and one in six boys experience sexual 
abuse in childhood (Finkelhor et al., 1990), and research suggests 
that this number is likely to be higher during disasters. The 
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 
reports that the risks of experiencing violence, abuse, or 
exploitation in a disaster are highest for children, compared to other 
age groups (IFRC, 2020a). Almost by definition, disasters create 
chaotic and unstable environments, a known risk factor child sexual 
abuse (CDC et al., 2014). 

9Reproductive coercion is behavior intended to control another 
person’s reproductive health and often includes sabotaging birth 
control and/or pressuring or forcing an intimate partner to initiate, 
continue, or terminate a pregnancy against their wishes.

Around 90% of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by someone the child 
or their family knows (CDC, n.d.c), often a family or other household 
member. When families are required to shelter in place during a 
disaster, it means that many children will be trapped in their homes 
with a person who is abusing them. At the onset of the COVID-19 
pandemic in the United States, national hotlines received a surge in 
calls related to physical and sexual abuse of children, and doctors 
reported an alarming increase in abuse-related injuries among child 
and adolescent patients (Donaghue, 2020; Kovler et al., 2021; Schmidt 
& Natanson, 2020; Todres & Diaz, 2020). In the first two months of 
stay-at-home orders, more than half of all calls to the RAINN (Rape, 
Abuse, and Incest National Network) hotline were made by minors, for 
the first time in the organization’s 25-year history (Kindelan, 2020; 
RAINN, 2020). Among those children and adolescents who called the 
hotline with coronavirus-related concerns, 79% said they were living 
with the person sexually abusing them, and 67% said that person was a 
family member (Kamenetz, 2020; RAINN, 2020). Many contacted RAINN 
through the online chat option, sharing that they could do so with 
“a little bit of privacy” because the adults at home believed they 
were using their device to do schoolwork (Kindelan, 2020).

Disasters can also lead to a lack of safe supervision for children, 
as parents and caregivers struggle to address their families’ 
economic, housing, food, health, and other basic needs while schools 
and child care facilities are forced to close. When parents and 
caregivers must continue to work or look for work, or when they become 
sick themselves during an epidemic, they may turn to friends, family 
members, neighbors, or other acquaintances for help with child care 
(Evans et al., 2020; Kovler et al., 2021). In one case during COVID-19, 
an essential health care worker with no other child care options left 
her two small children in the care of her boyfriend. Her sibling later 
contacted the ChildHelp National Child Abuse Hotline with concerns 
that both children showed physical signs of abuse afterward (Bosman, 
2020). Children may also be left unattended after a disaster, because 
of a lack of options or because the disaster itself separated children 
from their caregivers. People who sexually abuse or exploit children 
may leverage these circumstances to gain access to child victims 
(Fraser, 2020; Kaszovitz, n.d.).

10Online sexual exploitation of children includes using technology 
to groom, coerce, or blackmail children for sexual purposes; viewing,
 creating, and/or distributing images or videos of child sexual abuse; 
and live-streaming the sexual abuse of children.

11Online enticement refers to someone communicating with a child 
online with the intent to commit a sexual offense, such as obtaining 
sexually explicit images, engaging in sexual conversation, and/or 
meeting in person for sexual purposes.

Online sexual exploitation of children10 also increased during 
COVID-19, as both children and adults spent more time online for 
virtual school, work, recreation, and socializing during stay-at-home 
orders (INTERPOL, 2020; O’Donnell, 2021a; Sullivan, 2020). In 2020, 
the National Resource Center for Missing and Exploited Children 
received 37,872 calls to its CyberTipline regarding cases of online 
enticement,11 a 97.5% increase compared to the previous year (Morse, 
2021; O’Donnell, 2021a). People who sexually abuse and exploit 
children online had more time to create, distribute, and access 
sexually abusive content (INTERPOL, 2020), and some were found “openly 
discussing the pandemic as an opportunity to entice unsupervised 
children into producing sexually explicit material” (O’Donnell, 2021b).

In addition, they had more opportunity to connect with children through 
multi-player video games and social media sites to groom and coerce 
them into taking and sending sexually explicit photos and videos of 
themselves. The U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation reported a 77% 
increase in “self-generated” sexually exploitative content in 2020 
(Internet Watch Foundation, 2021). Globally, increases in 
live-streaming of child sexual exploitation for payment were also 
reported, as victims were trapped at home with abusers, travel was 
restricted, and economic hardship increased (INTERPOL, 2020; Servallos, 
2021; Sullivan, 2020). In the Philippines, which has been described as 
the “global epicenter” of live-streamed child sexual abuse, children 
are most often trafficked by a parent or other family member, and 
buyers are most often based in the U.S. The number of child sexual 
abuse images and videos reported from the Philippines tripled during 
the COVID-19 pandemic (Servallos, 2021).

At the same time disasters increase children’s risk of exposure to 
sexual abuse, they decrease children’s access to safe and trusted 
adults to tell, or who could recognize signs of abuse and intervene. 
When children are displaced to emergency shelters or other temporary 
housing situations, or as they are forced to shelter in place, they 
lose connection with teachers, child care providers, and other 
mandated reporters who might otherwise identify and report suspected 
abuse (Baron et al., 2020; Evans et al., 2020). Advocates and child 
protection agencies expect to see a significant uptick in disclosures 
in the aftermath of disaster, as children’s environments stabilize and 
they return to school, child care, youth groups, and other community 
settings where they may show indicators of abuse or feel safe to 
disclose (NAESV, 2020; Schmidt & Natanson, 2020).

Sexual Abuse by Caregivers

The prevalence of sexual abuse by caregivers is difficult to measure, 
and doubly so in the context of a disaster. Annually, an estimated 1 
in 10 older adults experience sexual, physical, psychological, and/or 
financial abuse in the United States, with only 1 in 24 cases reported 
(Makaroun et al., 2020). Barriers to reporting increase in disasters, 
as many victims are confined in their homes under the constant 
surveillance of abusive caregivers, and there are limited opportunities 
for other providers and loved ones to identify signs of abuse. In 
addition, caregivers and other providers may be less inclined to 
report suspected abuse while they are overwhelmed with care recipients’ 
and their own needs related to surviving and recovering from disaster 
(Birnstengel, 2020; Judson & Nieto, 2020). However, anecdotal reports 
across the U.S. suggest a significant increase in elder abuse and 
abuse of people with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 
data from countries around the world suggest the same (Birnstengel, 
2020; Han & Mosqueda, 2020). 

Disasters often increase social isolation, a significant risk factor 
for sexual victimization among people in later life and people with 
disabilities. In the case of COVID-19, many older adults and people 
with disabilities have health conditions that increase the risks of 
contracting the virus, experiencing severe illness, and dying due to 
COVID. Measures put in place to prevent transmission of the virus 
among older adults and people with disabilities also increase social 
isolation. Whether living independently in the community or in long-
term care facilities, many older adults and people with disabilities 
have been secluded with an abusive care provider during stay-at-home 
orders. Limited contact with people outside their homes and bans on 
visits to long-term care facilities reduce opportunities for health 
care workers, family, friends, and others to identify and intervene 
in abuse of older adults and people with disabilities who rely on 
caregivers (Han & Mosqueda, 2020; King, n.d.; Makaroun et al., 2020; 
Vera Institute of Justice, 2020).

Disasters can also lead to shortages and changes in staffing that 
can increase the potential for sexual abuse in both institutional 
and community settings. Personal care attendants, transportation 
providers, family caregivers, and others who provide daily support 
to older adults and/or people with disabilities may become unavailable 
in a disaster due to injury or illness, displacement and relocation, 
reassignment to respond to the crisis, or other factors. This can 
further isolate individuals who rely on caregivers, increasing 
potential for abuse and decreasing opportunities for intervention 
(King, n.d.). To address this need, there may be a rush to fill 
those positions with new providers. During COVID-19, however, 
advocates expressed concerns that in an effort to replace essential 
workers as quickly as possible, employers loosened some hiring 
requirements, such as mandatory waiting periods for background checks 
and comprehensive training requirements in place to help prevent abuse 
(Vera Institute of Justice, 2020). In addition, whenever people in 
later life and/or people with disabilities have to change personal 
care attendants, there is new potential for abuse (Vera Institute of 
Justice, 2020). In institutional settings such as nursing homes and 
other long-term care facilities, chronic staffing problems, lack of 
administrative oversight, staff burnout, and stressful working 
conditions can all increase the likelihood of elder abuse, including 
sexual abuse (CDC, n.d.b). Disasters can elevate all of these risk 
factors, as staff are overwhelmed with the effects of disasters on 
residents and themselves.

Sex Trafficking, Sexual Extortion, & Survival Sex12 

The economic and housing insecurity created and exacerbated by 
disasters increases risks of sexual exploitation, including sex 
trafficking, sexual extortion, and survival sex (IFRC, n.d.b; Polaris, 
2020f). Traffickers leverage existing vulnerabilities to ensnare and 
control victims and often target people who are living in unsafe 
situations, experiencing poverty, struggling with unmet mental health 
or substance abuse needs, isolated from support systems, or forced to 
flee their homes (British Columbia, n.d.; CDC, n.d.e; Franchino-Olsen, 
2019). All of these conditions are common outcomes of disasters. As a 
disaster leaves people without income and shelter, many may be forced 
to engage in transactional13 or survival sex in exchange for access to 
food, shelter, or another necessity (MNCASA, n.d.; Peterman et al., 
2020). A young girl participating in a Red Cross project in Haiti 
explained: 

Girls might be having sex to get help in return or even protection. 
When there’s no money or good jobs after a disaster, women and girls 
sometimes need to turn to transactional sex. They don’t always have a 
choice (IFRC, 2020a, p. 19).

While anyone may experience trafficking, people who are socially and 
economically marginalized by racism, nativism, classism, heterosexism, 
sexism, ageism, and/or ableism are at greatest risk (British Columbia, 
n.d.; CDC, n.d.e; Polaris, 2020b, 2020g; Todres & Diaz, 2020). 
Research indicates that Black girls are disproportionately represented 
among victims of child sex trafficking, and Latinx people are 
disproportionately represented among human trafficking in general, and 
labor trafficking in particular (Polaris, 2020g). LGBTQ youth, youth 
involved in foster care or juvenile justice systems, and youth with 
disabilities also experience elevated risks of sex trafficking 
(Franchino-Olsen, 2019; Institute of Medicine & National Research 
Council, 2013). People who have experienced previous violence and 
trauma, particularly sexual abuse, are also more likely to experience 
trafficking (Franchino-Olsen, 2019; Institute of Medicine & National 
Research Council, 2013; National Human Trafficking Hotline, n.d.). 
These individuals and communities also experience disproportionate 
impact from the material, social, and economic costs of disasters, 
further heightening existing vulnerabilities and limiting options for 
escape from exploitative situations (IFRC, n.d.a; Todres & Diaz, 2020).

Trafficking reports increased during COVID-19. In the month after 
stay-at-home orders went into effect in the U.S., crisis calls to the 
National Trafficking Hotline increased by more than 40%, and requests 
for immediate emergency shelter nearly doubled (Polaris, 2020f). Data 
from the national hotline also suggest that traffickers quickly 
adapted to the changing circumstances of the pandemic. During shelter-
in-place orders, reports of online trafficking situations increased by 
more than 45%, while reports of non-online sex trafficking (such as 
street-based prostitution) fell by approximately 30%. Notably, 
previous analysis has found that online trafficking situations are 
significantly more likely to involve children and adolescents, 
compared to other forms of sex trafficking (Polaris, 2021).

12Sex trafficking is the crime of using force, fraud, or coercion to 
engage a person in sexual activity in exchange for something of value, 
such as money, housing, or drugs. Sexual extortion occurs when a 
person abuses their power or authority to coerce sexual acts, images, 
or videos from a victim. Survival sex refers to trading sexual 
activity to meet basic survival needs such as food, shelter, and 
clothing without the overt force, fraud, or coercion of a trafficker.
Under federal law, this is a form of sex trafficking if the person is 
a minor. 

13Transactional sex refers to exchanging sexual activity for gifts, 
money, or other services without the overt force, fraud, or coercion 
of a trafficker. Under federal law, this is a form of sex trafficking 
if the person is a minor.

The COVID-19 pandemic also brought growing reports of landlords 
pressuring tenants to trade sexual services to avoid eviction (NAESV, 
2020; Polaris, 2020c). Importantly, under federal law, coercing sexual 
activity or images in exchange for something of value — in this case, 
housing — is sex trafficking (Polaris, 2020d). While state and federal 
lawmakers enacted policies to temporarily halt evictions during the 
pandemic, rent forgiveness was not included, and millions of people 
were unable to pay rent due to lost jobs and income during stay-at-
home orders (Jabola-Carous, 2020). People experiencing economic and 
housing insecurity are more likely to experience sexual extortion by 
landlords than those who are not, and low-income women of color are 
disproportionately targeted (Jabola-Carolus, 2020; Oliveri, 2018; Ruíz 
et al., 2020).

In addition to increasing vulnerability to exploitation, disasters 
worsen conditions for people who are already in trafficking situations 
and make it harder to identify and comprehensively serve victims 
(IFRC, n.d.a; Todres & Diaz, 2020). Reports from survivors and service 
providers during the COVID-19 pandemic indicate that demand for street-
based and in-call sex buying slowed down during the pandemic, due to 
stay-at-home orders and concerns about coronavirus transmission. 
However, the sex trade has not stopped, and some sex buyers are 
exploiting the growing economic crisis and lack of other buyers to 
negotiate for lower prices and riskier sexual activity, such as more 
aggressive sex acts and no condom use (Fraser, 2020; Polaris, 2020c). 
At the same time, people experiencing trafficking face high risks of 
exposure to coronavirus, with limited or no ability to practice or 
enforce protective measures like physical distancing or mask wearing, 
and often living in overly cramped conditions (IFRC, n.d.a; Todres & 
Diaz, 2020).

Workplace Sexual Harassment

In the midst of widespread unemployment, layoffs, and furloughs that 
often follow a major disaster, those who are able to continue working 
often face a drastically changed working environment. Many workplaces 
are understaffed, and many employees may work in remote or secluded 
locations. In an epidemic or pandemic, social distancing guidelines 
may change work assignments and schedules. All of these factors 
contribute to workplaces becoming increasingly isolated and 
decentralized, where sexual harassment is more likely to occur and less 
likely to be observed or interrupted by bystanders, reported by 
survivors, or addressed by management (Ending Violence Association of 
British Columbia [EVA BC], n.d.; Feldblum & Lipnic, 2016; Strauss, 
2020). In addition, the heightened threat of unemployment in the wake 
of a disaster can further discourage victims from reporting workplace 
sexual harassment, give more leverage to exploitative employers, and 
make it harder to leave an abusive work environment in search of 
another job.

Essential workers in jobs that can’t be done from home experience 
continued, and often heightened, workplace sexual harassment during 
and after disasters. For example, tipped food service workers — a 
majority of whom are women and disproportionately women of color — 
already experience elevated risks and rates of sexual harassment at 
work (Feldblum & Lipnic, 2016; One Fair Wage et al., 2020). During 
the COVID-19 pandemic, harassment of tipped workers became even more 
common and uniquely threatening. More than 40% of food service workers 
surveyed in five states and the District of Columbia reported that 
sexual harassment from customers had increased during the pandemic, 
at the same time their earnings fell due to restaurant closures and 
slowed business. Male customers routinely demanded that women food 
service workers remove their masks — thereby risking their health and 
safety for the customer’s sexual pleasure — in order to get better 
tips, at a time when many workers’ livelihoods depend on them (Elliott 
& Bowman, 2020; One Fair Wage et al., 2020). A bartender and bar 
manager in Chicago described one such interaction with a group of 
diners during COVID-19:

When it came time to drop off the check, one gentleman was like, ‘Um, 
excuse me miss, I’m going to need you to take off your mask so we can 
see your face so we know how much to tip you.’... People are just 
being very aggressive in their advances… Never in my life have I seen 
my staff disrespected over and over again (One Fair Wage et al., 2020, 
p. 19).

While data about the prevalence of sexual harassment towards domestic 
workers and farmworkers during the COVID-19 pandemic are not yet 
available, these essential workers also experience rampant harassment 
generally, and conditions are likely to worsen when disaster strikes 
(Saccomano, 2020). Domestic workers — more than 90% of whom are women, 
more than half women of color, and disproportionately immigrant women 
— support people in later life and people with disabilities, provide 
child care, and keep homes clean (Maye, 2020; Wolfe et al., 2020). 
Farmworkers — 83% of whom are Latinx, a large majority of whom are 
immigrants, and more than half of whom are undocumented — put food on 
tables across the country and the world (Farmworker Justice, n.d.). 
Their work is life-sustaining and absolutely essential to help families 
and communities weather a disaster, yet domestic workers and 
farmworkers are among the lowest paid and least protected workers in 
society. Due to the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, domestic and 
agricultural labor were explicitly and intentionally excluded from 
1930s federal labor laws that established union rights, minimum wage, 
overtime pay, and child labor standards. These essential workers are 
still denied many of the legal rights and protections enacted since 
then (Farmworker Justice, n.d.; Maye, 2020). They have little to no 
legal protection from sexual harassment or sexual extortion, 
retaliation for reporting abuse, or being fired without notice or 
cause (Maye, 2020; Saccomano, 2020; Soriano, 2020). Many workers also 
fear the threat of deportation if they report sexual harassment or 
violence (Burnham & Theodore, 2012; Yeung & Rubenstein, 2013). Unlike 
all other industries, current laws allow children as young as 12 to 
work in agriculture, and some children working on farms are even 
younger. In addition, many farmworker parents make the difficult choice 
to bring their children with them into the fields when school and child 
care are not available (Hellerstein, 2020; Ramírez, 2020). Children 
and adolescents who experience sexual harassment or abuse in these 
settings often face additional threats of harm to their families if 
they disclose (Kimber Nicoletti-Martínez, personal communication, 
May 24, 2021). These factors contribute to widespread and persistent 
sexual abuse against domestic workers and farmworkers of all ages, 
and are likely heightened by the economic crisis precipitated by 
disasters, including the COVID-19 pandemic (Maye, 2020; Ramírez, 2020; 
UN Women, n.d.a). As noted by two national advocacy organizations:
The existing circumstances related to the pandemic are ripe for both 
violence and exploitation against farmworkers due to the increased 
levels of stress, anxiety and feelings of helplessness, coupled with 
the overall vulnerability of this population. Domestic violence, 
sexual violence and human trafficking are all real threats against 
farmworkers during this time of instability (Farmworker Justice, n.d., 
para. 41).

These intersectional constraints of race, gender, and citizenship 
worsen the plight of domestic workers’ efforts to have their rights 
acknowledged and, in light of the COVID-19 crisis, leaves them even 
more vulnerable in our economy (Maye, 2020, p. 3).
In addition to increased risk of workplace sexual harassment, domestic
workers and farmworkers experience higher risks and fewer supports in 
the context of COVID-19. The nature of their work puts them in close 
proximity to others, increasing the risk of exposure, severe illness, 
and death from the virus (Farmworker Justice, n.d.; Maye, 2020). Most 
have not had access to the personal protective equipment they need, 
are unable to take time off for illness, and are uninsured and/or 
otherwise unable to seek medical care when needed (Clark, 2021; Lindsay, 
2020; Treviño-Sauceda, 2020; Wolfe et al., 2020). At the same time, 
many or most have been denied access to unemployment benefits or other 
economic relief measures put in place during the pandemic due to 
working in the cash economy, having undocumented immigration status, 
or other factors (Clark, 2021; Ramírez, 2020).

Among people working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, workplace 
sexual harassment has changed but not stopped. Remote work environments 
can lead people to believe that standard workplace policies and 
expectations do not apply and enable people to engage in harassing 
behavior with less accountability (Feldblum & Lipnic, 2016; Livelihood 
Law Firm, 2020). Reports of online harassment spiked as more and more 
people shifted to a virtual workspace (Norris & Torrisi, 2020). In 
addition to harassing and offensive comments, gestures, and chat 
messages during online meetings, women have described receiving 
pressure or demands from supervisors and co-workers to wear more 
make-up and “sexier” clothing on video conference platforms, and being 
told to show their whole bodies on camera rather than just their face 
(Elsesser, 2020; Norris & Torrisi, 2020). One woman described:

The director of the company uses Zoom to take screenshots of myself 
and other women which he shares with colleagues making derogatory 
statements and implying the photos look like we’re doing sexual acts 
(Rights of Women, 2021, para. 11).

As employees increasingly rely on digital and social media to stay 
connected, some may be more apt to cross the line between professional 
and personal relationships, sending unwanted and potentially offensive 
messages, pictures, emojis, or memes to co-workers. Unwelcome calls or 
messages after work hours have become more common, including questions 
about what the recipient is wearing or doing (P. Singh, 2020). These 
sexually harassing behaviors may be more likely to occur in online 
channels that aren’t being monitored by managers, including one-on-one 
and small group texts, chats, and emails (Swirling, 2020). Working 
from home can create a more informal atmosphere that may foster 
offensive and unwanted communication, while also making it more 
difficult for recipients and managers to recognize these behaviors as 
harassment (P. Singh, 2020). The fact that this harassment occurs 
while victims are at home can increase feelings of fear and violation, 
as one woman described:

Having to let colleagues into my bedroom [via video meetings] means 
I feel my privacy has been invaded and nowhere is safe. The men now 
have more ammunition to mock me with (Rights of Women, 2021, para. 10).

Barriers to reporting workplace sexual harassment can increase during 
and after disasters, and when cases are reported, investigation and 
accountability processes may be stalled or derailed. An essential 
hospital worker who reported sexual harassment to her employer in the 
U.K. described her experience:

As the pandemic was declared, all attention was diverted in managing 
clinical pressures and needs… This meant an investigation was not 
started for months. In the meantime, I felt unprotected as there was 
no system in place to remove the harasser from the department whilst 
an investigation was pending (Rights of Women, 2021, para. 16).

Even in the absence of disaster, workplace sexual harassment is 
chronically underreported. Fears of retaliation for reporting may 
increase in the midst of widespread unemployment and layoffs in a 
disaster, especially for low-wage workers and immigrant workers whose 
immigration status is undocumented or dependent on their employer. In 
addition, reporting channels may become unclear or unavailable as 
human resources departments, management teams, and other leaders 
responsible for ensuring workplace safety are understaffed and 
overwhelmed with disaster response. When employees are working 
remotely after a disaster, they and their employers may discover that 
existing workplace policies do not adequately define or address 
harassment in online and remote work settings (EVA BC, n.d.). In some 
cases, employers may leverage the disruptions caused by the disaster 
to downplay reports of harassment and dodge their legal obligations to 
address them. In a U.K.-based survey in the fall of 2020, nearly one 
in three women who had reported recent sexual harassment to their 
employer said the investigation process had been negatively affected 
by the COVID-19 pandemic (Rights of Women, 2021).

Image-Based Sexual Abuse

Image-based sexual abuse14 (sometimes called “revenge porn” or non-
consensual pornography) has reportedly increased during the COVID-19 
pandemic, as people spend more time at home and online, and abusive 
individuals use digital media to abuse victims from afar. The Cyber 
Civil Rights Initiative provides resources and support to victims of 
image-based sexual abuse. In the month after stay-at-home orders went 
into effect, calls to their crisis helpline increased by 54% (Fattal, 
2020). Similarly, visits to the U.K.’s Revenge Porn Helpline website 
nearly doubled at the start of the pandemic, and more cases were 
reported over the next four weeks than in any previous four-week 
period (Price, 2020). Around the same time, a well-known website used 
for image-based sexual abuse posted the message: 

We currently have a 24-hour backlog of memberships due to the sheer 
volume coming in… We would like to thank every one of our contributing
users for all the effort put in to keep us all a steady stream of 
fresh porn to view over the lockdowns that are carrying on all over 
the world (Price, 2020, para. 25).

In some cases, people who perpetrate image-based sexual abuse may 
obtain sexual pictures or videos of strangers through phishing and 
cyberattacks, which reportedly increased in the early months of the 
COVID-19 pandemic, and then use them to blackmail victims and/or share 
nonconsensual pornography (Fattal, 2020). In other cases, current or 
former intimate partners of victims may have obtained images either 
consensually, by force or coercion, or without the victim’s knowledge. 
During lockdown, distributing — or threatening to distribute — the 
images becomes a means of exerting power and control even when the 
victim and offender are not sheltering in the same place (Price, 2020). 
Victim advocates and law enforcement agencies have also expressed 
concern that more people — including more children and adolescents — 
are taking and sending each other sexual pictures and videos during 
stay-at-home orders, increasing the potential for future abuse (Morse, 
2021; Price, 2020).

14Image-based abuse refers to the non-consensual creation and/or 
distribution of sexual images or videos.

Sexualized Hate & Bias-Motivated Violence

Hate and bias-motivated violence rooted in racism, xenophobia, 
heterosexism, misogyny, and other oppressions is widely prevalent 
in U.S. society. This violence is often intersectional in nature, 
targeting individuals and communities based on more than one of their 
interconnected identities (Meyer, 2008; Walser, 2020). Sexualized 
harassment and sexual assault are frequently weapons of hate and 
bias-motivated violence, particularly but not only when perpetrated 
against victims who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, 
gender non-binary, and/or women (NSVRC, 2012a). Throughout history, 
many major disasters — including epidemics or pandemics and acts of 
war or terrorism — have been followed by a surge in stigmatizing and 
scapegoating rhetoric propagated by politicians and the media. These 
messages stoke long-standing prejudices and further embolden harassment 
and violence against members of marginalized communities (Aguilera, 
2020; Bhaman et al., 2020; Gover et al., 2020; Leavitt & Leavitt, 2020).
 
In the year after COVID-19 was declared a national emergency, reports 
of hate incidents perpetrated against Asian Americans and Pacific 
Islanders (AAPI) increased 145% (Center for the Study of Hate & 
Extremism, 2021; Harwell et al., 2021). Some service providers 
described as many as one hundred incidents happening each day (NRC 
& Casa de Esperanza, 2020). This surge in hate violence occurred as 
then-president Donald Trump, accompanied by many other elected 
officials and media outlets, persistently referred to COVID-19 as the 
“China virus” and other racist language that stoked xenophobia and 
wrongly associated the virus with Asian immigrants and Asian Americans 
(Donegan, 2021; Tavernise & Oppel, 2021). People who perpetrated 
violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders during the 
COVID-19 crisis frequently echoed these racist terms and sentiments. 
Over the course of one year, nearly 3,800 hate incidents were reported 
to Stop AAPI Hate, an online database created to track and respond to 
racist harassment, violence, and discrimination targeting AAPI 
communities in the U.S. These reports came from all 50 states and the 
District of Columbia, and included verbal, physical, and online 
harassment, workplace discrimination, refusal of services, and other 
violations of civil rights (Jeung et al., 2021). Women reported 2.3 
times more hate incidents than men, and many of the incidents included 
racialized sexual harassment (Fraser, 2020; IFRC, n.d.b; Jeung et al., 
2021; Yam, 2021). For example, one person from New York reported:

A white man catcalled me, then aggressively followed me down the block, 
and got inches from my face and yelled “Ch*nk!” and “C*nt!” after 
realizing I was Asian. Lots of neighbors were standing outside their 
homes and no one intervened (Jeung et al., 2021, p. 7).

In a similar incident on the other side of the country, a Vietnamese 
American woman in Los Angeles was verbally assaulted in a restaurant 
by a man who yelled racist and sexually degrading insults after she 
refused his request to have lunch with him (Abdollah & Hughes, 2021; 
Bit & Hung, 2020; Huang, 2020).

Community activists, among others, noted similarities to the sharp 
rise in hate incidents perpetrated against LGBTQ communities, and 
particularly gay and bisexual men, during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s 
(Leavitt & Leavitt, 2020; Walters, 2020). The rhetoric from the White 
House at the time similarly fueled stigma and scapegoating directed at 
marginalized communities (Killian, 2020; Walters, 2020). Surveys of 
LGBTQ communities in New York found that 28% of all hate incidents in 
1985 included verbal harassment related to AIDS, and the overall number 
of hate incidents against LGBTQ people doubled the following year. 
LGBTQ advocacy groups across the country described assaults increasing 
in frequency and brutality during the AIDS crisis (Greer, 1986).
Scapegoating rhetoric and increased hate and bias-motivated violence, 
including sexual violence, also occurred following the terror attack 
on September 11, 2001. Perpetrators of this violence, primarily white 
men, harassed, threatened, and assaulted Muslims, Sikhs, Arab 
Americans, South Asian Americans, and other people they perceived to 
be of Middle Eastern descent (Alimahomed-Wilson, 2017; Lichtblau, 
2016). According to FBI statistics, the number of reported hate crimes 
against Muslims increased more than 1,600% in 2001 (Schevitz, 2002). 
In a 2002 interview, Maha ElGenaidi, executive director of the Islamic 
Network Group, noted:

This has been the pattern for a very long time. We witnessed the same 
thing after the Oklahoma bombing, after the first terrorist attack on 
the World Trade Center in 1993 and after the Persian Gulf War. I am 
very glad that finally Americans at large are beginning to recognize 
this as a pattern and a problem that we need to address (Schevitz, 
2002, para. 16).

Many hate incidents targeting Muslim Americans post-9/11 have included 
misogynist, homophobic, and sexualized language, imagery, and violence 
(Ahmad, 2004; Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC], 2011). Researchers 
have noted that while people of all genders are targeted by 
Islamophobic harassment and violence, “it is a particularly gendered 
crisis” (Elmir, 2016). Muslim women, and especially women who wear 
hijab and niqab, are at heightened risk of harassment and violence in 
public spaces, due to intertwined oppressions of sexism and 
Islamophobia (Alimahomed-Wilson, 2017; Elmir, 2016; Zempi & 
Chakraborti, 2014).

Sexual Assault in Confinement

Sexual assault in jails, prisons, and juvenile and immigration 
detention centers may increase as disasters lead to worsening 
conditions, staffing shortages, delayed Prison Rape Elimination Act 
(PREA) investigations, and increased risks of retaliation for 
survivors who report sexual abuse in confinement. Each year, an 
estimated 200,000 adults and children are sexually abused behind bars, 
usually more than once. Around half of sexual violence against people 
who are incarcerated is committed by other inmates, and half is 
committed by the corrections staff. The vast majority of assaults are 
not reported, as retaliation by staff and other inmates is common when 
survivors do come forward (Just Detention International [JDI], 2018). 

People who experience sexual abuse in immigration detention settings — 
including adults, adolescents, and children — face additional barriers 
to reporting and getting help, including lack of language access, lack 
of legal representation, fear of retaliatory deportation, and a 
culture of secrecy among federal immigration agencies (JDI, 2009, 
2015). Young people, LGBTQ people, people with mental illness, and 
survivors of previous sexual victimization experience significantly 
higher rates of sexual assault while in confinement, compared to other 
people who are incarcerated or detained (JDI, 2009, 2015, 2018; 
Fernández, 2020).

Across the country, local, state, and federal corrections and 
detention facilities are underprepared for disasters. As described by 
David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 
National Prison Project (NPP), “In disaster planning as in everything 
else prisoners are an afterthought, if they are thought about at all” 
(Nicholas, 2019, para. 14). 

This lack of preparedness has led to exceedingly dangerous conditions 
in jails and prisons during Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Ike, Harvey, 
Irma, and Maria, among other disasters. Corrections officials refused 
or otherwise failed to evacuate facilities in the paths of storms, 
leaving inmates in flooded and overcrowded cells, in total darkness 
when the power went out, and without adequate food, water, medical 
care, or means of contacting anyone outside the facilities for help 
(Nicholas, 2019; NPP, 2006; Omorogieva, 2018). In interviews after 
Hurricane Katrina, many inmates described witnessing or experiencing 
sexual assaults during the crisis — often in the presence of correction 
staff who refused to intervene — both while trapped at Orleans Parish 
Prison (OPP) and after being evacuated by state order several days 
later to the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center (ACLU, n.d.). One of the 
men who was detained at Hunt wrote: 

Yes they had sexual assaults, even brutal and physical assaults 
between inmates. The non violent offenders were either getting beat up 
on, rob[b]ed of valuables, sexual[ly] assaulted or jumped by violent 
charged inmates while the superior stood back and did nothing it was 
to[o] uncontrol[l]able (NPP, 2006, p. 76).

Another man who was incarcerated at OPP during Hurricane Katrina 
described hearing people being sexually assaulted in the pitch darkness. 
He was sexually assaulted by other inmates later the same night. When 
he tried to report the incident to a corrections officer the next day, 
he said the officer “just looked at me and shook his head in disbelief. 
He said ‘I can’t do nothing about it.’” The man was sexually assaulted 
again the following night (ACLU, n.d., p. 47).

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an extreme threat to the health and 
safety of people who are incarcerated or detained. Social distancing 
measures are virtually impossible in prisons, jails, or detention 
facilities. Many cleaning products, including hand sanitizer, are 
considered contraband, and access to soap and running water is 
severely restricted. By December 2020, one in every five prisoners in 
the U.S. had tested positive for COVID-19, compared to one out of 20 
in the general population (Schwartzapfel et al., 2020). Furthermore, 
the pandemic adds to already significant understaffing issues in many 
facilities across the nation, creating additional safety risks (Texas 
Criminal Justice Coalition, 2020). As articulated by Matthew Van Winkle, 
Senior Program Officer of Just Detention International, during COVID-19
 “not only the sexual safety, but the very survival of some prisoners, 
is being left to chance by the government at all levels” (JDI & 
California Coalition Against Sexual Assault [CALCASA], 2020). With 
visitation suspended and access to communication channels — even phone 
and mail in some cases — restricted during the pandemic, survivors 
face ever greater obstacles to reporting or receiving counseling, 
advocacy, medical, and/or legal services related to sexual assault in 
confinement (JDI & CALCASA, 2020). Staffing, visitation, and 
communication challenges created or worsened by the COVID-19 crisis 
may cause significant delay in PREA investigations when survivors do 
report. In some cases, survivors may fear that retaliation for 
reporting will take the form of COVID-19 exposure. For example, at 
an immigration detention facility in Arizona, a transgender woman 
described being placed in an isolation cell just minutes after 
watching a man with COVID-19 symptoms being escorted out of it. She 
had just reported being sexually harassed by another detainee, and 
being placed in this isolation cell felt like punishment. After 
standing there for five hours, afraid that sitting down or touching 
anything would expose her to the virus, she withdrew her sexual 
harassment complaint (Fernández, 2020).

Sexual Violence in Shelters & Camps for Displaced Persons

Around the world, high rates of sexual violence have been documented 
in camps and shelters for individuals and families displaced by 
natural- and human-caused disasters (Thurston et al., 2021). During 
Hurricane Katrina in 2005, reports of sexual assault within the 
Superdome shelter and other evacuation locations began to make their 
way to the media within hours of the storm. Almost a third of reported 
incidents of sexual assault in the context of Hurricane Katrina 
occurred at evacuation shelters (Klein, 2008). Notably, research by 
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that girls and 
young women (ages 13 - 24) displaced to camps or tent settlements 
after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti were significantly more likely to 
have experienced sexual abuse after the earthquake than their peers, 
displaced or not, who were not living in camps or tent settlements 
(CDC et al., 2014). 

Overcrowded, chaotic, and unsafe conditions in evacuation centers and 
shelters can increase risks of sexual assault, particularly against 
children, women, and LGBTQ people (International Union for the 
Conservation of Nature [IUCN], 2020; UN Women, n.d.c). In the chaos 
of evacuation, it may be difficult for shelter workers and law 
enforcement to identify and track people who are on sex offender 
registry lists to ensure that they are not housed with evacuees who 
may be particularly vulnerable to abuse (Ford & Buchanan, 2018; 
Sullivan, 2017). Evacuation shelters may not have locking doors for 
bathroom facilities, private areas for sleeping, or adequate (if any) 
lighting, particularly in more remote or secluded spaces, all of which 
can contribute to increased risks of sexual violence (UN Women, n.d.c).

The presence or absence of gender-segregated facilities for sleeping, 
dressing, and toileting may also play a role. While many disaster 
response experts advocate for separating facilities by gender to 
reduce the likelihood of sexual violence (UN Women, n.d.c), this may 
create considerable risk of harm for transgender, non-binary, and 
two-spirit people, who experience high rates of sexual violence and 
harassment by staff and residents in emergency shelters, both during 
disasters and otherwise (bonnabella.xvx, 2020; Camey et al., 2020; 
North, 2017; NRC & FORGE, 2020). The lack of privacy in shelters and 
camps for displaced persons also makes it difficult for survivors to 
disclose sexual violence, and services are typically overwhelmed 
(IUCN, 2020; UN Women, n.d.c).

Trauma & Healing in Disasters

Disasters can cause extreme distress for affected individuals and 
communities. Intense feelings of fear, grief, anxiety, outrage, 
helplessness, and hopelessness are common and widespread. For survivors 
of sexual violence, whether the violence occurred during the disaster 
or long before, the circumstances of disasters can also trigger severe 
trauma responses and complicate survivors’ healing needs (NAESV, 
2020). These experiences can remind survivors of the trauma and 
feelings surrounding past experiences of violence, create a 
heightened sense of danger in the present, and cause a survival 
response in the body. Survivors may experience flashbacks, nightmares, 
and other trauma reactions related to past violence. 

Stress Related to the Immediate and Long-Term Effects of Disaster 

Research suggests that at least half of people directly or indirectly 
affected by disasters experience significant mental health impacts, 
and that people with a prior history of trauma are particularly likely 
to have symptoms of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, and 
other adverse mental health effects in the wake of disaster 
(Lee et al., 2020; Raj et al., 2020; Rezaeian, 2013; Taggart et al., 
2021). For survivors of sexual violence, living and dealing with the 
personal, social, financial, and material losses caused by disaster 
can trigger memories, feelings, and trauma responses connected to 
past experiences of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault (MNCASA, n.d.).

Re-Traumatizing Conditions of Sheltering

Sheltering during a disaster, either at home or in an evacuation 
center, often entails isolation from family and friends, restricted 
freedom of movement, strict rules for behavior, increased surveillance, 
and limited access to basic necessities. For anyone, these conditions
 can be extremely challenging. For survivors of sexual violence, they 
can also be intensely re-traumatizing, as these are the same conditions 
many abusive people impose and exploit as tactics to control and abuse 
victims (Eduardo & Powell, 2020; NRC & Common Justice, 2020; Taggart 
et al., 2021; Vera Institute of Justice, 2020; Walker, 2020). Research 
during the COVID-19 pandemic found that people with a history of 
sexual or intimate partner violence reported higher rates of 
depression and/or anxiety during the first two weeks of stay-at-home 
orders, and that symptoms worsened over time (Raj et al., 2020).

Medical Anxiety

Many survivors of sexual violence experience heightened anxiety about 
medical appointments, even in the absence of disaster. Common health 
care processes and dynamics — such as undressing and lying down, being 
touched, having objects inserted into one’s body, being physically and 
emotionally vulnerable to an authority figure, among many others — can 
be difficult and potentially triggering for survivors of sexual abuse 
or assault. In addition, many BIPOC survivors, LGBTQ survivors, 
survivors with disabilities, and survivors from other marginalized 
communities have been repeatedly mistreated and traumatized by medical 
providers and systems, further contributing to health care anxieties and avoidance (Bein, 2011; Sexual Assault Demonstration Initiative [SADI], 2020). All of these concerns can become intensified during a disaster, particularly an epidemic or pandemic, which raises both the stakes and the barriers surrounding medical care (Green et al., 2020; NRC & FORGE, 2020; Vera Institute of Justice, 2020).
Complex Trauma
People experience complex trauma when they are exposed to prolonged, repeated, and/or severe periods of victimization, as often occur in the context of child abuse, intimate partner violence, institutional abuse, human trafficking, and other conditions of physical and/or emotional captivity and chronic abuse (Courtois, 2004; National Center for PTSD, n.d.; Pressley & Spinazzola, 2020). Survivors of complex trauma often experience a chronically elevated stress response and a sense of constant danger, unpredictability, and/or powerlessness that can affect relationships, coping strategies, physical and mental health, and overall functioning. These experiences can be triggered and intensified by disasters and their effects, leading to more intense psychological responses and unique needs for support and healing (Armstrong, 2020; Pressley & Spinazzola, 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, one survivor of complex trauma wrote: 
Due to panic around the coronavirus (COVID-19)... I don’t know what 
will happen next. The feeling of imminent danger is a constant for me. 
On my best days, I still feel like something is just around the corner 
ready to crush any sense of stability I’ve managed to carve out. 
Everything feels so fragile. I grieve things before there is need to 
grieve. I expect the worse [sic] and so I fight to take control, over 
my body, my environment and the future. It’s a battle I can’t win. 
Eventually my system becomes overloaded because living on the edge is 
exhausting, mentally and physically. And then I dissociate, freeze or 
fall apart. And the cycle of hypervigilance starts all over. This is 
the impact that trauma has had on me and a taste of what it’s like to 
have complex PTSD (C-PTSD) (Armstrong, 2020, para. 1-2).

Historical Trauma

For Black survivors, Indigenous survivors, and survivors of color, 
disasters may trigger historical trauma. Many disasters and the 
inequities they exacerbate and expose are rooted in colonialism, 
genocide, slavery, forced relocation and family separation, and 
ongoing forms of environmental racism and structural violence in the 
United States. These and other institutionally induced disasters 
result in collective and cumulative emotional, psychological, and 
spiritual wounding that is carried across generations (Strong Oak 
Lefebvre, personal communication, June 24, 2021; University of 
Minnesota Extension, n.d.). Reflecting on the interconnectedness of 
past and present trauma during the COVID-19 pandemic, psychologist 
Jean Pierre Ndagijimana writes: 

In many societies that experienced massive fear and collective 
heightened stress, the coronavirus may trigger stories they think they 
have buried in their past. For many, this is not the first time the 
elders in their/our communities and those physically vulnerable among 
us are at the highest risk of dying from a communal threat… For some, 
this is not the first time that leaving home could result in dying 
sooner rather than later… These are embodied stories that our brain-
bodies have stored for our future survival (Ndagijimana, 2020, para. 4-5).
Historical trauma is deeply tied to enduring health, economic, 
environmental, and other racial inequities and injustices today. The 
repeated failure of governments, emergency responders, community 
organizations, media, and other mainstream entities to center and 
prioritize the lives, safety, and wellness of BIPOC communities in 
disasters not only recalls but replicates in the present the long 
history of racial violence and oppression in the United States. This 
can give rise to historical trauma, grief, fear, distrust, and 
disbelief in mainstream systems and interventions (Begay, 2020).

Unmet Needs for Healing

At the same time disasters can trigger trauma responses associated 
with previous experiences of sexual violence, they can also interrupt 
or cut off access to many of the supports survivors turn to for their 
healing. The following circumstances, common in disasters, can 
complicate survivors’ healing needs.

Social Isolation and Loss of Emotional Support

Research has consistently identified social support as one of the 
most critical factors in supporting coping and reducing trauma in 
periods of high stress (John-Henderson & Ginty, 2020). In some cases, 
social support may actually increase following a disaster, as community 
members rally together, check in with each other, and provide mutual 
aid and comfort. Often, however, disasters can create or worsen social 
isolation, a significant barrier to healing for many survivors of 
sexual violence.

Restricted Access to Healthy Coping Strategies

The physical, social, and economic hardships created by disasters can 
make it extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to go for a walk 
or to the gym, prepare and eat healthy foods, engage in soothing 
hobbies, visit calming places, go to a place of worship or other 
community spaces, connect with family and friends, or engage in 
various other strategies survivors of sexual violence may turn to for 
comfort and healing in their day-to-day lives.

Increased Use of Drugs and Alcohol to Cope

With declining access to other coping strategies, many people increase 
their use of alcohol, prescription medications, or other drugs to cope 
with or escape from the physical, emotional, interpersonal, and other 
challenges in the wake of disasters (Czeisler et al., 2020). For 
people in recovery from substance use disorders, including many 
survivors of sexual violence, disasters can provoke strong urges to 
drink or use again while simultaneously cutting off or limiting access 
to peer support groups or medication-assisted treatment that support 
their recovery (National Child Traumatic Stress Network [NCTSN] & 
National Center for PTSD, 2018; SAMHSA, n.d.b).

Worsening of Chronic Illness and Mental Health Conditions

Experiences of sexual violence and other trauma can influence 
survivors’ physical and mental health across their lifespan. Health 
conditions that are common with trauma include gastrointestinal issues, 
autoimmune disorders, frequent headaches, gynecological issues, eating 
disorders, mental health needs, insomnia, fatigue, anxiety, and 
unexplained symptoms, among others (SADI, 2020). These conditions can 
be further complicated by injuries, illnesses, and/or stressors arising
 from disasters, compounded with decreased access to medical and mental 
health care.

Compromised Physical and Emotional Safety

By definition, disasters threaten the physical and emotional safety of 
affected people and communities. Survivors of sexual violence may face 
additional and unique safety concerns. For some survivors, evacuating 
in a disaster may mean leaving a place of refuge and risking the 
possibility of being found and further harmed by past perpetrators of 
sexual violence. Some survivors may find that they have no other 
option but to shelter with those who have abused them, whether in 
evacuation centers, their own homes, or the homes of extended family, 
friends, or acquaintances. In addition to increased threats to 
physical safety, disasters can disrupt routines, push boundaries, 
compromise trust, and restrict choices. These factors can be 
particularly detrimental to the emotional safety and healing of people
who have experienced previous trauma.

Loss of Material Needs and Supports

Disasters can take away access to people’s most basic human needs, 
including shelter, food, water, clean air, clothing, warmth, and rest. 
These are the foundational requirements for human survival, and 
necessary for sustaining physical and emotional safety. For survivors 
of sexual violence and other trauma who may already struggle to have 
their basic needs met, the additional losses imposed by disaster can 
be devastating and derailing to their healing journey.

Survivor-Centered & Community-Centered Healing & Recovery
While there is much to say about the vulnerability and trauma created 
by disasters and sexual violence, it is important to recognize the 
deep wells of personal and collective strengths they can also uncover. 
Across generations, survivors of trauma have found, created, and 
passed on means to survive, heal, and transcend disaster, oppression, 
and abuse. Many have formed survivor networks for mutual support, 
advocacy, and activism for transformative social change. Advocates, 
counselors, emergency responders, and other service providers must 
recognize and support survivors’ resilience and resourcefulness, and 
honor their expertise in the survival strategies that are most 
meaningful and effective for them and their communities.

“The people who have been living with a pandemic of marginalization, 
disregard, or neglect for much of their lives or their whole lives are 
the people who have the expertise we need today, and that could help 
the rest of the world, yet continue to be disregarded.” 
—JD Davids (Werning, 2020)

Historical Resilience & Ancestral Ways

The knowledge that communities have about their own and their 
ancestors’ experiences, including their legacies of resilience and 
survival, must be centered and honored at all stages of disaster 
preparedness, response, and recovery. In times of crisis, many 
survivors may turn to and deepen their connection with ancestral 
knowledges and cultural practices from which they can draw strength 
and healing. 

BIPOC, immigrant, disabilities, LGBTQ, and other historically 
marginalized communities who have experienced repeated and prolonged 
disasters and historical trauma throughout U.S. history have also 
developed, shared, and passed on strategies and traditions for 
survival to subsequent generations. These can include spirituality 
and religion, rituals, storytelling, arts and music, movement and 
dance, foodways, medicines, connection to elders, and collective care, 
among many others. After centuries of colonialist, racist, ableist, 
heterosexist, and other oppressive policies that have persecuted and 
shamed people for practicing their cultural traditions and ancestral 
ways, maintaining, reclaiming, and embracing these strategies of 
survival and healing is a form of resilience and resistance in itself 
(Betty, 2020).

Far too often, disaster managers, emergency responders, and service 
providers have failed to recognize, appreciate, and learn from the 
historical resilience and ancestral ways of BIPOC, immigrant, and 
other communities disproportionately impacted by disasters, both in 
the U.S. and around the world (FEMA, 2019; Grossman, 2013; Marsella 
& Christopher, 2004; Trader-Leigh, 2008). There are already local, 
community-based programs — both formal and informal — supporting 
survivors in traditional ways. It is the responsibility of mainstream 
service providers to learn about and uplift the strengths, resources, 
and resilience that are already present within communities.

“I am finding myself uniquely equipped to help others who are 
struggling. Because of all the hard work I’ve done over the years 
learning to deal with my fear, I’m shockingly emerging from this as a 
valuable resource. I used to think my complex PTSD was a disability. 
In crisis, I’m recognizing that it is a superpower.” 
— Stephanie Foo (2020, para. 8)

For many people and communities, spirituality and religion have been 
vital sources of resilience in the context of natural- and human-caused 
disasters, providing hope, meaning and purpose, a sense of empowerment, 
and social support, among other important personal and collective 
strengths (Alawiyah et al., 2011). Following the 9/11 terror attack, 
90% of U.S. adults surveyed reported that they turned to religion to 
help them cope (Schuster et al., 2001). Interviews with Black survivors 
of Hurricane Katrina found that relying on a higher power, praying and 
meditating, reading the Bible, attending church, and serving others 
were essential sources of emotional resilience during and after the 
disaster (Alawiyah et al., 2011; Lawson & Thomas, 2007). During the 
COVID-19 pandemic, even as places of worship were forced to close 
their doors to prevent the spread of the virus, 41% of Black adults, 
30% of Latinx adults, and 20% of white adults said the pandemic had 
strengthened their faith. Among people who attend historically Black 
churches, 56% said that their faith grew stronger during the pandemic, 
higher than any other group (Gecewicz, 2020).

Particularly in Black communities, faith and faith communities have 
long served as important lifelines and coping strategies in response 
to adversity (Alawiyah et al., 2011; Gates, 2021; Trader-Leigh, 2008). 
For centuries, Black churches have attended to not only the spiritual, 
but also the emotional, physical, economic, and political resilience 
of Black communities enduring the ongoing disasters of systemic racism 
and oppression (DeSouza et al., 2020; Gates, 2021; Sinha, n.d.). In 
the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Black clergy and churches played a 
central role as first responders, providing housing, food, clothing, 
medical and mental health care, systems advocacy, and other urgently 
needed practical support — generally without recognition, funding, or 
other support from government officials or disaster relief organizations 
(Trader-Leigh, 2008). During the coronavirus pandemic, with its 
disproportionate impacts within Black communities, Black churches 
across the country have similarly provided wide-ranging services and 
support — including food, employment support, COVID-19 testing and 
vaccination sites, and social connection for older adults and others 
experiencing heightened isolation under stay-at-home orders 
(Abdul-Mutakabbir et al., 2021; Banks, 2020; Bunn, 2021; Guess, 2020; 
Kolade, 2020; Norris, 2020). As described by Pastor Nick Taliaferro of 
the West Philadelphia Seventh-Day Adventist Church shortly after the 
start of the pandemic:

When times get dark, the church demonstrates its relevance. What 
you’re seeing now is the church, as it has always been in the Black 
community in particular, filling the place where government and 
social-economics fail (Norris, 2020, para. 7).

“At times of great uncertainty like these, I remind myself that my 
Black, LGBTQ+ and female ancestors constantly experienced moments just 
like the current one that our world is in — and many survived. I lean 
on my personal strength as a Black bisexual female human walking 
around in this world. Plus, I have access to the knowledge passed down 
to me from the Black foremothers who founded the reproductive justice 
framework and movement. I can look to the knowledge passed down to me 
from my queer and trans elders who came-of-age during the United 
States AIDS epidemic — which we are still fighting — and survived, 
even when too many of their families and friends did not.” 
— Candace Bond-Theriault (Bond-Theriault, 2020, para. 4-5)

In addition to the practical support provided by Black churches, 
research shows that church attendance can strengthen physical and 
mental health among Black parishioners. Reverend Dr. Maria Black and 
her colleagues note that group singing, a common aspect of traditional 
Black worship experiences, releases endorphins and increases pain 
thresholds, social bonding, and immune competence, for example 
(DeSouza et al., 2020).

Research similarly supports the physical and mental health benefits of 
traditional rituals and ceremonies among Indigenous communities. 
Clinical psychologist Dr. Tami DeCoteau explains: 

What the science is saying is that the things that help to restore 
your body and quiet the noise and the chaos that trauma creates so 
that we can access our Indigenous knowledge are the things that are 
part of our culture, like rhythmic sound and rhythmic movement, and 
bilateral movement, and safe connections, and meaningful ceremonies 
that help us with transitions… So it’s really validating what we know 
and who we are as Indian people and empowering us to think about how 
do we revive and bring together those Indigenous methods to help us 
with our own individual healing and our community healing (Van Ness 
Feldman & The Roundtable on Native American Trauma-Informed 
Initiatives, 2020).

Through violence, forced removal from Native lands, coerced 
conversion through missionization, and compulsory boarding schools, 
U.S. governments, churches, and institutions sought to destroy 
Indigenous peoples and cultures for generations (Avalos, 2021). 
For Indigenous individuals, families, and communities surviving 
intergenerational historical trauma from these institutionally 
created disasters, connecting to cultural identity through traditions, 
customs, practices, and language is a means of digging into the root 
of the trauma, finding identity and pride, and engaging in the long 
and ongoing process of healing. From day to day, people can continue 
to find outlets for healing that resonate for them, which may include 
connecting with religious, spiritual, and/or cultural practices 
(Stacy Four Star, personal communication, June 24, 2021). 
Many Indigenous people have visions and dreams which they use to 
survive and heal, which are too often misinterpreted, mislabelled, 
and dismissed by mainstream mental health resources (Strong Oak 
Lefebvre, personal communication, June 24, 2021). Circles are also 
a significant part of Indigenous ways of thinking, often in contrast 
to the linear processes and worldviews of mainstream legal, education, 
health care, and other systems. For example, talking circles, the 
circle of life, the medicine wheel, and the seasons, directions, 
ceremonies, and sweat lodges are all circular. In Indigenous 
communities, circles represent the interconnectedness of all things, 
and that there is no beginning or end. The circle is also seen in 
survivors helping others heal, as they get what they need for their 
own healing (Stacy Four Star, personal communication, June 24, 2021).

Healing is relational and interconnected within Indigenous communities, 
helping to restore relationships with self, community, ancestors and 
descendents, and the natural and spiritual world (Avalos, 2021). 
Acknowledgement of trauma and pain, including accountability from 
those who caused harm, are also essential for healing and restoration. 
In the summer of 2021, nearly 1,000 Indigenous children were found 
buried in unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools 
in Canada. The response of Indigenous communities across the continent 
included ceremony, prayers, songs, art, and witnessing stories of 
survivors and descendents, both in person and online. Communities also 
called for accountability from Canada and the U.S. to repatriate 
Indigenous children’s remains and to be honest about this history and 
its lasting effects today. This has been part of the work of Canada’s 
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which offers a model to support 
healing of historical trauma in the U.S. (Native American Boarding 
School Healing Coalition [NABS], 2021; Strong Oak Lefebvre, personal 
communication, June 24, 2021). The National Native American Boarding 
School Healing Coalition wrote:

...healing starts with confronting the trauma and understanding it. 
We are hopeful that the U.S. has finally stepped foot on the path 
of confronting the harmful Indian boarding school policy and seeking 
to understand it so we can heal for our collective future… Our healing 
begins by taking the time to care for each other in the ways that they 
tried to strip away from us. Support our elders during this time. Go 
to ceremony. Sing and dance and laugh to honor our ancestors who were 
forbidden to do all of those things. And keep demanding justice 
(NABS, 2021).

In Decolonizing Community Care in Response to COVID-19, the NDN 
Collective also highlights traditional medicines, and the value of 
connecting with these ancestral ways and knowledges among Indigenous 
peoples:

It’s true that our relatives and ancestors endured germ warfare at the 
hands of the U.S. military while suffering great losses. What’s also 
true is that we survived, and our connection to traditional knowledge 
and medicine has played a role in that survival. During this time when 
we are having to practice “social distancing,” it is a perfect time to 
dive into learning about your traditional medicines, whether that be 
tinctures and syrups, traditional foods, plant medicines, fermentation, 
and so on. Connect with friends and relatives and learn from each 
other (Begay, 2020, para. 10-11).

“As sick, disabled, poor, Black and brown, queer and trans people 
(to name a few), we already know a hell of a lot about surviving. 
Over the past two decades, I’ve learned a lot about survival in ways 
many people do — from being poor and sick and having to make food 
stretch and grow, shoplift and forage my food… From studying herbal 
medicine as a chronically ill person and learning to make my own so I 
could afford it and could share with friends, to learning skills from 
friends who live rurally and low electricity. Most recently, I’ve 
learned from sick and disabled mutual aid in the face of wildfires, 
snow, power cut offs and now, COVID-19/coronavirus.” 
— Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha (2020, para. 2)

Connecting with traditional foodways — including methods and rituals 
for growing, foraging, preserving, preparing, and sharing food — is 
also an important source of resilience for many people and communities 
preparing for, coping with, and recovering from disasters. In many 
cases, ancestral knowledges related to food may be linked to surviving 
the protracted disasters of colonialism, racism, nativism, and other 
oppressions. For example, reflecting on the experiences of Afro-Puerto 
Rican coastal foragers and the effects of Hurricane María in 2017, 
cultural anthropologist and decolonial scholar Dr. Hilda Lloréns 
explains:

For my ancestors the capitalist impetus was disastrous from the moment 
their bodies were conceptualized as racialized chattel and their right 
to freedom lost… Rather than starve, they learned to engage in several 
subsistence activities, such as cultivating small food gardens, animal 
husbandry, foraging for food in the forests and/or mangroves, fishing, 
and sharing food, goods, and exchanging favors with family and 
neighbors. In the margins, they found freedom in their proximity to 
nature and to each other, creating and living by alternative logics 
from those that conceptualized them only as “workers” (Lloréns, 2019, 
para. 13).

Many examples have emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic of traditional 
foodways serving as strategies for resilience and healing. In tribal 
communities, more people turned to collecting food as medicine, rather 
than commodity, and growing and sharing their own healthy food as an 
alternative to the packaged foods provided by federal food distribution 
programs (Strong Oak Lefebvre, personal communication, September 21, 
2020). In addition to starting a community garden, one University of 
Nevada graduate student from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe decided to 
catch, clean, and distribute Lahontan cutthroat trout to elders and 
others in the community, saying: 

We’re in a global pandemic, and it’s so important that we return to 
these foods… Our people have been eating trout for thousands of years. 
They’ve sustained our communities and have contributed to our survival 
as a people (Spillman & Kane, 2020).

Foodways within many immigrant and refugee families and communities 
also serve as sources of resilience in times of disaster. After 
traveling across town to stock up on favorite foods at one of the only 
Caribbean markets in the Bay Area, Sio Massiah tweeted:

I’ve been joking about how Africans and West Indians been prepared for 
corona. We grew up with canned goods and rice. Buying produce with 
long shelf lives. Sanitizing everything with dettol. But it just dawned 
on me that it means our families always lived in a state of survival 
(Evelyn, 2020).

Research suggests that many immigrants and refugees have “earned 
strength” as a result of experiences with everyday inequities and 
previous disasters (Uekusa & Matthewman, 2017). Strategies such as 
preserving and conserving food, preparing and storing meals in large 
quantities, self-isolating for safety, and creating exit plans are 
often everyday practices for people who have lived through traumatic 
events in the past, and can be assets for coping with current and 
future disasters (Aghajanian, 2020). Sio Massiah reflects:

Back home, they prepared for hurricanes, for shipments not making it 
from the port… our families sometimes come from dire situations already, 
only to come here [to the United States] and struggle to climb the 
socioeconomic ladder. So regardless of your experience, survival 
becomes a way of life. We become our own experts (Evelyn, 2020, para. 
5-6).

These experiences highlight the importance of intergenerational 
storytelling within immigrant communities, as different generations 
bring different experiences and strategies related to disaster 
preparedness, response, and recovery (Mira Yusef, personal 
communication, September 21, 2020).

“We are only as strong as the most vulnerable person in our community, 
so now more than ever it is imperative for us to decolonize from 
individualism and reconnect with ways of community care.” 
— NDN Collective (Begay, 2020, para. 6)

Current and future generations can learn from elders across many 
different communities about the previous disasters they have 
experienced and the ways they have survived. During the COVID-19 
pandemic, many LGBTQ people have noted similarities not only to the 
trauma and loss of the AIDS crisis, but also to the resilience and 
survival strategies that communities drew on during that time, 
including political activism, community education, and mutual aid 
(Killian, 2020; NRC & FORGE, 2020). Reflecting on his experiences 
caring for and losing friends through the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s 
and 90s, journalist Barry Yeoman described:

But in that crucible, we learned our strengths. Some of us were good 
at bedside visits. Some of us were good at dealing with the parents. 
Some of us were good at scheduling care. Some were good at interacting 
with the doctors. And some of us were good at supporting the inner-
circle… I feel like maybe I do have some coping skills that my peers 
don’t have (Killian, 2020, para. 61-63).

Collective care and mutual aid are critical sources of resilience among 
many cultures and communities that have survived previous trauma, as 
will be discussed in the following section.

Collective Care & Mutual Aid

Collective care and mutual aid networks have always existed, 
particularly within communities that have never been able to depend on 
the state or helping systems and have been intentionally denied access 
to resources. BIPOC, LGBTQ, immigrant, disabilities, sex worker, and 
other communities that have been chronically underserved or unserved 
by mainstream institutions have long and rich traditions of mutual aid. 
This can include gathering together, sharing stories, growing community 
gardens, developing and supporting community businesses, and coming 
together to hold systems accountable (Strong Oak Lefebvre, personal 
communication, June 24, 2021). In a widely circulated resource about 
establishing pods of mutual aid, social justice trainer and community 
organizer Rebel Sidney Black wrote:

Mutual aid can look many different ways. Those of us who are sick and 
disabled, black, indigenous, multiracial, and people of color, poor, 
working class, immigrants, queer, trans, two spirit, and more, probably 
already practice mutual aid and may not even know it (Black, 2020, 
para. 1).
Mutual aid projects have also developed in response to previous 
disasters. After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans residents founded the 
mutual aid organization Common Ground Relief to provide for immediate 
needs like housing, health, and clothing with an emphasis on “people 
working together to rebuild their lives in sustainable ways” (Common 
Ground Relief, n.d.). In another example, thousands of volunteers and 
activists with Occupy Sandy provided water, food, and other resources 
and support that were otherwise unavailable to many residents affected 
by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 (McMenamin, 2020).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mutual aid networks have gained more 
widespread recognition and support. As the pandemic has reached every 
corner of the United States and most of the world, it has become as 
apparent as ever that individualistic approaches to disasters are 
ineffective and unjust, and that the responses of governments and 
other systems are often too late and too little and further marginalize 
people already at the margins. Individuals, groups, and organizations 
established new mutual aid networks, and retooled existing ones, to 
mobilize the strengths, skills, and resources in communities to 
address wide-ranging needs. These networks have highlighted that 
mutual aid can take many different forms. Some of the many acts of 
mutual aid during the pandemic include, among others, preparing meals; 
delivering groceries; picking up prescriptions and other supplies; 
providing funds for food, rent, utilities, health care, and other 
necessities; making and distributing masks, hand sanitizer, and 
personal protective equipment; sharing coping and survival skills; 
caring for children (remotely or in person); and providing 
companionship and emotional support. 

“This moment of precarity and disaster reminds us that we cannot rely 
on the state for our wellbeing. The legacies of imperialism, capitalism, 
and patriarchy undergird forms of violence that unevenly expose many 
in our communities to further risk, rendering people disposable. Yet, 
in this moment, we also see how revolutionary love and care can reshape 
our world… We are made of communities with deep collective knowledge 
on how to care for each other and the world around us. Together, we 
can survive and build interdependent communities of resistance.” 
— Asian American Feminist Collective (Bhaman et al., p. 3)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mutual aid networks have gained more 
widespread recognition and support. As the pandemic has reached every 
corner of the United States and most of the world, it has become as 
apparent as ever that individualistic approaches to disasters are 
ineffective and unjust, and that the responses of governments and 
other systems are often too late and too little and further marginalize 
people already at the margins. Individuals, groups, and organizations 
established new mutual aid networks, and retooled existing ones, to 
mobilize the strengths, skills, and resources in communities to address 
wide-ranging needs. These networks have highlighted that mutual aid 
can take many different forms. Some of the many acts of mutual aid 
during the pandemic include, among others, preparing meals; delivering 
groceries; picking up prescriptions and other supplies; providing funds 
for food, rent, utilities, health care, and other necessities; making 
and distributing masks, hand sanitizer, and personal protective 
equipment; sharing coping and survival skills; caring for children 
(remotely or in person); and providing companionship and emotional 
support. 

Many mutual aid efforts during the pandemic have been created by and 
for people in communities disproportionately impacted by the health 
and economic crises of COVID-19, and chronically overlooked and 
underserved by mainstream systems. Emergency relief funds and other 
mutual aid projects centering LGBTQ BIPOC communities, Navajo and Hopi 
reservation communities, undocumented immigrant communities, 
disabilities communities, and sex worker communities, among many 
others, emerged in cities and states across the country (Solnit, 2020).

Some mutual aid efforts have formed to meet needs of people 
experiencing sexual violence and sexualized racial harassment during 
this time. For example, Nylah Burton, a Howard University alumna, 
launched the Black Survivors Healing Fund, a mutual aid project to 
collect and provide unrestricted funds to current and former Howard 
students who have experienced sexual violence. Most survivors who 
accessed the funds indicated needing help with rent, groceries, and 
mental health care, as well as relocation and tuition expenses 
(Barthel, 2020). In Orange County, California, neighbors offered up 
mutual aid by organizing shifts to sit outside and protect the home 
of a family that was being targeted nightly for anti-Asian harassment 
during the pandemic, including racial insults and a pornographic print 
left at their front door (CBSLA Staff, 2021; Fry, 2021). Black Women’s 
Blueprint shifted the focus of their Sistas Van, usually a mobile 
healing unit for survivors of sexual violence, to provide food, 
clothes, toiletries, contraception, personal protective equipment, 
social and emotional support, and other resources to meet the 
immediate needs of Black women and girls across New York City. They 
partnered with existing mutual aid groups throughout the community 
and donors across the country to respond where they were needed 
(NSVRC, 2021).

“One of the biggest clichés about disasters is that they reveal 
civilisation as a thin veneer, beneath which lies brutal human nature… 
But the great majority of people in ordinary disasters behave in ways 
that are anything but selfish, and if we’re stuck with veneer as a 
metaphor, then it peels off to reveal a lot of creative and generous 
altruism and brilliant grassroots organising.” 
— Rebecca Solnit (Solnit, 2020, paras. 2-3)

Another intersection between mutual aid and sexual violence that arose 
during the COVID-19 pandemic is the strategy of pod mapping. Pod 
mapping was originally created by educator and community organizer Mia 
Mingus and the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC) as a 
tool for people to identify who in their lives they could turn to “for 
support around violent, harmful, or abusive experiences, whether as 
survivors, bystanders or people who have harmed” (Mingus, 2016, para. 1). 

It encourages people to identify skills that they would find helpful 
in a crisis, and talk to people in their circles about that possibility 
before it happens. Pod mapping thus provides a resource for applying 
principles of collective care to support and accountability related 
to violence and abuse (AAPI Women Lead, 2020). During COVID-19, pod 
mapping was adapted and shared as a tool for building relationships 
and connections for other forms of mutual aid during the crisis 
(Black, 2020). The Firecracker Foundation, an organization serving 
child survivors of sexual trauma in mid-Michigan, incorporated pod 
mapping in the development of a childcare collective to help prevent 
sexual and domestic violence by “alleviating the pressure in homes 
with children and increasing accountability by putting children in 
contact with a network of safe, healthy adults” (Firecracker 
Foundation, n.d., p. 1).

There is a lot that mainstream service providers can learn from 
collective care and mutual aid networks, and the ways in which 
communities have and continue to survive and support one another 
outside of state-sponsored services. A core philosophy of mutual aid 
is “solidarity, not charity.” Mutual aid organizing is driven by the 
needs of communities as they define them, and centers the strengths 
and capacities of community members to care for one another. Community
 members drive decisions about how resources are allocated, without 
outside systems or institutions mediating or restricting access 
(Mayorquin, 2020; McMenamin, 2020). This approach views people “as 
participants in their survival rather than passive consumers of 
assistance,” (Araabi, 2020, para. 9) and recognizes that people who 
need assistance of one kind can also likely offer assistance of 
another (Arnold, 2020). Mutual aid is also about building and 
strengthening relationships within community, and sustaining 
connection for the long-term. These lessons extend far beyond the 
context of disasters. As one mutual aid organizer expressed:

There’s nothing new in America about people not being able to work, 
being laid off or not having a job, or not having access to food, or 
not having access to reliable transportation… It’s important to keep 
the mindset moving forward, that the lessons we learn from this about 
how communities can take care of each other and how neighbors can come 
together [are] a potential solution… to some of the hardships that 
will continue to exist (Diavolo, 2020, para. 31).

“...We invented anti-sexual violence work and anti-domestic violence 
work… Our work came into being because survivors demanded that it be 
so. This work has always been about creative solutions, and this work 
has always been about responding to things that should not happen. 
And I think that gives us a lot of strength, and resilience, and power 
in this current moment… We work in a field that is about creating 
solutions out of nothing. This is what we do. So I have a lot of hope 
and faith in us.” 
— Kris Bein, Resource Sharing Project (NRC, 2020a)

Mainstream providers can also learn about mutual aid happening in 
their communities, and find out how to best support these efforts. 
This might include contributing funds, time, or other resources, 
promoting the efforts through other channels and networks, encouraging 
people to offer what they can and ask for what they need, or other 
forms of support. It is important to remember that mutual aid is a 
long-standing practice within many communities, particularly among 
those that mainstream institutions have repeatedly failed to serve, 
and to take direction with humility and openness from mutual aid 
networks and projects that already exist.

Emergency Response from Crisis to Stabilization

Disasters require us to re-imagine sexual violence work and how we 
serve survivors more holistically. When people are displaced, isolated, 
struggling to get basic necessities, and unable to reach services in 
the wake of disaster, “it does not matter what services an organization 
or institution usually provides, the caring of the brain-body health 
of those they are serving should be a priority” (Ndagijimana, 2020, 
para. 14). While the shape of services may change, the basic principles 
of a survivor-centered approach remain the same. It is crucial that 
disaster managers, emergency responders, and service providers in 
every sector recognize that survivors are the experts in their own 
lives and needs, and services must be designed and adapted accordingly.

During the COVID-19 pandemic and other disasters, victim services and 
other community organizations and systems have innovated to meet the 
changing and growing needs of sexual violence survivors and their 
communities. They have developed new strategies and adapted existing 
ones to support survivors in moving from crisis to stabilization. The 
lessons learned from these efforts can inform planning and response in 
the event of disasters, and also broaden and strengthen service 
delivery models for the future.

Financial and Material Support

For many survivors of sexual violence, healing from trauma can come 
only after basic life needs are met. This is always true, and more 
visibly so in the context of disasters. For advocates, counselors, and 
others who work with survivors, this can require expanding services or 
shifting focus to more deeply and directly address financial and 
material needs, including housing and utilities, food, health care, 
technology, transportation, child care and schooling, and other basic 
necessities. For example:

Creating direct cash assistance programs that empower survivors to 
make their own financial choices about what they need for their safety 
and healing (Doyle et al., 2020; Durrence et al., 2021).

Providing information about disaster relief funds, unemployment 
benefits, utilities assistance, and other financial resources; 
assisting survivors through application processes; and advocating on 
their behalf with systems.

Becoming a drop-off site for donations of essential goods — such as 
toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning products, diapers and wipes, baby 
formula, menstruation products — and coordinating pick-up or delivery 
to survivors (Arizona Coalition to End Sexual & Domestic Violence 
[ACESDV], n.d.b).

Providing smartphones, data packages, wireless internet hotspots, 
chargers, burner phones, or other technology resources survivors need 
to access services, work, school, safety, and social supports 
(IFRC, n.d.a).

Advocating with funders to be able to redirect organizational 
resources to provide direct financial, housing, and material support 
to survivors and their families.

For survivors sheltering in place with perpetrators of sexual violence,
 it may be unsafe to contact an organization to discuss issues of 
sexual violence but possible to place a call about financial, material, 
and other needs. In this way, broadening the scope of services and 
supports offered can also open up opportunities for survivors to 
connect with victim services agencies (NRC, 2020e).

Housing Support

Both in and out of disasters, safe housing is critical for preventing, 
escaping, and healing from sexual abuse, harassment, and assault. Some 
of the ways victim services and other organizations can support the 
housing needs of sexual violence survivors include:

Advocating on behalf of survivors with landlords to negotiate rent 
payments, prevent evictions, etc. (NRC & WOCN, 2020).

Providing support for rapid rehousing, using agency resources to 
immediately pay for expenses like rent, utilities, and deposits to 
move survivors and their families into permanent housing (NRC, 2020a).

Paying for extended-stay hotel placements, and/or working with housing 
programs in the area that are moving people into hotels or other 
temporary housing locations (Head Start Early Childhood Learning & 
Knowledge Center [ECLKC], 2020; NRC, 2020a).
Providing transportation to emergency shelters or other housing 
options in other regions, if temporary housing in the immediate area 
is unavailable or inaccessible.

Advocating with funders to be able to reallocate funds towards 
providing/or and increasing housing subsidies for survivors 
(NRC, 2020c).

“I think the most important thing is advocates partnering with 
survivors to identify, strategize, creatively think through, problem 
solve what are going to be the best options.” 
— Lisa Fleming, Rose Brooks Center (NRC, 2020a)

For additional recommendations and resources related to housing 
advocacy for survivors of sexual violence, visit:

Sexual Violence and Housing Resource Collection from the National 
Sexual Violence Resource Center: nsvrc.co/SVandHousing

Creating Spaces of Healing: Exploring Housing Advocacy from the 
Resource Sharing Project: nsvrc.co/CreatingSpaces

Guidance for Using Hotels to Meet Survivors’ Immediate Safety and 
Housing Needs from the Domestic Violence and Housing Technical 
Assistance Consortium: nsvrc.co/UsingHotels

Flexible Funding for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Survivors 
from the National Alliance for Safe Housing & Washington State 
Coalition Against Domestic Violence: nsvrc.co/FlexibleFunding

Digital/Online Services

When health, safety, financial, transportation, or other barriers 
prevent survivors from physically accessing care in their communities, 
online services can provide a critical lifeline for many. During the 
COVID-19 pandemic, as organizations and institutions were forced to 
close their doors to prevent the spread of infection, service providers 
across the country quickly shifted to digital/online formats — 
including online chat, text messaging, and video conferencing — in 
order to sustain services to survivors. Some of the best practices 
advocates have identified include:

Working with individual survivors to identify the technology solutions 
that work best for them, as there is no one-size-fits all tool or 
platform that will work for all survivors and situations (NRC, 2020b, 
2020e).

Remaining open to different platforms, offering multiple options, and 
finding out what survivors need in order to connect safely and 
accessibly (NRC, 2020b, 2020e).

Prioritizing and balancing privacy, confidentiality, and accessibility 
when selecting and using online and digital platforms and tools 
(NRC, 2020e).

Practicing informed consent and safety planning related to the use of 
digital/online services, such as (IFRC, n.d.a; NRC, 2020c, 2020e):

Discussing potential risks to privacy and confidentiality with 
different platforms or tools; 

Sharing strategies for deleting texts, emails, recent calls, browser 
histories, etc.;

Establishing code words or signals to prevent impersonation and 
indicate whether it’s safe to talk; 

Offering text-based communication options (through online chat or 
text messaging), as many survivors may not be able to discuss issues 
out loud, for safety or other reasons; and

Following the survivor’s lead in identifying the technologies that 
feel safest and most accessible for them.

Referring survivors to online chat services provided by national 
organizations, if the local service provider does not have the 
capacity to implement this option safely and sustainably.

For in-depth recommendations and resources related to online/digital 
services, check out these resources from Tech Safety:

Using Technology to Communicate with Survivors During a Public Health 
Crisis: nsvrc.co/UsingTechnology

Best Practices When Using Mobile Devices for Advocacy: 
nsvrc.co/MobileDevices

Digital Services Toolkit: nsvrc.co/DigitalServicesToolkit

Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: nsvrc.co/COVID19Toolkit

Creative Service Venues

In order to make supportive services accessible to survivors of sexual 
violence, advocates and other service providers need to meet them 
where they are, both figuratively and in many cases literally. 
Disasters exacerbate many of the barriers that already prevent 
survivors from being able to visit rape crisis centers or other 
traditional locations for in-person support. Therefore, many service 
providers find innovative ways to move services out of their offices 
and into other community settings that survivors can more readily 
access. For example:

Partnering with pharmacies, grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, 
food banks, and other essential businesses and services where 
survivors can use code words to ask employees to contact victim 
services on their behalf, or provide them with a safe place to make 
the call (Kottasová & Di Donato, 2020; Rise, n.d.).

Coordinating with a survivor so that you “just happen coincidentally 
to be at the local market at the same time to do your weekly shopping” 
to meet up with a survivor at a grocery store or other essential 
business for quick check in (NRC, 2020d).

Arranging to meet in a parking lot, where the survivor and service 
provider each stay in their separate cars and talk with each other 
over cell phones. They can see and hear each other, and talk privately 
without risk of exposure during an epidemic or pandemic (NRC, 2020d).

Providing services on-site at evacuation centers, emergency shelters, 
hotels and motels, faith-based shelters and housing programs, or other 
places where people are being housed in a disaster (Head Start ECLKC, 
2020; SAMHSA, n.d.a).

Social Connection

Disasters disrupt social networks and increase isolation for many 
survivors. Service providers can help to foster social connection in 
multiple ways, including:

Proactively reaching out by text, email, or phone call (depending on 
how the survivor previously connected with services) to check in with 
survivors and help people feel connected and less isolated (NRC, 2020b).

Working with survivors to identify people they can reach out to for 
connection and support, including friends, family, neighbors, 
culturally specific organizations, faith community, service providers, 
etc. The pod mapping resource developed by the Bay Area Transformative 
Justice Collection can be useful to share with survivors (Mingus, 2016).

Providing warm referrals to other service providers and community 
organizations to facilitate smoother connections and continuity of 
care. This can be especially important for survivors who are 
evacuating or otherwise relocating to other areas (Head Start ECLKC, 
2020).

Safety Planning

Safety planning is always centered around the survivor’s own knowledge 
of what they need and what will work for them to be physically and 
emotionally safe. Safety means something different for everyone and 
can take on new meanings and challenges in the context of disasters. 
Some strategies to consider include:

Exploring times and places where the survivor could come into contact 
with the perpetrator(s) (if they aren’t currently sheltering in place 
together) and creating plans to help stay safe, such as alternating 
routes, changing routines, and requesting accompaniment and support 
from trusted others (ACESDV, n.d.c).

Identifying opportunities to safely and privately reach out for 
services when sheltering in place with someone who is abusive, such 
as going into the bathroom and running water, going for a walk or 
walking the dog, going to the laundry room or laundromat, grocery 
shopping or getting water, picking up medications, getting gas, etc. 
(ACESDV, n.d.a).

Offering alternative ways of communicating that may be more private 
under the circumstances, such as online chat or text messaging.

Identifying safe people to contact in case of an emergency — such as
neighbors, family, friends, co-workers, or others — and creating a 
code word or signal with those trusted individuals to indicate when 
help is urgently needed.

For more information about safety planning in the context of COVID-19 
and other disasters, visit:

An Advocate’s Guide to Safety Planning During COVID-19 from the 
Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence: 
nsvrc.co/SafetyPlanning

Feeling Safe in Your Body and Mind: A Guide for Survivors of 
Sexual Violence from the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic 
Violence: nsvrc.co/FeelingSafe

Safety Plan for Sexual Assault Survivors from the North Carolina 
Coalition Against Sexual Assault: nsvrc.co/SafetyPlanForSurvivors 

Coping and Self-Care Strategies

Supporting survivors in coping and self-care is foundational to the 
work of advocacy. During disasters, survivors may find that their 
usual capacities for coping are overwhelmed and their strategies for 
self-care may be disrupted or out of reach. Some techniques that may 
be particularly useful in these times include:

Creating routines to help create a sense of normalcy, predictability, 
and control. This might include things like starting each day with the 
same activity, like light exercise or stretching, making the bed, 
journaling, or another calming activity; setting regular times for 
errands, meals, etc.; scheduling a regular daily or weekly time to 
connect with family, friends, or other sources of support 
(ACESDV, n.d.d).

Identifying triggers — what makes the survivor feel unsafe, anxious, 
or overwhelmed — and exploring strategies for working through them 
when they occur.

Practicing grounding skills, such as breathing exercises, noticing 
small details about the surrounding environment, or visualizing places 
of safety and comfort.

Encouraging breaks from news and social media, if they are adding to 
feelings of anxiety and stress.

For additional resources and suggestions related to coping and 
self-care, visit:

Let’s Get Grounded: A Toolkit for Survivors from the Arizona Coalition 
to End Sexual and Domestic Violence: nsvrc.co/LetsGetGrounded

Self-Care During COVID-19 from the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and 
Domestic Violence: nsvrc.co/SelfCareDuringCOVID19

A Toolkit for Survivors During COVID-19 from metoo movement: 
nsvrc.co/ToolkitForSurvivors 

Coping Strategies for Complex Trauma Survivors Contending with the 
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic from The Foundation Trust: 
nsvrc.co/CopingStrategies

A Guide for Survivors of Sex Trafficking During COVID-19 from 
Sanctuary for Families: nsvrc.co/SurvivorsOfTrafficking

Student’s Guide to Radical Healing from the University of Nevada, 
Las Vegas: nsvrc.co/RadicalHealing

Strategies for Sustainable Prevention

The conditions of risk and inequity that lead to increased sexual 
violence and hardship for survivors during disasters do not materialize 
when disaster strikes or end when disaster recedes. They precede, 
are magnified, and often become further entrenched by disasters. As 
these conditions are exposed during and after disasters, survivors, 
advocates, community organizers, service providers, and others 
invested in sexual violence prevention have the opportunity to create 
programs, build coalitions, and enact policies that foster safer, 
healthier, and more equitable communities free from sexual violence, 
not only in times of disaster, but at all times.

Organizational Change

Transformative change to effectively and equitably prevent sexual 
violence during and beyond disasters often starts with change within 
organizations and institutions, including those that focus on victim 
services, emergency services, and disaster preparedness and response.

“Whether it’s a coronavirus pandemic or climate change or any number 
of increasing natural and military-based and disease-based disasters, 
we create the conditions now for the communities we want to live in 
tomorrow…” 
— Susan Raffo (2020, para. 20)

Accountability to survivors

People who have experienced trauma have unparalleled expertise in 
their own strengths, resources, and needs. This is true of survivors 
of sexual violence, survivors of disasters, and survivors of other 
forms of trauma. It is vital that service providers across all sectors 
embrace and uplift survivor leadership by:

Centering the wisdom and experiences of those most affected by 
structural inequities and the resulting human, material, economic, 
and environmental losses and impacts of disasters.

Adapting services and models to be responsive to survivors and the 
contexts of their lives.

Creating systems by which survivors can provide meaningful input and 
feedback regarding programs and services and hold community 
organizations and systems accountable.

Proactively identifying survivor communities who are underserved or 
unserved by existing programs and organizations, learning from those 
communities about their strengths and needs, building relationships 
and investing resources to ensure that culturally responsive and 
accessible services are available to all survivors.

The anti-trafficking movement has developed several resources that 
offer a model for centering survivor leadership within organizations:
Toolkit for Building Survivor-Informed Organizations from the National 
Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center: 
nsvrc.co/SurvivorInformedOrgs

Survivor-Informed Practice: Self-Guided Assessment Tool from the 
National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center: 
nsvrc.co/SurvivorInformedPractice 

Survivor Engagement Resources from Survivor Alliance: 
nsvrc.co/SurvivorEngagement

Survivor-Centered and Survivor-Led Practices from Youth 
Collaboratory: nsvrc.co/SurvivorCentered

Accountability to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Organizations

“...The expertise about what harms and heals lies primarily with 
trauma survivors.” 
(Taggart et al., 2020, para. 16)

Culturally specific and tribal programs are a lifeline for many BIPOC 
survivors. They provide support and services that are rooted in 
historical resilience and ancestral ways, build upon and organize 
networks for mutual aid, and center the lived experiences of people 
and communities who have been systematically marginalized by 
mainstream services and institutions. In these and other ways, 
organizations led by and for BIPOC communities hold expertise that is 
vitally essential for our collective survival and recovery during and 
beyond disasters. Despite this, they are consistently under-funded and 
often excluded from the continuum of care and referral pathways in 
many communities. Mainstream service providers have much to learn 
through intentional and transformative collaboration with and 
accountability to BIPOC-led organizations by:

Learning about the work of culturally specific and tribal 
organizations working locally, regionally, and nationally to center 
the voices and experiences of BIPOC survivors.

Entering into partnerships with BIPOC-led organizations with humility 
and respect, and a willingness to build relationships and offer 
support in ways that may be unfamiliar (National Resource Center on 
Domestic Violence [NRCDV] & NSVRC, 2021). 

Offering more resources, support, and power in partnerships and 
collaborations with culturally specific and tribal organizations than 
they take (NRCDV & NSVRC, 2021). 

Compensating culturally specific and tribal partners for the expertise 
and time they share with mainstream organizations and service providers.

Advocating with funders to allocate and increase funding dedicated to 
BIPOC-led organizations to support their work.

To learn more, explore the work of these and other national BIPOC-led 
organizations:

Black Women’s Blueprint: www.blackwomensblueprint.org

DC Rape Crisis Center (DCRCC): www.dcrcc.org

Multicultural Efforts to end Sexual Assault (MESA): 
www.asec.purdue.edu/mesa

National Organization of Asians and Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual 
Violence (NAPIESV): www.napiesv.org

National Organization of Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault 
(SCESA): www.sisterslead.org

Visioning B.E.A.R. Circle Intertribal Coalition: 
www.visioningbear.org

Women of Color Network: www.wocninc.org

Anti-Oppression Work Within Organizations

Fundamentally, preventing sexual violence in disasters, and at all 
times, requires uprooting systems and structures of oppression and 
organizing communities around the guiding principles of equity and 
justice. This work starts at home within organizations and institutions, 
including victim services, emergency response, disaster management, 
and other sectors and systems. Some organizations may have incorporated 
this work since their origins, some have made significant investments, 
and some are just beginning to have these conversations. Organizations 
and systems must commit to the ongoing process of integrating 
anti-racism and anti-oppression into all aspects of their work and 
workplaces, for example (Potapchuk et al., 2005):

Assessing readiness for and commitment to dismantling oppression at 
all levels of the organization.

Developing a common language and analysis for having honest and hard 
conversations about racism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, 
sexism, and other oppressions within organizational culture and 
processes.

Evaluating policies, practices, procedures, and programs through the 
lens of racial and social equity.

Centering equity in decision-making throughout the organization.

Providing training and coaching for all employees to consistently 
apply anti-racism and anti-oppression lenses to their work.

Creating systems of accountability and indicators of progress towards 
dismantling oppression and increasing equity within the organization.

For more information and resources to support anti-oppression work in 
organizations, visit:

Plan: Organization Change from Racial Equity Tools: 
nsvrc.co/PlanProcessOrgChange 

Strategies: Organizational Change Process from Racial Equity Tools: 
nsvrc.co/StrategiesOrgChange 

Operationalizing Racial Justice in Non-Profit Organizations from 
MP Associates: nsvrc.co/RacialJusticeNonProfit  

White Supremacy Culture in Organizations from The Centre for Community 
Organizations (COCo): nsvrc.co/WhiteSupremacyinOrgs 

Anti-Racism Resource Collection from Resource Sharing Project:
nsvrc.co/AntiRacismResource 

Anti-Oppression from Resource Sharing Project: nsvrc.co/Anti-Oppression 
Anti-Racism as Violence Prevention from Futures Without Violence: 
nsvrc.co/ViolencePrevention  

Anti-Racism is Fundamental to Sexual Assault Services from Sexual 
Assault Demonistration Initiative: nsvrc.co/AntiRacismFundamental 
 
Interrupting Racism & Other Forms of Oppression from Elevate | Uplift: 
nsvrc.co/InterruptingOppression 

Trauma-Informed Organizational Management and Supervision

Organizational leaders have the responsibility to ensure that the 
organization’s practices, policies, and culture are rooted in a trauma-
informed framework. Staff and volunteers, many of whom are themselves 
survivors of sexual violence or other trauma, must have the support 
and resources they need to sustain their own wellness and safety, as 
well as the emotional capacity to provide meaningful services to others.
 Disasters often shine a bright light on the need for these supports, 
but they are also beneficial and necessary in the daily work of 
organizations in the absence of disaster as well. During the COVID-19 
pandemic, many victim and social services organizations have 
incorporated trauma-informed supervision practices, workplace 
flexibilities, emotional and social supports, and other measures to 
support the well-being of staff and volunteers. These strategies can 
be sustained and built upon for ongoing trauma-informed organizational 
culture, including:

Recognizing that staff, volunteers, and their families are also 
personally impacted by disasters or other traumatic events and need 
support for their own trauma and grief, physical and emotional safety, 
caregiving responsibilities, economic, housing, food security, and 
other needs (IFRC, n.d.b).

Consulting with staff about their needs and providing flexibility in 
work hours, locations, and deadlines (IFRC, n.d.b).

Acknowledging and providing support around the logistical, physical, 
and emotional challenges that can arise when staff need to work from 
home, including difficulties maintaining emotional boundaries between 
personal life and work life and decreased access to colleagues for 
collaboration and support (Kindelan, 2020; Polaris, 2020e).

Ensuring that organizational policies give staff access to paid time 
off and encourage staff and volunteers to take breaks from the work.

Providing free and easy-to-access mental health support through an 
Employee Assistance Program or similar resource (IFRC, n.d.b).

Offering affordable health insurance coverage for staff and their 
families to support access to quality medical and mental health care.

Designating time in workday schedules for healing, meditation, or 
other self-care.

Recognizing and celebrating the creativity of staff and volunteers in 
adapting to new challenges, strategizing and problem solving, and 
continuing to deliver essential services and support to survivors and 
communities.

Checking in more frequently with supervisees, creating space for staff 
to talk about work-related stress, vicarious trauma, and vicarious 
resilience.

Asking staff and volunteers what they need to thrive in their work and 
actively striving to meet those needs.

Ensuring that workloads are manageable, flexible, and diverse, with 
healthy expectations and boundaries around the work.

Providing regular opportunities for social connection among colleagues 
for formal and informal debriefing, collaboration, peer learning, 
relationship building, and mutual support.

Building trust and supporting a sense of predictability through clear 
communication, consistent and equitable guidelines and expectations, 
and transparent decision-making processes.

Ensuring that organizational leaders have their own support structures, 
both professional and therapeutic (Orlene Davis, personal 
communication, June 29, 2021).

For additional resources related to trauma-informed organizations, 
visit:

COVID-19: Considerations for a Trauma Informed Response for Work 
Settings from Trauma Informed Oregon: nsvrc.co/COVIDTraumaInformed 

Supervising During the Pandemic from Workplaces Respond to Domestic 
& Sexual Violence: nsvrc.co/PandemicSupervising  

Leading During Traumatic & Triggering Events from Diversity Equity 
Inclusiveness Consulting: nsvrc.co/LeadingDuringTriggeringEvents 

Building Cultures of Care: A Guide for Sexual Assault Services 
Programs from Sexual Assault Demonstration Initiative: 
nsvrc.co/CulturesofCare 

NCTSN Trauma-Informed Organizational Assessment from The National 
Child Traumatic Stress Network: nsvrc.co/TraumaInformedAssessment 

Resources for Organizations from Trauma Informed Oregon: 
nsvrc.co/TIOResources 

A Guide to Trauma-Informed Supervision from Pennsylvania Coalition 
Against Rape: nsvrc.co/TraumaInformedSupervision 

Organizational Trauma and Resilience from Resource Sharing Project: 
nsvrc.co/OrgTraumaResilience 

The Vicarious Trauma Toolkit from Office for Victims of Crime: 
nsvrc.co/VicariousTraumaToolkit 

Coalition Building

Disasters, by definition, overwhelm the available resources within 
affected communities. The scope of problems and range of needs 
created by disaster are far too vast for any single organization or 
entity to address alone. Collaboration is essential for survival and 
recovery. The same is true of sexual violence, both during and beyond 
disasters. Preventing and responding to sexual violence requires 
multi-racial, multi-system, multi-sectoral responses in collaboration 
with organizers and organizations addressing a wide range of risk 
factors and providing comprehensive pathways to healing. Every part 
needs to see the major role they play, as one cannot succeed without 
the success of all.

Community coalitions — which may take the form of committees, task 
forces, or other alliances and partnerships — are often formed in 
response to major events, outside threats, sudden changes, new 
information, or a desire for meaningful social change (Community Tool 
Box, n.d.). Disasters are likely to bring about any or all of these 
circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing frequency and 
severity of other natural- and human-caused disasters have motivated 
many organizations and individuals to seek out, establish, and 
revitalize collaborative spaces to address disasters and their effects 
in their communities. Bringing together and joining with community 
partners to plan for, respond to, and recover from disaster can help 
to facilitate connections, strengthen resources, and enact policies 
and protocols to prevent sexual violence and promote healing during a 
crisis and long into the future.

“The problem of violence is deeply interconnected with a wide range of 
social conditions... Our solutions need to be as comprehensive and 
interconnected as the problems they seek to address. The challenge is 
to recognize natural allies whose work has an impact on violence 
prevention but whose motivation or interest may not be specifically 
about violence prevention.” 
— Berkeley Media Studies Group (Dorfman & Wallack, 2009)

Connect with Community Partners

It is important to think broadly and inclusively about community 
partners to engage with around issues of sexual violence and disasters. 
The factors that increase risks for sexual violence and barriers for 
survivors during disasters connect to virtually every sector in the 
community, as well as persistent systemic inequities in each, including 
housing, employment, mental and physical health, child care and 
education, city planning, transportation, police and prison systems, 
and others. Connecting with individuals, organizations, and systems 
that address these wide-ranging issues to plan for, respond to, and 
recover from disasters can help to prevent sexual violence and support 
healing throughout the community.

Key community partners may include:
 
Community residents

Culturally specific organizations 

Tribal organizations

Youth-serving organizations

Elder-serving organizations

Disabilities advocacy organizations

LGBTQ centers

HIV/AIDS community organizations

Religious congregations and faith-based organizations

Community advocacy groups

Housing programs and homeless shelters

Workforce development programs

Health care providers and systems 

Mental and behavioral health care providers and systems

Drug and alcohol treatment programs

Residential care facilities

Emergency responders and disaster managers

City/urban planners, public works, and transportation departments

Food banks and meal programs

Educational institutions

Child care and early learning centers

Businesses

Labor unions

Local and state policymakers

Local and state public health departments

Child welfare services

Adult protective services

Restorative and transformative justice programs

Law enforcement and corrections officials

Civil legal programs

Court systems

Rape crisis centers, domestic violence agencies, and other violence 
prevention and survivor advocacy organizations 

Each of these community partners will have different insights, 
resources, and capabilities to contribute. Connecting with both 
current and new partners creates opportunities to learn about each 
other’s experiences related to disasters, sexual violence, and 
intersecting issues such as economic and housing insecurity, health 
disparities, barriers to services, trauma and healing, mutual aid, 
and more. Service providers and other community stakeholders can begin 
to identify shared goals, collective strengths, common challenges, 
and opportunities for collaboration in disaster planning, response, 
and recovery.

Prioritize Equity

Whether engaging with an existing coalition or initiating a new 
collaborative endeavor to address sexual violence in disasters, an 
equity-focused approach that centers the experiences and leadership of 
people and communities most affected by the issues is essential. Black, 
Indigenous, and people of color; people experiencing economic and/or 
housing insecurity; documented and undocumented immigrants; people 
with disabilities; LGBTQ people; women and girls; older people; and 
young people face disproportionate risks and burdens from disasters.

In Flipping the Script: White Privilege and Community Building, Maggie
 Potapchuk offers concrete strategies and recommendations for promoting 
equity in multi-racial partnerships and community coalitions, including 
(Potapchuk et al., 2005):

Create inclusive, transparent, and equitable decision-making processes 
that seek to redistribute power to individuals and communities most 
impacted by inequities.

Pay consistent attention to whose voices are being heard and whose are 
not, and work to ensure that “the people most accustomed to controlling 
these processes (white people with respect to people of color; men 
with respect to women; wealthier people with respect to poorer people; 
advocates and system workers with respect to neighborhood residents)” 
are not dominating decision-making processes (p. 112).

Work to ensure that the cultural norms of predominantly white and 
mainstream organizations do not dominate group processes, timelines, 
agendas, deliverables, or assumptions about what is “best,” “normal,” 
or “appropriate.”

Actively learn about, honor, and create space for coalition members’ 
cultural practices, rituals, and community processes.

Establish consistent systems and processes by which the coalition will 
be accountable to community residents.

Recognize and acknowledge that predominantly white and mainstream 
organizations have often betrayed communities of color, and that 
community residents are taking risks when they partner with and trust 
entities that have historically caused harm.

Gather many different types of evidence to inform strategies and 
evaluate the coalition’s work and impact in the community, such as 
storytelling, shared wisdom from long-time residents or elders, 
quantitative and qualitative data from multiple sources, and levels 
of community participation, among others.

“A coalition is a powerful tool for mobilizing people to action and 
bringing equity to the forefront of multiple agendas.” 
— Prevention Institute (Prevention Institute, n.d.)

Creating and sustaining equity in a community coalition requires 
ongoing attention and conversation. It is important to take time to 
regularly check in with everyone involved in the coalition to review 
and assess equity and inclusion within the group’s processes, and make 
adjustments as needed (Orlene Davis, personal communication, 
June 29, 2021).

For more information about fostering equity in community coalitions, 
visit: 

Flipping the Script: White Privilege and Community Building from MP 
Associates: nsvrc.co/FlippingTheScript 

Fostering Equity: Creating Shared Understanding for Building Community 
Resilience from Center for Community Resilience: 
nsvrc.co/FosteringEquity 

“Chapter 27: Working Together for Racial Justice and Inclusion” 
in Community Tool Box from Center for Community Health and Development — 
University of Kansas: nsvrc.co/WorkingTogetherCommunityToolbox

Plan and Implement Prevention Strategies

The specific goals and activities of a community coalition will depend 
on the needs identified within the community and the assets and 
abilities of coalition members. The more coalition members can actively
and meaningfully contribute — whether in expertise, skills, or other 
resources — the more the coalition will achieve. Starting out with 
activities that can be accomplished in the short-term can help to boost 
the motivation, visibility, and credibility of the coalition to 
facilitate larger-scale, longer-term goals (Cohen et al., n.d.).

A community coalition working to increase safety and prevent violence 
during and after disasters might work on one or several of the 
following activities:

Conduct a community assessment related to sexual violence in disasters.
 
Community coalitions can work to identify the strengths, assets, needs, 
and challenges in the community that may affect risk factors for sexual 
violence and resources for healing during and following a disaster. 
This might include sharing and gathering stories about mutual aid 
efforts, innovative services, and individual and collective resilience, 
as well as inequities, underserved or unserved populations, and unmet 
needs in current or previous disasters. This process can help identify 
the most important and impactful issues for a community coalition to 
address and identify key strategies, partners, and resources that can 
help achieve shared goals (Smathers & Lobb, n.d.). 

Facilitate training for disaster responders, service providers, and 
community members. 

Community coalitions often provide a forum for both informal 
information sharing and more formal cross-training among their members.
For example, a coalition might request disaster response training from 
a local or state emergency management agency, and in turn offer to 
train regional emergency response teams in issues related to sexual 
violence, including trauma-informed and culturally informed responses 
and the potential for disasters to trigger trauma reactions among 
survivors of previous sexual abuse, harassment, or assault. Community 
coalitions may also collaborate on developing and delivering training 
opportunities to policymakers, service providers, and community 
members at large regarding roles that everyone can play in preventing 
sexual violence and supporting survivors in the context of disasters.

For more information about conducting a community assessment, visit:

Community Assessment from Ohioline — Ohio State University Extension: 
nsvrc.co/CommunityAssessment 

“Community Assessment” in Vision to Action: Take Charge Too from North
Central Regional Center for Rural Development — Iowa State University: 
nsvrc.co/VisiontoActionCommunityAssessment 

“Chapter 3: Assessing Community Needs and Resources” in Community Tool 
Box from Center for Community Health and Development — University of 
Kansas: nsvrc.co/AssessingCommunityNeedsCommunityToolbox 

Mapping the Assets of Your Community: A Key Component for Building 
Local Capacity from Southern Rural Development Center: 
nsvrc.co/MappingYourCommunity

Build and strengthen referral pathways that can be sustained or 
adapted in a disaster.  

Community coalitions can work to ensure that all service providers 
and systems are knowledgeable about one another’s work, including 
services offered and referral processes. This helps to foster a “no 
wrong door” approach to service provision, such that a community 
member who contacts any service can be connected directly to a broad 
range of support available throughout the community. This is valuable 
at all times, and even more so during a disaster when some services 
and systems may be temporarily unavailable, operating at reduced 
capacity, and/or overwhelmed by requests for services. Organizations 
can support community members and each other by answering questions, 
assisting with triage, and helping to connect residents to a full 
spectrum of services to meet their needs. These service networks 
should include housing and homelessness programs, food banks and meal 
programs, culturally specific organizations and advocacy groups, faith
communities, holistic health care and healing arts practitioners, and 
other community organizations and partners whose critical roles in 
preventing sexual violence and supporting survivors are often 
overlooked in mainstream referral networks for sexual violence 
response. Community coalitions can create or update service directories 
that can be distributed throughout the community and provide updates 
as service availability and contact information may change in the 
event of a disaster.

Share, strengthen, and coordinate disaster response and recovery plans. 
Community coalitions can work to develop more cohesive, comprehensive,
and coordinated disaster response and recovery plans that address the 
increased risk factors for sexual violence and the complex healing 
needs of survivors in a disaster. Each member of the coalition can 
review and share their own organization’s, agency’s, or community’s 
plans for ensuring continuity of services during a crisis, and members 
can support each other in strengthening and coordinating plans 
throughout the community. This process can also help to ensure that 
critical funding, staffing, and other resources are getting where they 
are most needed and prevents stakeholders from working at cross-purposes 
or unnecessarily duplicating efforts when disaster strikes. It is 
important to consider disaster response and recovery plans through the 
lens of risk factors for sexual violence perpetration and victimization 
— including economic and housing insecurity, health inequities, and 
barriers to services — so that these can be anticipated and mitigated 
wherever possible. 

Develop and distribute community messaging related to sexual violence 
in disasters. Community coalitions can reach a wider audience than any 
one of its members would reach alone. Using social media, email blasts 
and newsletters, text or phone banking, posters, flyers and palm cards, 
television and radio public service announcements, news media, word of 
mouth, and other channels, coalition members and other community 
stakeholders can work together to amplify key messages in the community 
to prevent sexual violence and support survivors before, during, and 
after disasters. Key messages include:

Support is available — Acknowledging the effects of disasters on mental 
and behavioral health, promoting help-seeking, and providing 
information about available services in the community can help to 
reduce risk factors for perpetration, decrease vulnerabilities for 
victimization, and provide support to people healing from sexual 
violence. Messages can also offer suggestions for healthy coping 
strategies and where to get support with these strategies, in the 
context of the disaster. Information about legal protections and 
options related to housing, employment, immigration, health care, 
disaster relief, public benefits, and other arenas can also help to 
mitigate potential risk factors for sexual violence in disasters. Make 
sure that information about community services — such as availability, 
hours, and location — is verified before distributing (IFRC, n.d.b).

How to help — Promoting skills and support for noticing and 
interrupting abusive behavior in the context of disasters encourages 
bystander intervention. It also signals to people who might be inclined 
to commit sexual violence that others in their community will be 
looking out for these behaviors. Messaging could include examples 
related to sexually exploitative behavior and sexual violence by 
landlords, employers, caregivers, family members, humanitarian workers, 
or other potential offenders, and a variety of strategies for 
interrupting and intervening in these situations.

It is important to collaborate with community partners in developing 
community messages to ensure that they are relevant, accurate, and 
accessible to everyone throughout the community. This includes planning 
for translation or transcreation of written resources in multiple 
languages, and distribution through linguistically and culturally 
diverse media and venues. Messages should be survivor-centered and 
inclusive of survivors of all genders, ages, abilities, cultures, and 
experiences to avoid further stigmatization or marginalization of any 
survivor community (IFRC, n.d.b).

Advance policies that prevent sexual violence and support survivors.

By bringing together organizers and organizations from across the 
community, coalitions can combine their clout and constituencies to 
wield a large amount of political influence. They can work to educate 
local, state, regional, and even national policymakers about funding 
and policy changes needed to prevent sexual violence and support 
survivors as communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from 
disasters. The next section outlines additional considerations related 
to policy education efforts.

“Supporting survivor-led initiatives to determine specific policy 
changes is critical to a just system of change that is truly inclusive, 
better supports the needs of survivors, and also works to end systemic 
sexual violence in the U.S. and throughout the world.” 
(Ruíz et al., 2020, p. 22)

Policy Education

Policies at all levels — organizational, municipal, state, national, 
and international — can be implemented that help to prevent and 
respond to sexual violence both during times of crisis and at all 
times. Community organizers and organizations can play significant 
roles in educating policymakers about the experiences, strengths, 
innovations, challenges, and needs of their constituents. As the 
country and the world seek to rebuild after the devastation of the 
COVID-19 pandemic and other current and recent disasters, attention 
must be paid not only to the needs for violence prevention and 
survivor support in the present moment, but also to policies and 
infrastructures that will build and sustain safer, healthier, more 
equitable communities for the long-term future. 

Equity Analysis

In order to prevent sexual violence in disasters, policies must 
explicitly account for and attend to the social, economic, political, 
and health inequities that create disproportionate harms and risks 
among historically marginalized communities. 

Policymakers can:

Apply an equity analysis to emergency preparedness and response plans 
at every level: organizational, city, state, national, and 
international.

Assess and address disparate impacts of plans and policies among BIPOC 
communities, poor and low-income people, people experiencing 
homelessness or housing instability, documented and undocumented 
immigrants, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities and chronic illness, 
people in later life, youth, women, and victims/survivors of sexual 
and gender-based violence.

Facilitate meaningful participation of individuals and communities 
who are disproportionately impacted by the primary and secondary 
effects of disasters, including increased risks of sexual violence 
victimization, in decision-making processes related to disaster 
planning, response, and recovery (IFRC, n.d.a). 

Ensure that policies enacted to prevent, respond to, and recover from 
disaster proactively address increased risks of sexual violence 
victimization and needs of survivors.

Prioritize resources for individuals and households at particular risk 
from the secondary impacts of disasters, such as economic, housing, 
and food insecurity, who experience heightened vulnerability to sexual 
violence victimization (IFRC, n.d.a).

Data Collection and Surveillance

Policymakers, program planners, and emergency responders need 
significantly more data regarding risks and prevalence of sexual 
violence in disasters to identify, implement, and evaluate effective 
prevention strategies.

Policymakers can:

Collect and analyze gender-, age-, disability-, and race-disaggregated 
data to measure differential impacts, barriers, and risks being faced 
by different groups in the context of disaster (IDSA & HIVMA, 2020; 
IFRC, n.d.a).

Ensure that surveillance systems developed to monitor the impacts of 
disasters include indicators of sexual violence incidence, prevalence, 
and risk factors (IFRC, n.d.a, n.d.b; WHO, 2005). Include data from 
sources beyond law enforcement, as the overwhelming majority of sexual 
assaults are never reported.

Use data to inform and adjust efforts and interventions to best meet 
the needs of individuals and communities disproportionately impacted 
by disaster and resulting risk factors for sexual violence 
(IFRC, n.d.a; UN Women, n.d.b).

Essential Services

Services that help to prevent sexual violence from happening and 
support survivors’ healing when it does are life-saving and must be 
recognized and prioritized as essential during disasters and always. 
This includes programs and services that reduce risk factors for 
sexual violence perpetration and victimization — including housing, 
mental health, and substance abuse treatment — as well as those that 
provide direct emotional, informational, and material support to 
survivors.

Policymakers can:

Expand definitions of essential services to include sexual and domestic 
violence agencies and shelters, sexual and reproductive health clinics, 
mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, housing programs, 
and other services critical for preventing sexual violence and 
supporting survivors (Bleiweis & Ahmed, 2020).

Dedicate funding to ensure that these essential services are fully 
funded and equipped to operate safely during and beyond disasters, 
including living wages for workers, access to personal protective 
equipment and other needed supplies, and adequate funding and other 
resources to respond to the increased volume and complexity of 
community needs in disasters (Bleiweis & Ahmed, 2020; Bradbury-Jones 
& Isham, 2020; NAESV, 2020; Roesch et al., 2020).

Allocate additional funding to culturally specific and tribal 
organizations that provide services to BIPOC survivors, immigrant 
survivors, LGBTQ survivors, survivors with disabilities, and other 
underserved communities who are disproportionately affected by 
disasters, their effects, and barriers to healing (Ramírez, 2020; 
Survivors’ Agenda, n.d.; NTF, 2020; Ujima, n.d.).

Protect funding that has been previously allocated for the essential 
services outlined above, and ensure that existing resources are not 
diverted elsewhere in the event of disasters (IFRC, n.d.a).

Incorporate explicit exemptions for seeking safety or services related 
to sexual or gender-based violence when implementing curfews, travel 
restrictions, or orders to shelter in place during disasters. Ensure 
that survivors are not harassed, punished, fined, or put at further 
risk for violating these orders while escaping an abusive situation 
or accessing essential services (IFRC, n.d.b; Roesch et al., 2020; 
SAMHSA, n.d.a; UN Women, n.d.b). 

Ensure that people are able to access essential services regardless 
of immigration status, and that seeking services will in no way lead 
to detention, deportation, or involvement of immigration authorities 
(Hayes, 2020; IFRC, n.d.a). Provide guidance and resources to ensure 
that individuals and communities are informed, in both written and 
spoken formats and in multiple languages, that services are available 
to immigrants who are undocumented.

Invest in equitable access to technology so that all community 
residents can access essential services online, which is often the 
only option available in the event of a disaster. This might include 
technology subsidy programs, wireless internet hotspots in public 
spaces, funding for community-based organizations to distribute mobile 
devices, or other measures (Evans et al., 2020; Human Rights Watch, 
2020; NRC & Common Justice, 2020).

“The core definition of equity is to provide the greatest support to 
those with greatest need… It is separate from equality, which is 
providing the same resources to everyone regardless of need. One of 
the core tenets of emergency management is to work to stabilize and 
heal communities from the disruption caused by disaster. As such, it 
is important to recognize the role that equity plays in communities’ 
ability to mitigate, prepare, respond, and recover from a disaster.” 
— FEMA National Advisory Council (FEMA, 2020)

Trauma-Informed Systems

Disasters create widespread trauma in affected communities. In the 
case of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has experienced a level of 
collective trauma that has rarely been seen before in human history 
and that will continue to impact the global community for generations. 
This comes at a time when many individuals, families, and communities 
are already reeling from an epidemic of trauma tied to widespread 
sexual violence, intimate partner violence, child abuse, elder abuse, 
hate violence, state violence, historical and enduring oppressions, 
and other traumas. The need for trauma-informed practices and approaches
 in all systems and aspects of society could not be more apparent or 
more urgent.

Policymakers can:

Allocate funding in disaster relief and recovery packages to implement 
and expand trauma-informed approaches throughout affected communities 
(Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice [CTIPP], 2020).

Provide support, guidance, and funding opportunities for local and 
state systems to integrate trauma-informed practices across all sectors, 
including housing, health, education, early childhood education and 
child care, law enforcement, immigration, corrections, and courts 
(CTIPP, 2020; Futures Without Violence, 2018; Scattergood Foundation, n.d.).

Designate or create a local and/or state entity to support efforts 
related to implementing trauma-informed approaches through training 
and technical assistance (CTIPP, 2020; Yatchmenoff, 2015).

Incorporate requirements for sector-specific training on trauma-
informed practices into funding announcements and contracts with 
community service providers (Futures Without Violence, 2018).

Economic Justice

Widespread economic inequities contribute to elevated risks and 
prevalence of sexual violence, with disproportionate impact on people 
and communities who are already economically marginalized. Advancing 
economic justice can help to prevent sexual violence before, during, 
and after disasters.

Policymakers can:

Implement and extend rent and mortgage relief, eviction moratoria, 
vouchers for temporary housing, and utilities relief to prevent 
housing insecurity and homelessness caused or exacerbated by disasters 
(Polaris, 2020a).

Invest in safe and affordable housing and rapid-re-housing programs 
for individuals and families who are homeless to prevent sexual 
violence, reduce trauma, and shorten the lengths of stay in emergency 
and transitional shelters (Survivors’ Agenda, n.d.).

Extend worker protections, including wage and hour laws, occupational 
safety standards, and protections from harassment and discrimination, 
to all workers, regardless of type of work or immigration status. This 
would help to protect the essential domestic workers, farmworkers, 
tipped workers, gig workers, and others who are disproportionately 
affected by the economic impacts of disaster and resulting risks of 
sexual violence (Lindsay, 2020; Survivors’ Agenda, n.d.; Wolfe et al., 
2020).

Ensure that all workers receive a living wage (Lindsay, 2020; Ramírez, 
2020; Survivors’ Agenda, n.d.; Wolfe et al., 2020).

Extend paid family, medical, sick, and safe leave to include time off 
related to sexual violence, intimate partner violence, human 
trafficking, and stalking. This allows survivors of violence to take 
time off from work to access essential services, heal from abuse, and 
seek safety (Bleiweis & Ahmed, 2020; Ruíz et al., 2020).

Invest to increase the availability and accessibility of affordable, 
quality child care so that workers — particularly women, low-wage 
workers, and many essential workers — do not have to choose between 
their livelihoods or their children’s safety in the context of 
disasters or otherwise (Ramírez, 2020; Survivors’ Agenda, n.d.).

Extend unemployment benefits and emergency stimulus payments to 
individuals and families who have been historically excluded, including
 gig workers, people residing in households with mixed immigration 
status, and resident and nonresident immigrants who have been issued an 
individual tax identification number (ITIN) (Bleiweis & Ahmed, 2020; 
Ramírez, 2020).

Fund direct unrestricted cash assistance programs for survivors of 
sexual and gender-based violence, and allow victim services 
organizations to use their state-issued funding for this purpose, so 
that survivors can do what they need to get and stay safe (Bleiweis & 
Ahmed, 2020; Doyle et al., 2020; Durrence et al., 2021; Ruíz et al., 2020).

Health Equity

Systemic inequities in health, health insurance, and health care 
create significant barriers to essential physical and mental health 
services and increase risk factors for sexual violence perpetration 
and victimization, both during disasters and otherwise.

Policymakers can:

Ensure that all health insurance policies fully cover mental health 
services without co-pay, including trauma-informed, culturally 
specific, and identity-affirming services and providers, as well as 
substance abuse treatment and harm reduction services (Ruíz et al., 2020).

Fully fund the Indian Health Service to ensure adequate health care 
for Indigenous peoples (Doshi et al., 2020; IDSA & HIVMA, 2020; 
National Congress of American Indians [NCAI], n.d.; Smith, 2018; 
Warne & Frizzell, 2014).

Invest in community health centers, particularly in underserved rural 
and migrant communities, to expand access to health care, including 
trauma-informed services for survivors of sexual violence (Ramírez, 
2020; Survivors’ Agenda, n.d.).

Require all employers of essential workers — including domestic, 
agricultural, and service industry workers — to provide personal 
protective equipment and other resources needed in an epidemic, 
pandemic, or other disaster, and protect workers in all industries 
from retaliation for reporting violations of workplace safety protocols 
(Ramírez, 2020).

Moving Forward

“We can not go back to business as usual after this experience. We 
have to apply what we learned to our lives, to our politics, and to 
our relationships, so that if and when this happens again, whether 
it’s a pandemic or a climate catastrophe, we can be fully prepared as 
communities. This might look like voting in November, or working for 
medicare for all in your state or region, or working within your 
community to build gardens and food banks, bringing in renewable 
energy so we are not dependent on grids or oil and gas. This moment 
can feel scary and strange but again, when you quiet worries and the 
fears, it’s moments like this that really urge us to become strong, 
innovative, holistic-minded and resilient peoples.” 
— NDN Collective (Begay, 2020, para. 18)

Disasters can shake and reshape our understanding of the world and our 
place within it. During the COVID-19 pandemic and other recent 
disasters, we have seen how past and present policies, practices, and 
funding priorities leave our communities vulnerable to disasters and 
their devastating effects, including increased risks of sexual violence. 
These conditions disproportionately burden Black, Indigenous, and 
people of color, people experiencing economic and housing insecurity, 
documented and undocumented immigrants, people with disabilities, 
people in later life, youth, LGBTQ people, women, trans and non-binary 
people, and other historically marginalized communities. The costs to 
lives and livelihoods are immeasurable. We have seen that these same 
conditions contribute to widespread sexual abuse, harassment, and 
assault. Perhaps most importantly, we have seen that all of this was 
true before these disasters, and will continue to be true unless and 
until we take collective, sustained, and urgently needed action to 
change it.

At the same time, we have seen our immense capacity for resilience, 
innovation, and collective care in action. People have uplifted and 
reconnected with ancestral ways of healing. Neighborhoods have come 
together to share in mutual aid, ranging from meals to housing to 
child care and more. Service providers have innovated and adapted to 
more holistically and accessibly meet the growing and changing needs 
of the people they serve. Community leaders have formed new coalitions, 
both formal and informal, to pool their resources and efforts to 
contain multiple and mounting crises and build back better for the 
future. Across the country, people have rallied together to demand 
racial justice, economic justice, and social change. We have seen 
that we are all connected, that together our small actions can have 
enormous impact, and that everyone has a vital role to play in our 
collective resilience and survival.

The work of achieving racial and socioeconomic equity, preventing 
sexual violence, and preparing for and recovering from disasters is 
inseparably intertwined. Moving forward, let us take what we have 
learned and use it to grow our support networks, strengthen systems 
of care, advance racial equity and social justice, and ensure that all 
of our communities are healthy, safe, and free from sexual violence — 
not only when the next disaster strikes, but today and every day.

“What I have seen after earlier disasters is that a lot of people 
aspire to ‘go home’ and ‘back to normal’, but some find in the moment 
a sense of self and a sense of connection so meaningful that something 
about who they were and what they did in the crisis carries forward 
into how they live the rest of their life. Sometimes this is as 
intangible as a change of priorities and habits, and a new sense of 
agency; not uncommonly, it’s as substantial as a new coalition, a new 
network, a new set of policy priorities, a new political career or a 
decision to go into work that supports the whole. And even those who 
want things to get back to normal often find they are changed 
permanently in their sense of who they are, and what matters most.” 
— Rebecca Solnit (Solnit, 2020, para. 34)

Recommended Resources

The resources recommended throughout the guide are listed below for 
easy reference. 

Visit NSVRC’s online resource collection on sexual violence in 
disasters to find additional resources for organization leaders, 
service providers, community organizers, and survivors: 
https://www.nsvrc.org/sexual-violence-disasters

For more information about addressing risk factors and preventing 
sexual violence, visit:

STOP SV: A Technical Package to Prevent Sexual Violence from the 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: nsvrc.co/STOP_SV 

Continuing the Dialogue: Learning from the Past and Looking to the 
Future of Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence Prevention 
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: 
nsvrc.co/ContinuingTheDialogue

Transforming Communities to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse and 
Exploitation: A Primary Prevention Approach from Prevention Institute: 
nsvrc.co/TransformingCommunities 

Sexual Violence and the Spectrum of Prevention from the National 
Sexual Violence Resource Center: nsvrc.co/SpectrumOfPrevention 

Engaging Communities in Sexual Violence Prevention from the Texas 
Association Against Sexual Assault: nsvrc.co/EngagingCommunities 

Engaging Bystanders to Prevent Sexual Violence Information Packet 
from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center: 
nsvrc.co/EngagingBystanders

For additional recommendations and resources related to housing 
advocacy for survivors of sexual violence, visit:Sexual Violence and 
Housing Resource Collection from the National Sexual Violence Resource 
Center: nsvrc.co/SVandHousing

Creating Spaces of Healing: Exploring Housing Advocacy from the 
Resource Sharing Project: nsvrc.co/CreatingSpaces 

Guidance for Using Hotels to Meet Survivors’ Immediate Safety and 
Housing Needs from the Domestic Violence and Housing Technical 
Assistance Consortium: nsvrc.co/UsingHotels 

Flexible Funding for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Survivors 
from the National Alliance for Safe Housing & Washington State 
Coalition Against Domestic Violence: nsvrc.co/FlexibleFunding: 

For in-depth recommendations and resources related to online/digital 
services, check out these resources from Tech Safety:

Using Technology to Communicate with Survivors During a Public Health 
Crisis: nsvrc.co/UsingTechnology

Best Practices When Using Mobile Devices for Advocacy: 
nsvrc.co/MobileDevices

Digital Services Toolkit: nsvrc.co/DigitalServicesToolkit

Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: nsvrc.co/COVID19Toolkit

For more information about safety planning in the context of COVID-19 
and other disasters, visit:

An Advocate’s Guide to Safety Planning During COVID-19 from the 
Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic Violence: 
nsvrc.co/SafetyPlanning

Feeling Safe in Your Body and Mind: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual 
Violence from the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and Domestic 
Violence: nsvrc.co/FeelingSafe

Safety Plan for Sexual Assault Survivors from the North Carolina 
Coalition Against Sexual Assault: nsvrc.co/SafetyPlanForSurvivors

For additional resources and suggestions related to coping and 
self-care, visit:

Let’s Get Grounded: A Toolkit for Survivors from the Arizona Coalition 
to End Sexual and Domestic Violence: nsvrc.co/LetsGetGrounded

Self-Care During COVID-19 from the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual and 
Domestic Violence: nsvrc.co/SelfCareDuringCOVID19

A Toolkit for Survivors During COVID-19 from metoo movement: 
nsvrc.co/ToolkitForSurvivors 

Coping Strategies for Complex Trauma Survivors Contending with the 
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic from The Foundation Trust: 
nsvrc.co/CopingStrategies

A Guide for Survivors of Sex Trafficking During COVID-19 from 
Sanctuary for Families: nsvrc.co/SurvivorsOfTrafficking

Student’s Guide to Radical Healing from the University of Nevada, 
Las Vegas: nsvrc.co/RadicalHealing

The anti-trafficking movement has developed several resources that 
offer a model for centering survivor leadership within organizations:

Toolkit for Building Survivor-Informed Organizations from the National 
Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center: 
nsvrc.co/SurvivorInformedOrgs

Survivor-Informed Practice: Self-Guided Assessment Tool from the 
National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center: 
nsvrc.co/SurvivorInformedPractice

Survivor Engagement Resources from Survivor Alliance: 
nsvrc.co/SurvivorEngagement

Survivor-Centered and Survivor-Led Practices from Youth Collaboratory: 
nsvrc.co/SurvivorCentered

To learn more, explore the work of these and other national BIPOC-led 
organizations:

Black Women’s Blueprint: www.blackwomensblueprint.org

DC Rape Crisis Center (DCRCC): www.dcrcc.org

Multicultural Efforts to end Sexual Assault (MESA): 
www.asec.purdue.edu/mesa
National Organization of Asians and Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual 
Violence (NAPIESV): www.napiesv.org

National Organization of Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault 
(SCESA): www.sisterslead.org

Visioning B.E.A.R. Circle Intertribal Coalition: 
www.visioningbear.org

Women of Color Network: www.wocninc.org

For more information and resources to support anti-oppression work in 
organizations, visit:

Plan: Organization Change from Racial Equity Tools: 
nsvrc.co/PlanProcessOrgChange  

Strategies: Organizational Change Process from Racial Equity Tools: 
nsvrc.co/StrategiesOrgChange 

Operationalizing Racial Justice in Non-Profit Organizations from MP 
Associates: nsvrc.co/RacialJusticeNonProfit  

White Supremacy Culture in Organizations from The Centre for Community 
Organizations (COCo): nsvrc.co/WhiteSupremacyinOrgs 

Anti-Racism Resource Collection from Resource Sharing Project: 
nsvrc.co/AntiRacismResource 

Anti-Oppression from Resource Sharing Project: 
nsvrc.co/Anti-Oppression 

Anti-Racism as Violence Prevention from Futures Without Violence: 
nsvrc.co/ViolencePrevention

Anti-Racism is Fundamental to Sexual Assault Services from Sexual 
Assault Demonstration Initiative: nsvrc.co/AntiRacismFundamental  

Interrupting Racism & Other Forms of Oppression from Elevate | Uplift: 
nsvrc.co/InterruptingOppression 

For additional resources related to trauma-informed organizations, 
visit:

COVID-19: Considerations for a Trauma Informed Response for Work 
Settings from Trauma Informed Oregon: nsvrc.co/COVIDTraumaInformed 

Supervising During the Pandemic from Workplaces Respond to Domestic & 
Sexual Violence: nsvrc.co/PandemicSupervising  

Leading During Traumatic & Triggering Events from Diversity Equity 
Inclusiveness Consulting: nsvrc.co/LeadingDuringTriggeringEvents 

Building Cultures of Care: A Guide for Sexual Assault Services 
Programs from Sexual Assault Demonstration Initiative: 
nsvrc.co/CulturesofCare 

NCTSN Trauma-Informed Organizational Assessment from The National 
Child Traumatic Stress Network: nsvrc.co/TraumaInformedAssessment 

Resources for Organizations from Trauma Informed Oregon: 
nsvrc.co/TIOResources 

A Guide to Trauma-Informed Supervision from Pennsylvania Coalition 
Against Rape: nsvrc.co/TraumaInformedSupervision 

Organizational Trauma and Resilience from Resource Sharing Project: 
nsvrc.co/OrgTraumaResilience 

The Vicarious Trauma Toolkit from Office for Victims of Crime: 
nsvrc.co/VicariousTraumaToolkit 

For more information about fostering equity in community coalitions, 
visit: 

Flipping the Script: White Privilege and Community Building from MP 
Associates: nsvrc.co/FlippingTheScript 

Fostering Equity: Creating Shared Understanding for Building Community 
Resilience from Center for Community Resilience: 
nsvrc.co/FosteringEquity 

“Chapter 27: Working Together for Racial Justice and Inclusion” in 
Community Tool Box from Center for Community Health and Development — 
University of Kansas: nsvrc.co/WorkingTogetherCommunityToolbox 

For more information about conducting a community assessment, visit:

Community Assessment from Ohioline — Ohio State University Extension: 
nsvrc.co/CommunityAssessment 

“Community Assessment” in Vision to Action: Take Charge Too from North 
Central Regional Center for Rural Development — Iowa State University: 
nsvrc.co/VisiontoActionCommunityAssessment 

“Chapter 3: Assessing Community Needs and Resources” in Community Tool 
Box from Center for Community Health and Development — University of 
Kansas: nsvrc.co/AssessingCommunityNeedsCommunityToolbox 

Mapping the Assets of Your Community: A Key Component for Building 
Local Capacity from Southern Rural Development Center: 
nsvrc.co/MappingYourCommunity

Glossary

Many of the key terms we have used in this guide are defined and 
discussed below. Our goal is to use language in ways that are 
informative and inclusive, while understanding that language can 
also be limited and oppressive, sometimes simultaneously. We recognize 
that language is complex and constantly evolving, and words have 
different meanings for different people, communities, and cultures. 
We support individuals and communities in using the language they 
choose to describe their own identities and experiences.

BIPOC

BIPOC is an acronym for Black, Indigenous, and people of color. It is 
used throughout this resource and in some activist and academic 
communities to acknowledge and center the specific violence, cultural 
erasure, and systemic oppression experienced by Black and Indigenous 
people in the United States.

Disaster
A disaster is a serious disruption of the functioning of a community 
or a society causing widespread human, material, economic, or 
environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the 
affected community or society to cope using its own resources (United 
Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, 2009).

Environmental Racism

Environmental racism is a form of systemic racism in which governmental, 
corporate, and other institutional policies and practices 
disproportionately expose Black, Indigenous, and people of color to 
health hazards such as pollution, toxins, and hazardous waste where 
they live and work.  

Epidemic

An epidemic is an unexpected increase in the number of cases of a 
disease within a population or region.

Historical Trauma
Historical trauma is “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding 
over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group 
trauma” (Brave Heart, n.d.).

Image-Based Sexual Abuse
Image-based sexual abuse refers to the non-consensual creation and/or 
distribution of sexual images or videos.

Latinx

The term Latinx is used in this document as an LGBTQ+ inclusive and 
gender-neutral alternative to the ways traditional Spanish grammar has 
reinforced sexism and the male/female binary. It is important to note 
that some people may use Latin@, Latine, or other terms to reflect the 
language of their communities.

LGBTQ

LGBTQ is an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer 
or questioning. It is used throughout this resource as an umbrella 
term for people whose sexual orientation and/or gender identities have 
been historically marginalized.

Online Enticement

Online enticement refers to someone communicating with a child online 
with the intent to commit a sexual offense, such as obtaining sexually 
explicit images, engaging in sexual conversation, and/or meeting in 
person for sexual purposes.

Online Sexual Exploitation of Children

Online sexual exploitation of children includes using technology to 
groom, coerce, or blackmail children for sexual purposes; viewing, 
creating, and/or distributing images or videos of child sexual abuse; 
and live-streaming the sexual abuse of children.

Pandemic

A pandemic is an epidemic that has spread to multiple countries or 
continents.

Reproductive Coercion

Reproductive coercion is behavior intended to control another person’s 
reproductive health and often includes sabotaging birth control and/or 
pressuring or forcing an intimate partner to initiate, continue, or 
terminate a pregnancy against their wishes.

Sex Trafficking

Sex trafficking is the crime of using force, fraud, or coercion to 
engage a person in sexual activity in exchange for something of value, 
such as money, housing, or drugs.

Sexual Extortion

Sexual extortion occurs when a person abuses their power or authority 
to coerce sexual acts, images, or videos from a victim.

Sexual Violence

Sexual violence is an umbrella term to describe any type of sexual 
abuse, harassment, or assault. This includes sex trafficking, sexual 
extortion, reproductive coercion, and unwanted sexual contact or 
exposure. People who commit sexual violence may use force, threats, 
manipulation, or coercion to commit these acts. They often know and 
are trusted by the people they abuse and may victimize people of any 
age or gender.

Survival Sex

Survival sex refers to trading sexual activity to meet basic survival 
needs such as food, shelter, and clothing without the overt force, 
fraud, or coercion of a trafficker. Under federal law, this is a form 
of sex trafficking if the person is a minor.

Transactional Sex

Transactional sex refers to exchanging sexual activity for gifts, 
money, or other services without the overt force, fraud, or coercion 
of a trafficker. Under federal law, this is a form of sex trafficking 
if the person is a minor.

Vicarious Trauma

Vicarious trauma refers to the cumulative effects on a person’s 
physical, psychological, and spiritual health from witnessing the 
suffering of others over time.

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About the Author

Annie Gebhardt, MPH, is a training and research consultant dedicated 
to supporting organizations and communities in ending sexual and 
gender-based violence. Since joining the movement in 1999, she has 
served as a student activist, victim advocate, community educator, 
self-defense instructor, and state and national technical assistance 
provider. She previously developed online courses, podcasts, and 
resource collections focused on preventing and responding to sexual 
violence in disasters as a Training Specialist at the National Sexual 
Violence Resource Center. 

About NSVRC

The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) is the leading 
nonprofit in providing information and tools to prevent and respond 
to sexual violence. NSVRC translates research and trends into best 
practices that help individuals, communities, and service providers 
achieve real and lasting change.

877-739-3895  ·  resources@nsvrc.org  ·  www.nsvrc.org