Issues in the News
Highlighting NO MORE day in the media
Mar 15th
As you likely know, Wednesday marked the public launch of NO MORE, a national movement to end domestic violence and sexual assault. The coverage of the event has been overwhelming, and we know many of you want to know more about the day’s events and this important movement. We’ve compiled some of the initial articles about the launch that we’ve been reading here at Joyful Heart so that you can read them too and get excited about coming together to say NO MORE to domestic violence and sexual assault.
For the launch of NO MORE, Joyful Heart staff members headed to Washington, D.C. with our founder, president and fearless leader Mariska. She stood with Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder as they introduced a series of new grants to reduce victims of domestic violence-related homicides. Check out those NO MORE pins on them!
Mariska Hargitay greets Joe Biden, as they proudly display their NO MORE pins.
While Vice President Biden spoke about the necessity for grants to fund programs to support survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, mark. Brand Ambassador Ashley Greene took the stand to address Congress and announced survey results from the NO MORE Study on teen dating violence, funded by the Avon Foundation:
mark. Brand Ambassador Ashley Greene Announces "No More Campaign" Study Results On Capitol Hill
The team then whisked off to the National Press Club, where Mariska had the honor of being the headlining speaker for their luncheon series, and was supported by Sarah Tofte, Maile Zambuto and Lendon Ebbels. Watch her dynamic and engaging speech below:
- Press.org -watch the speech here!
- Washington Examiner
- Houston Chronicle
- The Patch
Mariska Hargitay speaks to the National Press Club about the NO MORE movement
In addition to introducing NO MORE to the media, the JHF team was there with Kym Worthy, super-prosecutor from Detroit, to help advocate for ending the backlog of rape kits in Detroit and all across the country:
Lastly, from our home bases all over the country, NO MORE partners contributed to a Live Blog to chronicle the events, pictures and shed light about the issues all day. If you missed the action on NO MORE Day, take a look back here:
Stay tuned for a first-hand account of the day from one of our D.C. JHF team members!
1in6 Thursday: Restrictive Residency Rules and the Illusion of Public Safety
Mar 7th
Patti Giggans, Executive Director of Peace Over Violence, discusses the negative effects of increasing restrictive residency rules for sex offenders while reducing their access to resources, monitoring and increasing the risk of recidivism.
The latest strategy to restrict where convicted sex offenders live is to create parks where none exist to force registered sex offenders to move out of a neighborhood. The City of Los Angeles plans to build three pocket parks in the communities of Harbor Gateway and Wilmington. California state law prohibits sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a park, playground school or a daycare center. Some states restrict living within 1,000 feet or near certain bus stops. There are similar residence restrictive laws in every state along with sex offender databases and community notification of where offenders live, known as Megan’s Laws. The unintended result of super-restrictive sex offender zoning makes it impossible for sex offenders to find stable housing and forces them to cluster and crowd together in motels and apartment buildings, or sometimes under bridges creating homelessness, often away from family or other potentially positive supports. There is concern that these over-restrictive policies can backfire and actually increase recidivism.
Located in southern Los Angeles, Harbor Gateway, a community of about 40,000 people, has one of the city’s highest concentrations of registered sex offenders: 86 registered offenders live in a 13-block area. The park will be created in a space the equivalent of a backyard on a grassy corner large enough to fit a jungle gym and a couple of benches. The park is being explicitly created to restrict offenders from congregating in the area not necessarily to create green space for kids to play. No one can fault the community for its concern for safety especially of its children or blame its civic leadership for wanting to do something about it. Restrictive living and working rules keep multiplying with the goal of public safety. But do these living restrictions improve public safety or exacerbate the potential for re-offending? As there are fewer and fewer places for offenders to live and work they will continue to resort to clustering or worse: go underground. Creating housing instability can limit employment opportunities and access to social services and social support. Visibility, surveillance, accountability, treatment and support are some of the protective factors that can help an offender stay on the path of non-offending and reduce recidivism.
Convicted sex offenders and registrants are all painted with the same brush of pariah and monster, so it is very challenging for communities to think beyond the criminal justice lens to include public health approaches. But might we be risking being blinded by the illusion of safety when we don’t explore the complexity and the diversity of these offenders and call for research on what really works best. There is little room for political leadership to ask these important questions. Forcing offenders to go missing or go underground by promoting overly restrictive residence and employment restrictions may very well be one of those illusions of public safety that can backfire and create more risk and increase recidivism.
- By Patti Giggans
Patti Giggans is the Executive Director of Peace Over Violence. Peace Over Violence is dedicated to building healthy relationships, families and communities free from sexual, domestic and interpersonal violence. She is also the Vice-President of the Board of Directors for 1in6.
The mission of 1in6 is to help men who have had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood live healthier, happier lives.
1in6′s mission also includes serving family members, friends and partners by providing information and support resources on the web and in the community.
Joyful Heart and 1in6 invite you to visit 1in6.org for info, options and hope, and to learn more about our partnership and Engaging Men initiative at men.joyfulheartfoundation.
The views expressed above are not necessarily those of the Joyful Heart Foundation or 1in6.
Renewing Our Commitment to VAWA in 2013
Jan 18th
When the U.S. Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994, it revolutionized community and government responses to domestic violence and sexual assault across the nation. Since that time, each reauthorization of VAWA has expanded its focus—to include dating violence and stalking, to create and enhance prevention and education programs, to train and coordinate law enforcement, courts, prosecutors and victim services in their response to violence against women and children.
Unfortunately, Congress again made history in 2012 when it failed—for the first time ever—to pass the latest reauthorization of VAWA. With the expiration of the reauthorization bill, funding for existing programs and services for survivors of violence will continue under the 2005 reauthorization. This funding arrangement will make it difficult for many organizations to maintain their current levels of programming and services, especially with ever-tightening national, state and local budgets. The expiration of the 2012 reauthorization also represents a missed opportunity to make VAWA more comprehensive, including provisions for housing, campus-based services and greater protections for certain vulnerable communities.
While we are greatly disappointed that the 112th Congress did not act to extend VAWA’s protections, we will continue to advocate for the 113th Congress to reintroduce and reauthorize VAWA in this legislative session. We, and our partners across the advocacy community, are deeply committed to ensuring that all survivors have access to quality, healing and life-saving programs and services. We are hopeful that Congress will join us in this commitment.
1in6 Thursday: New Year, New World
Jan 3rd
We begin this New Year with a much greater awareness within our communities than just a year ago about the frequency at which boys are subjected to unwanted or abusive sexual experiences. But perhaps even more importantly in terms of healing for those boys—and the men they become—in the past year, we’ve seen men speaking more openly about their efforts to overcome the harmful impacts of those childhood experiences. Every word that diminishes the sense of isolation and shame about abusive experiences, which many men have silently carried through their adult lives, potentially opens a door to recovery. As we enter 2013, we have a very different context for addressing sexual abuse of boys than ever before.
The courageous testimony from the men who were abused by Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, though painful to hear, opened a floodgate of disclosures from men and women abused by individuals in positions of power – coaches, teachers, clergy and others. In recognition of the failures it made in addressing the clear signs of Sandusky’s abuse of boys in his care, Penn State has undertaken an intensive self assessment and consulted with numerous experts to determine the best ways to prevent future abuse and to support those who have already experienced abuse.
Even the NCAA has initiated a widespread effort to address the impact and prevention of sexual abuse through a $50 million fine imposed on Penn State.
The public’s response to revelations about decades of sexual abuse reports covered up by the Boy Scouts of America might have been very different without the heightened awareness brought by the media coverage of the Sandusky trial. Again, the realization for each of the boys who was abused that he is not one, but instead, one of many, will make it easier to acknowledge the experience and to seek help for any negative consequences.
Within the same context, Major League knuckle-ball pitcher and 2012 Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey wrote about his recovery from childhood sexual abuse in his autobiography “Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball.” His willingness to include those experiences in his life story and his reflections on the success and peace that he brought to his life, in part by finally facing the painful memories about his childhood, have, no doubt, been an inspiration to many.
Another memoir published in 2012, “Nice to Meet Me” by Chris Carlton, walks readers through the first 15 months of his healing journey, in a clear, insightful, humble and humorous style.
And Dr. Howard Fradkin’s newly released book on recovery “Joining Forces, Empowering Male Survivors to Thrive” is written with the goal of providing tools for male survivors of sexual victimization to develop skills they can use to overcome the effects of trauma and learn to thrive in their lives. In the book, Fradkin describes his own process of recovery from childhood sexual abuse and uses the voices of 20 other men who have worked through their healing.
So let’s hope that when we look back on 2013, we’ll be able to see it as the tipping point year, when individual’s, families’ and communities’ support for men’s willingness to seek help to recover from unwanted or abusive childhood sexual experiences became the norm, rather than the exception.
–By Peter Pollard
Peter Pollard is the Training and Outreach Director for 1in6, Inc. Peter previously worked for 15 years as a state, child-protection social worker and was the Public Education director at Stop It Now! Since 2003, he has served as the Western Massachusetts coordinator for SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) and also does work for a Certified Batterers Intervention Program.
The mission of 1in6 is to help men who have had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood live healthier, happier lives.
1in6′s mission also includes serving family members, friends and partners by providing information and support resources on the web and in the community.
Joyful Heart and 1in6 invite you to visit 1in6.org for info, options and hope, and to learn more about our partnership and Engaging Men initiative at men.joyfulheartfoundation.
The views expressed above are not necessarily those of the Joyful Heart Foundation or 1in6.
How We Can Turn Towards Domestic Violence the Rest of the Year
Nov 16th
“My wife and I were at a dinner in Washington DC earlier this year—it was a cancer event—and this woman sat down and said ‘Nice to meet you I’m so and so, and I’m a 30 year cancer survivor.’ That wasn’t all that she was, but that was simply part of what she had gone through and that’s why she was there. Our vision is that is that someday someone will be able to sit down at a table and say ‘I’m a survivor of sexual abuse; I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse; I’m a survivor of rape’, and not have the needle skip off the record and have the person sitting across from them not know what to say. Because it’s not what defines them, it’s simply something that happened to them and it’s not their fault and they don’t need to carry the shame. It’s an unjust stigma in the sense that the shame belongs to the perpetrator and not the victim.”—Peter Hermann, founding Joyful Heart Board member
Every time I read this quote, I think long and hard about Peter’s words—about what it means to really turn towards these issues and about what it would be like if we, collectively, really saw surviving abuse or assault in the same way we see surviving something like cancer. Without blame, stigma or shame. Unafraid to listen to someone’s story and unafraid to say “no more.”
Every year, October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM). (Coincidentally, it also happens to be Breast Cancer Awareness Month.) Domestic Violence Awareness Month is one filled with rallies, marches, speak outs and awareness events of all kinds, many with purple ribbons and many with first appearances of the NO MORE symbol. It was a month in which we collectively turned towards an issue that affects 1 in 3 women—the number who are raped, physically assaulted or stalked by a husband or boyfriend in their lifetime—and the 15 million children who witness violence in their homes each year.
In October, staff members at Joyful Heart were proud to participate in the second Shine the Light in Times Square event. We stood with advocates, bystanders and elected officials, including Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Tony Award-winning playwright Eve Ensler, representatives from the New York State Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and many others, to literally shine the light on domestic violence, watching as billboards in all directions in the world-famous Times Square lit up purple with messages of support for those affected by domestic violence.
The NASDAQ billboard turns purple for the Shine the Light event in Times Square.
Shine the Light in Times Square.
Shine the Light in Times Square.
Across the country, the lights at LAX International Airport turn purple in honor of DVAM. Photo Courtesy of the City of Los Angeles.
The Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles turns purple in honor of DVAM. Photo Courtesy of the City of Los Angeles.
Photo Courtesy of the City of Los Angeles.
The most inspiring things about events like this one is that they bring issues that are so often kept hidden in the shadows out of the darkness and into the light, something that Joyful Heart believes deeply in doing. So as we move into November and the other 10 months of the year, we’d like to share some of the many other ways to turn towards these issues.
Say “NO MORE”
NO MORE is a movement to end domestic violence and sexual assault with one uniting symbol, like the pink breast cancer awareness ribbon, the red AIDS ribbon or the yellow “support our troops” symbol. In just two simple words, NO MORE is exactly what we’re trying to say: NO MORE domestic violence and sexual assault. NO MORE blaming survivors. NO MORE doing nothing. NO MORE silence. NO MORE bystanding.
In 2013, NO MORE is officially launching to the public and we’re proud to play a big role in rolling it out. You can join the movement and help bring the symbol to your community in the following ways:
- Download the toolkit and use the NO MORE symbol—on your correspondence, on banners and posters, on pins and t-shirts and anything else you can think of. It’s yours to use and share.
- Follow NO MORE on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up to receive updates on the movement at www.nomore.org.
- Add your photo to the NO MORE photo gallery. Through this simple act—uploading a photo and a message—we’re truly delivering a powerful message that you’re not alone and that we say “no more.”
Use Your Voice
We’re proud to partner with The Verizon Foundation, A CALL TO MEN, NO MORE and sportscaster James Brown to spread the message that Your Voice Counts to end domestic violence. Though women and children represent the majority of victims of domestic violence, men are affected as well—as victims, as perpetrators and as witnesses and bystanders. Engaging men is an important part of the movement to address, prevent and—one day—end domestic violence.
The Your Voice Counts campaign invites men to join the conversation to end domestic violence with specific tools aimed at giving men resources and information to speak out against this issue. Take a look at James Brown’s message:
We invite you to share this resource. Pass it on to those in your life—friends, family and colleagues. It’s sometimes easy to think that domestic violence happens to other people who are far removed from our own communities. But when 1 in 3 women are raped, physically assaulted or stalked by a partner, it’s clear that this happens all around us. So please, share this resource and use these tools. Your Voice Counts.
Play with 1BlueString
We also know that 1 in 6 men are survivors of an unwanted or abusive sexual experience in childhood. To raise awareness about this devastating statistic, Joyful Heart is honored to support 1BlueString, an innovative and exciting new awareness campaign from our partner, 1in6, a leading organization providing information and resources to the 1 in 6 men who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse and their family, friends and loved ones.
The concept for 1BlueString is simple: get the string at 1BlueString.org for your electric or acoustic guitar (or both), switch it in for your low E string and when you play—whether you’re jamming with a friend or playing in front of dozens, hundreds or thousands of people, share the 1 in6 statistic. Learn more here on the blog and at 1BlueString.org
1in6 Thursday: “I’ll Never Forgive You.”
Oct 25th
For several days, one sentence has continued to trouble me: “I’ll never forgive you.” Those words were spoken by the man identified only as Victim 4 at the Jerry Sandusky sentencing on October 9, 2012. His words say several things to me.
The most obvious is that he expresses the pain that comes from betrayal. At the trial itself, Victim 4 and other survivors referred to the gifts and personal attentiveness from Sandusky, who became their role model. Then came the molestation. Until it began, Sandusky may have probably been the most trusted man in their lives. His wooing them through seductive actions and evil motives caused an unrelenting pain that still remains.
Perhaps the words are also an unconscious cry to the perpetrator to admit what he did. If I faced my perpetrator and shouted those words, it would signify a plea: “Please tell me you’re sorry for how deeply you wounded me. Help me understand why you hurt me.” When the victimizer is someone we admire and love, the hurt becomes far more intense.
The words also speak of despair. What Victim 4 lost as a boy—his innocence—won’t ever be restored, even if his perpetrator confesses. As a survivor of sexual molestation, I know how abuse affects us for life. We can be emotionally shattered and unable to trust others. We can be suspicious of the motives when someone treats us kindly. We can push away many good people because one bad person took advantage of our naïveté and youth.
Possibly the words are also a threat. It’s as if to say, “You want absolution for your wrongdoing but you’ll never, never get it from me.” They seem like words to withhold forgiveness and that will punish the guilty. The words mean we carry the pain and refuse to offer compassion for the wrongdoer. I call myself a serious Christian, and many of my peers would jump on Victim 4′s words and insist, “You must forgive him.” But if I could speak to Victim 4, I’d say, “Feel your pain. You don’t have to release it until you’re ready. As you move forward in your own healing, perhaps the day will come when you’ll shed your anger and freely offer your forgiveness, even if you never tell him.”
“Number 4, grieve as long as you need to. There’s no need to push yourself toward letting go. If and when you’re ready, you won’t need prodding.”
–By Cecil Murphey.
Cecil Murphey is the author of When a Man You Love Was Abused. His follow-up book, Not Quite Healed will be released in February 2013. He is also the author or co-author of more than 100 books including The New York Times’ best-seller 90 Minutes in Heaven.
The mission of 1in6 is to help men who have had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood live healthier, happier lives.
1in6′s mission also includes serving family members, friends and partners by providing information and support resources on the web and in the community.
JHF and 1in6 invite you to visit 1in6.org for info, options and hope, and to learn more about our partnership and Engaging Men initiative here.
The views expressed above are not necessarily those of the Joyful Heart Foundation or 1in6.
1in6 Thursday: Men Who were Abused as Boys
Oct 18th
Men who were abused as boys were abused by individuals, not by a caricature. I find it disheartening that some have suggested we have to work hard to protect our children from other “Sanduskys.”
It seems to me that using the name of Jerry Sandusky, perhaps the most high profile child abuser to have been convicted in quite some time, creates a caricature of what is a horrible crime committed against a person. Of the hundreds of thousands of men who access our website annually, I doubt that even one would want to describe the person who abused him as a generic ‘Sandusky.’ Even though stories of child abuse rise to such a highly public level just once every couple of years, it’s estimated that 1 in 6 men and 1 in 4 women are survivors of an unwanted or abusive sexual experience in childhood. It happens every day. Every year. The men, and sometimes women, older boys or girls who hurt them have real names, real personalities, real connections to the child who was victimized. In some cases, they are family members or other trusted persons and what happened to their victims was life-altering and profoundly hurtful.
To take it further, there are over 25,000 residents of Sandusky, Ohio who no doubt would not want to be included in a broad-brush manner with child sexual abuse and their town. Or, the almost 3,000 families in our country who have the last name Sandusky. One such family is the Gerry Sandusky family in the Baltimore area. In fact, this Gerry with a “G” not Jerry with a “J” Sandusky made one of the most powerful and poignant statements about what happened to the survivors of abuse at the hands of Jerry Sandusky of Penn State, in an interview with Rick Reilly on ESPN.
Gerry with a “G” Sandusky gets it. It’s about individuals who were abused by other individuals – complex, sometimes delusional, sometimes cruel, selfish or even violent individuals, but not the caricatured monsters that we find it so easy to paint the people who sexually abuse children to be.
To close, may I suggest that we call those that abuse with a description of their actions– their offense? Saying, “the person who sexually abused those children” or “the coach who sexually assaulted a child in his care” captures the magnitude of the betrayal and the gravity of the crime and not just a generalization of the experiences of the 19 million American men who have been sexually abused as children, or the easy caricaturization of the moment.
Please note that these words are my own and not those of the organization that I founded and run today.
- By Steve LePore
Steve LePore is the Founder and Executive Director of 1in6.
The mission of 1in6 is to help men who have had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood live healthier, happier lives.
1in6′s mission also includes serving family members, friends and partners by providing information and support resources on the web and in the community.
Joyful Heart and 1in6 invite you to visit 1in6.org for info, options and hope, and to learn more about our partnership and Engaging Men initiative at men.joyfulheartfoundation.
The views expressed above are not necessarily those of the Joyful Heart Foundation or 1in6.
1in6 Thursday: Worse Than Denial – Institutional Betrayal
Oct 4th
After The LA Times reported that between 1965 and 1985 The Boys Scouts of America took very little or no action about suspected child sexual abuse, it announced it would review 5,000 cases spanning the past fifty years. The Times investigation found that Scouts’ officials did not report to police hundreds of cases of alleged sexual abuse and that as many as 1,662 male child victims were impacted. This scandal will continue to make headlines as hundreds of files are released from the BSA’s own collection of cases known as “perversion files.”
It is increasingly difficult to comprehend the enormity of the continued unfolding of inaction and unwillingness to protect children through intentional cover-up and denial. Indeed, these revelations are worse than denial, these are acts of institutional betrayal. The protection of predators and the preservation of reputations supersede a most fundamental human impulse of caring for children. Part of me screams ”What were they thinking?” while another part seeks to understand how and why major respected institutions like The Boy Scouts of America, Penn State University, The Catholic Church, public school districts and elite private schools (and the list goes on) could betray their own missions and reasons for existence. Leaders seem to have no problem compromising their own integrity when faced with the issue of child sexual abuse.
As a longtime advocate for sexual assault victim/survivors, women, men and children I have thought a lot about this. Perhaps we are not yet asking the right questions. Perhaps the cultural restraints of talking about sex and sexuality play a deeper role than we wish to acknowledge on the topic of child sexual abuse and sexual violence. It seems that there is a huge gap between being able to discuss sex frankly and in healthy ways, while at the same time the wider culture supports the early sexualization and commodification of girls and boys in media and advertising.
During this prolonged recession the one industry that is thriving is the porn industry. On the one hand sex is exploited commercially to sell every product imaginable, yet youth in high school are deprived of being taught the facts about their own biology and about healthy sexuality. Parents continue to lack the support and guidance to discuss these still quite sensitive topics with their children. I am entertaining the notion that until we break through our personal discomforts, cultural taboos, and reluctance to talk about sex and sexuality in all of its complexity in healthy ways, we will continue to see the proliferation of sexual abuse along with inappropriate, ineffective and harmful responses to it. For an issue like child sexual abuse – where no one is for it and everyone is against it – it is curious that we do so little to prevent it.
There are questions we are not asking, conversations we are not having. The Boy Scouts of America had a rule of excluding gay men and boys from participating while at the same time collecting files on alleged abusers and doing nothing about it. I am wondering about this but have seen little reporting on this conundrum of the organizational culture. For sure, homophobia prevents honest discussions and explorations of sexuality. What are the other discussions that we are not having? Until we break through these fears and denials, I am afraid we will continue to witness and suffer betrayal from our most trusted institutions.
–By Patti Giggans
Patti Giggans is the Executive Director of Peace Over Violence. Peace Over Violence is dedicated to building healthy relationships, families and communities free from sexual, domestic and interpersonal violence. She is also the Vice-President of the Board of Directors for 1in6.
The mission of 1in6 is to help men who have had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood live healthier, happier lives.
1in6′s mission also includes serving family members, friends and partners by providing information and support resources on the web and in the community.
Joyful Heart and 1in6 invite you to visit 1in6.org for info, options and hope, and to learn more about our partnership and Engaging Men initiative at men.joyfulheartfoundation.org.
The views expressed above are not necessarily those of the Joyful Heart Foundation or 1in6.