A Learning Experience...

As a community educator for a rape crisis center, I often went to other social service agencies to give awareness presentations on sexual assault. I remember a specific presentation that I gave at a local domestic violence shelter, to several women living in the shelter.

I was trained as a dual sexual assault/domestic violence advocate. I have answered hundreds of crisis line calls related to domestic violence, and responded to victims at the hospital who were sexually assaulted by an intimate partner. I knew the facts, but nothing could have prepared me for sitting with those women, many of whom had just arrived at the shelter.

I knew going in that I needed to have a different strategy from my usual presentation. I always knew there would be a handful of sexual assault survivors in any group I presented to, whether they disclosed or not. With this group, however, I knew many, if not most of them, would have histories of sexual violence – but they may not have identified it yet. I didn’t want to be offensive and come in as the “expert,” when they were the actual experts of what it meant to survive domestic and sexual violence.

It was a small group, with about 10 women. One woman had just arrived a couple of days before, and she had a lot of bruising on her face, as well as a black eye. I was startled at first, because most of the sexual assault victims I provided advocacy for didn’t have visible injuries -- certainly not to that degree.  Other women had been there in the shelter longer, and there was a natural mentor/mentee feel among the women in the room.

As this was an educational setting, and I am not a therapist, I had to be mindful to not let our time together turn into a group therapy session. I wanted to give them information in a safe, comfortable way, so I made the decision to “throw away” the traditional script I used for most presentations (including the obnoxious quiz we used back in those days), and just talked with these women. I offered a place for sharing their personal experiences, which in turn helped them better understand some complicated aspects of sexual assault. An hour flew by, and none of us wanted the conversation to end.

This was a great experience for me, and I certainly hope it was for those women. I may not have fully realized it at the time, but the fact that I remember it several years later tells me I took a lot away from it. I believe it made me a better educator, because I was able to really evaluate my audience and tailor the presentation to what they needed to know, not what I thought they needed to know. It also made me a better advocate, because it gave me the opportunity to be in their environment, to see how they lived, and what the adjustment into shelter was like.

The relationship between the two agencies continues today, with a strong focus on collaboration and cross-training. Do you have a similar story of collaboration between two social service agencies to share?