Culture Change
Imagine you and your friend were at a party last night and you found your friend crying hysterically saying that she was raped. You are now in the emergency room still in the clothes that you were wearing and your friend is telling the police officer what happened. The police officer leaves the room. The door is ajar and he says to his colleague, “Well, look at what she’s wearing.” What do you do?
This scenario proposed in sexual violence education is an exercise forensic nurse Brazsal uses, centered around the prominence of victim-blaming and lack of bystander intervention.
This is the culture of society right now and while change is ideal, it is generational and will only come with time and the development of different mindsets.
“It needs to occur on a micro level within families, schools, and school settings, to macro-level with legislation,” Brazsal said.
Brazsal’s job as a forensic nurse for sexual assault victims is to conduct an exam post-rape to collect evidence and anything necessary later to prove the occurrence. As an individual who sees the aftermath of sexual violence both physically and emotionally on her patients and being a survivor of assault herself, her life is centered around the effects of rape. Her own experience has inspired her to focus her career on helping others and working to create change in society.
Another important aspect of culture change is instilling it in youth.
“I feel like the fundamentals of social responsibility and empowering self should be taught at a very early age because that’s when people start to interact with each other,” Brazsal said.
Brazsal conducted a study about teachers’ and parents’ perceptions on consent and consent resources. Both populations (teachers and parents) wish that there were more resources for them to conduct conversations about it, yet there was a lack of resources available to them.
The other finding was that one group, the parent group, assumed that the teachers were talking about consent and permission and the teacher group was assuming that parents were teaching it within their homes. This confusion led to failure to discuss the topic with youth whatsoever.
This finding brings up the lack of conversation about boundaries and consent and how discussing it at an early age when learning societal norms and expectations can set up youth to be more aware of their role regarding sexual assault.
“It has to be very intentional. The barrier that I have had when having discussions with teachers, parents of young age or council members even is that they feel like this is mature content and that kids won’t understand boundary settings. We’re not talking about sex here. We’re not talking about intimacy. For example, it’s not okay to take crayons out of little Mickey’s hand. Or don’t pull on Maria’s hair, that’s an extension of her body — It’s about boundary setting. And those fundamentals need to be not only taught at a young age but it needs to be reinforced every year,” Brazsal said.
Along with conversation among youth, another key aspect to creating culture change is knowing how to support the victims. Often, law enforcement, legislation, and any other individuals who will hear the story of a sexual assault victim fail to empathize and understand what they went through. While rape is a violation of the body, several other factors accompany it including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Eight out of nine of the survivors interviewed reported PTSD, attempted suicide, and/or anxiety and depression after their assault.
“The lack of understanding of the pathophysiology of victims of sexual assault, that not only is prevalent with the general public, I still have to do a lot of teaching with law enforcement and health professionals because I remember when I was trying to get help after the fact, I did record it. The law enforcement, they were great. Some were not. Even when I tried to get help with mental health they were like ‘Well, why are you talking about this now?’ They didn’t understand that I needed time to process or for my brain to function correctly in order to receive help,” Brazsal said.
Another topic brought up by several interviewed survivors was the lack of believing their stories.
Samantha Prasad said, “ I would love to see survivors just be believed off the bat and not be met with this onslaught of questions. Let’s focus on healing, caring, and nurturing first.”
False allegations range from 2-10% of all sexual assault reports and Prasad feels that focusing on this 2-10% takes away attention from actual cases that do need to be addressed and given justice for victims.
“The reform I want to see is just ‘believe survivors’. Because it already takes such courage to come forward to report and when you come forward and you’re not believed that does so much more damage too. It’s just like ‘Okay yeah I shouldn’t have said anything.’ It just reverts back to the shame, to the guilt, to all of those things that you don’t want survivors to have to feel,” Prasad said.