Inspiring a Movement: Ending Child Sexual Abuse at the 2013 National Sexual Assault Conference

By Natalie Sullivan, Ms. Foundation for Women interim Program Officer, Safety

Last week, the Ms. Foundation for Women hosted a mini track on child sexual abuse prevention at the National Sexual Assault Conference in Hollywood, Calif. In partnership with PreventConnect, a project of the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault, OAASIS Oregon, Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, Ping Chong + Co., Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina and Samaritan Counseling Center, Ms. hosted five workshops on child sexual abuse prevention. 


The 2013 National Sexual Assault Conference (NSAC) kicked off with flying colors on the morning of Aug. 28, 2013 – the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Opening speaker Lynn Rosenthal of the Office on Violence Against Women set the tone for the conference by offering that “there is a connection between the work [we’re] doing for women’s freedom and King’s work.” Faye Washington, of the YWCA Los Angeles, added, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.” With such calls to action, 1,400 of us from across the U.S. spent the next three days gathered together to “Inspire a Movement, Invest in Change, and Imagine…” what a world without sexual assault would look like, and what it would take to build a vibrant movement to arrive there.

I was thrilled and humbled to be in the presence of a diverse range of movement makers. From service providers to therapists to policy makers to teachers to activists (and many, many more), we roamed the halls, meeting rooms and streets of Hollywood strategizing about how to end the culture of violence and sexual abuse that is so pervasive in our lives and communities. The Ms. Foundation, alongside our grantee partners, was lucky enough to host five workshops specific to ending child sexual abuse – an issue that too often has fallen on the periphery of and between existing movements – with the guiding belief that ending child sexual abuse is one of the most strategic actions we can take to improve the safety of communities everywhere. Our mini track, “Building a Movement to End Child Sexual Abuse,” highlighted several cutting-edge strategies currently led by our grantee partners across the U.S. to prevent child sexual abuse.

We opened our mini track with Foundations for Change: Sharing Key Approaches to Ending Child Sexual Abuse, hosted by David Lee, Leona Smith DiFaustino, Cordelia Anderson and Joan Tabachnick. Drawing upon lessons learned and strategies shared throughout our and PreventConnect’s National Web Conference Series to End Child Sexual Abuse, this workshop led attendees through an introduction to the various strategies currently used in the field to prevent child sexual abuse, including policy advocacy, faith-based organizing, perpetrator prevention and survivor activism.

Next, Christi Hurt and Sarah Vidrine of Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina led a workshop on what it took to build a statewide coalition in North Carolina focused on creating a state primary prevention policy package to end child sexual abuse. Christi and Sarah walked attendees through the process of building a coalition that brings diverse communities, multidisciplinary teams and the voice of survivors to the table, while maintaining focus on one sole objective. The workshop proved to be a fertile space for the exchange of ideas, examination of how to overcome challenges and exploration of how other states might be able to take on such a model.

Our third workshop, Convening to End Child Sexual Abuse: A Strategic Choice for Movement Building, was led by Klarissa Oh, Linda Crockett, Cordelia Anderson, Billye Jones Mulraine, Christi Hurt, Randy Ellison and myself. During this workshop, we explored why convening is key to movement building and why storytelling is crucial in the work we do to end violence. We invited attendees to consider how they might do the same in their own work.

Day two of our mini track kicked off with Linda Crockett and Deb Helt of Samaritan Counseling Center’s Safe Church Project. Linda and Deb showcased the Safe Church project, an interactive one-year ecumenical group training designed to shift congregational culture to inspire prevention of child sexual abuse within churches and communities. Currently launched in Pennsylvania, they are planning to take the project national soon.

Finally, our mini track closed with an arts-based workshop led by Sara Zatz and Amita Swadhin, who hosted a documentary screening of Ping Chong + Co’s Secret Survivors. In addition to showing the documentary, Sara and Amita guided attendees through an interactive discussion and creative workshop on using the arts to end child sexual abuse. They presented the Secret Survivors toolkit designed to complement the documentary and support community and education partners in sparking dialog to end child sexual abuse.

This conference enabled child sexual abuse to come out of the shadows and into the foreground into a national dialog of violence prevention, and I thank CALCASA and their partners, National Sexual Violence Resource Center and Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape for their vision in organizing this conference.  I continue to be moved and pushed in many ways by the brilliance and depth of knowledge of those who do this work. For me, conferences reinforce the benefit of face-to-face exchanges of ideas, breaking down silos, so that we continuously remember how each of our pieces of work supports the greater whole. This year’s NSAC fully lived up to those expectations, laying the groundwork for progress and continued movement building to end violence.

Return to the Ms. Foundation for Women website

Lived Experiences Fuel Hope & Action

By Cordelia Anderson and Joan Tabachnick

The August 30 ECSA Web Conference featured two survivors of child sexual abuse who have incorporated their stories into their activism to end child sexual abuse.  Their stories and their work provided a moving foundation for a discussion about how to tell one’s truth with a vision for social change. 

Amita Swadhin opened with her own story of abuse within her family and described how her healing led her to question the responses of the system to those of different class, ethnic or immigrant status.  And these questions led her to the idea of building a theater performance from the perspective of adult survivors of child sexual abuse, which was created by Ping Chong & Company. The result is an incredibly powerful performance, called Secret Survivors, performed by those whose stories are crafted into the script. As a young, queer woman of color and daughter of immigrants she fights structural oppression with the power of her truth and paves the way for the truth of others to be heard.  Randy Ellison, Board President of Oregon Abuse Advocates and Survivors in Service (OAASIS), was silenced by the weight of shame as a male sexual abuse victim, so much so that he did not disclose abuse or address his trauma for 40 years.  After telling his story for the first time at a public hearing before the state legislature, he will not be silenced again. He authored the book, Boys Don’t Tell: Ending the Silence of Abuse, and is part of the OAASIS Speakers Bureau that works for policy change.

Randy and Amita point out that while speaking out results in others feeling safer to disclose their own experiences of abuse, they believe the power of personal stories is to give hope and inspire action for social change.  Personal stories make the facts come alive and motivate people to get involved. But then what?  When asked what others can do, Amita supported the idea of a national “coming out” day for survivors in order to create a broader picture of who is affected and how many of us are affected by child sexual abuse.  Randy talked about the power of having many voices speaking together, and suggested contacting a local coalition to speak with others on key questions facing our policy makers and funders

Much of the discussion centered on how ALL of us are affected by child sexual abuse in some way.  We defined “Voices of Experience” as anyone who has been personally affected by child sexual abuse –survivors, friends and families of survivors, and the friends and families of those who have perpetrated abuse.  We explored the difficult question of how to learn from all stories – even of those who have abused.  Amita brought forward a quote that captured how our collective stories force us to look at trends and long term solutions rather than just an immediate response: “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story” (Chimamanda, Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story).

Beyond what Amita and Randy spoke about, they also modeled so beautifully the power of combining personal stories with professional goals.  For years, it has been hard for professionals to fully own and incorporate their personal stories into their work.  In this web conference these two survivors, activists, and professionals did just that -- opening the door for others to do the same.  

We ended the web conference with a quote by Henri  Nouwen “when we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means most to us, we often find that it is those who instead of giving advice, solutions or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand”.  A huge thank you to Amita and Randy for all you do to build a movement and make prevention a reality.