SERVICES FOR SURVIVORS

In keeping with its focus on being a source of support for sexual assault survivors, OSAPR recognizes that its primary service is to provide victims with someone to speak with about their experiences.

The OSAPR employees—Rankin, an education specialist, and a prevention specialist—and OSAPR’s student volunteers offer generally non-directive advice regarding the Ad Board, medical and legal recourses, therapy, and other possible outlets for survivors.

In addition to gaining information about the range of resources available to victims, many survivors use the office as a place to grapple with their complicated emotions and stories.

“I think many survivors feel that the best way they can heal is by talking about their experience and just having someone there to listen,” says Julia H. Nunan-Saah ’11, an OSAPR volunteer. “With traumatic experiences like rape, it helps to be able to recount the event to someone who will be supportive and allow the survivor to feel sad or angry, or whatever other emotions may come up.”

In addition to OSAPR’s hotline, there are several other outlets for students—whether they are victims, friends of victims, or people who just need to talk—to find someone willing to listen while respecting their anonymity.

The most prominent is Response, a peer-counseling line whose counselors—all female undergraduates—are trained by the OSAPR staff to provide both immediate aid for sexual assault victims and support for people facing domestic abuse or other relationship issues.

“We’re there to be with survivors and help them process their emotions by acting as a sounding board for their experiences,” said the co-director of Response, who asked to remain anonymous because Response is a confidential organization. She added that as helpful as Rankin and the OSAPR staff are, sometimes victims just want to talk to a fellow student.

NO ‘STRANGER IN THE BUSHES’

While OSAPR and Response try to ease the healing process for students who have experienced the trauma of sexual assault, the office is also working to fight sexual assault before it occurs.

“Prevention is about managing risks that will reduce the possibility of violence and about creating a culture where it is unacceptable to commit rape,” Marine says. She adds that in order to effectively put a stop to violence, both women and men must confront the reality of sexual assault and change their attitudes about when and how frequently sexual assault takes place.

One major obstacle to prevention, she says, is students’ assumption that sexual assault is a rare occurrence and will never happen to them.

“Virtually no one is raped by a stranger jumping out of the bushes,” she says, adding that many people take refuge in this stereotype to avoid the notion that rape could happen to them or someone they know.

“People tend to distance themselves from a feeling of vulnerability, and the only way to make emotionally difficult topics more realistic and more relevant to their lives is to have more people talking about it,” Marine says.

She says that OSAPR workshops, particularly the mandatory educational performance “Sex Signals” at the beginning of freshman year, are the best ways to combat the idea that sexual assault is not a problem relevant to Harvard students.