Newsletter: Spring 2005: Alliance Launches Citywide Survivor Survey

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The Alliance has embarked on an ambitious project to include survivors' voices in the evaluation of services provided to them after a sexual assault. The Alliance believes the survivor's perspective is crucial to enhancing systems' abilities to respond to their needs.

Survivors turn to a variety of community and city organizations for assistance including law enforcement, prosecutors, rape crisis centers and hospitals. This contact proves therapeutic for many survivors. However, for others, these services become a source of stress. When survivors' needs are not addressed by the very systems they turn to for assistance, there is a sense of betrayal that can affect them in the long-term. Posttraumatic stress is increased when survivors feel blamed, doubted and revictimized and this affects their recovery process.*

It has been historically difficult to survey victims of sexual assault and abuse. For reasons that include acute stress disorder, typical feelings after a treated in the aftermath by significant others and systems, few have responded to single-program evaluations. To encourage survivors to participate in this citywide survey, the Alliance is utilizing all systems and services that interact with survivors, making the survey as accessible as possible, and simplifying how someone can be involved.

The survey provides multiple ways for survivors to participate. First and foremost, it is anonymous. It is available in English and Spanish. Survivors may access an on-line survey at www.nycagainstrape.org/survey, or can receive a paper version or flyer for the online survey from a local rape crisis program.

Eye-catching posters and postcards were designed and broadly disseminated. This citywide outreach will continue through the summer.

Local service providers and systems support this initiative because they care about survivors and want to meet their needs. They understand that they can affect a survivors' recovery and want to help rather than hinder that process. Survey results will be shared with local systems for systems- improvement efforts, and to advocate for increased funding for service providers. Alliance training programs will also incorporate information learned from the survey.

This citywide effort is a timely and necessary project. More attention and research has been paid to how rape affects it's victims in recent years than ever before. Now those victims have the opportunity to address the very systems designed to respond to them in their hour of need. The Alliance looks forward to working with people in NYC to ensure that survivors' needs are met.

For more information on this project, and to receive posters and postcards, please contact Debi Fry, Alliance Research Coordinator at (212) 229 - 0345, or dfry@nycagainstrape. org.

* Campbell, R., et. al. (2001). Preventing the "second rape": Rape survivors' experiences with community service providers. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 16, 1239-1259.

Campbell, R. (1998). The community response to rape: Victim's experiences with the legal, medical and mental health systems. American Journal of Community Psychology, 26,
355-379.

Campbell, R. and Raja, S. (1999). Secondary victimization of rape victims: Insights from mental health professionals who treat survivors of violence. Violence and Victims, 14, 261-27

Deborah Fry is the Research Coordinator at the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. [more]

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