A rape avoidance program in Canada that targets messages toward young women is being hailed as a “rare success” after it reduced the risk of sexual assault by nearly 50 percent during participants’ first year of college. The results from the program, published this week in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, threaten to renew a contentious debate about the most effective means of sexual assault prevention that don’t place the onus on potential victims.
Thanks in large part to a wave of student activism, the issue of campus rape has recently been elevated to the national stage. Last year, President Obama launched a White House Task Force to focus on reforming the way that schools handle sexual assault.
Spurred by pressure from the White House — as well as unflattering headlines about administrators embroiled in sexual assault controversies — colleges across the country are now attempting to tackle the problem. Schools are increasingly mandating sexual assault prevention programs for incoming students. But, particularly in light of the fact that it’s difficult to collect accurate data on the rate of sexual assault among college students, there hasn’t been much long-term research to determine which training and education materials are the most effective.
Charlene Senn, a psychologist at the University of Windsor and the lead author of the new Canadian study, hopes her research may help start to change that.
Senn’s team of researchers tracked first-year students at several universities in Canada over a two-year period. About 450 women were randomly assigned to a sexual assault prevention program that included four different three-hour training sessions covering healthy relationships, defining personal boundaries, and self-defense. Those sessions, which ranged from group discussions to role playing, were intended to be interactive. About 450 additional women were assigned to a control group and received a less dynamic education campaign, including a brochure with information about sexual assault.
One year later, the researchers surveyed participants about their experiences with sexual violence. They found that, among the control group that received brochures, about ten percent of the women reported they had been raped (defined as an assault during which a perpetrator used force, threats, or incapacitation through drugs or alcohol). Among the group that participated in the rape avoidance training, meanwhile, about five percent reported being raped. The reports of attempted rape during the same time period were even lower: About 9.3 percent of women in the brochure group reported that someone had tried to assault them, compared to 3.4 percent of women in the rape avoidance group.
Those are impressive numbers. The New York Times reports that some researchers are praising Senn’s study as “one of the largest and most promising efforts” in the field of sexual assault prevention, which has so far delivered only murky data.
Other experts, however, are raising concerns about the central premise of Senn’s program, which ultimately makes college women responsible for taking additional steps to avoid rape.
Participants in the rape prevention program, for instance, were taught to use the buddy system in social situations and guard their drinks in public. They also learned wrist-holds and choke-holds to better equip them to fight back against someone forcefully holding them down, as well as tactics to better confront acquaintances who may be pushing their boundaries.
Efforts to prevent sexual assault frequently spark controversy for taking this approach, which critics say places too much of a burden on potential victims rather than working to change the behavior of potential perpetrators. Women are already bombarded with messages about how they should alter their behavior to keep themselves safe. Feminist activists argue that, in this context, victim-focused prevention programs often reinforce a pervasive rape culture that positions women as a the gatekeepers of sexual activity.
In an editorial accompanying the results from the new study, Kathleen Basile, an expert in violence prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, expresses caution about celebrating the Canadian program as the ultimate solution to the campus rape crisis. Although she acknowledges Senn’s study is a valuable contribution to the field, Basile adds that “its primary weakness is that it places the onus for prevention on potential victims, possibly obscuring the responsibility of perpetrators and others.”
“What happens when women who complete the intervention cannot successfully resist rape?” Basile points out. She concludes that sexual assault requires a complex and multi-layered approach that also engages the community as a whole.
Senn, too, says it’s important to work toward broader societal shifts in the way that both men and women are taught about sexuality, relationships, and consent. (In fact, some aspects of her rape avoidance program engage with these topics: In the training sessions, participants learned that acquaintance rape is common, and practiced defining their sexual boundaries so they can better articulate their lines of consent.) But she says college women also need practical prevention strategies.
“What this shows us is that, while we wait for effective programs for men or for cultural shifts in attitudes to happen, there is something practical we can do to give young women the tools they need to better protect themselves from sexual assault,” Senn said in a statement.
Other researchers have also attempted to strike this balance, pursuing programs that both teach women self-defense strategies and engage men in broader conversations about sexual norms. Stanford University scientists, for instance, have been pursuing this multi-level approach in Kenya, where violence against women is rampant and police officers have been criticized for an insensitive approach toward victims.
In partnership with organization called No Means No Worldwide, Stanford researchers have conducted several studies to gauge the effectiveness of gender-specific rape prevention programs. In 2013, they published the results from a study that found teaching girls verbal and physical self-defense techniques helped empower them to feel more comfortable saying “no.” Just this week, they followed up with the results from a second study examining a program seeking to “change attitudes that lead adolescent boys and young men to think it is acceptable to assault or rape their female peers.” That education campaign, which taught men about the cultural norms that contribute to violence against women, helped participants have more positive attitudes toward women and successfully identify common rape myths, even nine months after the training ended.
Researchers also typically agree that these type of education efforts need to start much earlier, long before students set foot on a college campus.
“With the spotlight currently focused on sexual violence on college campuses in both the United States and Canada, it may be tempting to focus all attention on the college-age group for prevention efforts. But prevalence data paint a different picture — we must start younger,” Basile writes in her editorial.
Thanks to deeply entrenched support for abstinence-only education, it’s been difficult to expand comprehensive sex ed classes in public schools, even as part of a broader rape prevention strategy. But some policymakers are trying. This spring, California lawmakers introduced a bill that would require high schools to update their health classes to add information about sexual violence, healthy relationships, and affirmative consent.