October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and an opportunity to think about our relationships and those of our friends and family. Often, survivors of domestic violence turn to friends and family for help first, so it’s crucial that we know what domestic violence is and how to help others. Domestic… [ Keep reading ]
Did you miss last week’s MODVSA-sponsored event, “Engaging African American Males in Ending Gender-Based Violence: Increasing Pathways to Safety, Justice, Reconciliation and Healing” at Seattle City Hall, featuring a panel of speakers including Dr. Oliver Williams, professor at the University of Minnesota with 35 years in the field of domestic violence, and Bettie Williams-Watson, Executive Director of Multi Communities and 33 years in the fields of domestic violence and sexual assault?
We are excited to co-sponsor an event on September 4, 2019 featuring two incredible experts: Bettie Williams-Watson and Dr. Oliver Williams. They will offer their combined 60+ years of experience and expertise on engaging African American men and boys in ending gender-based violence at the event, co-sponsored by the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and the Seattle University School of Law. Ms. Williams-Watson and Dr. Williams will speak to the importance of addressing racism, healing trauma that men and boys have themselves experienced, and bringing communities together protect African American women and girls. There are pathways to safety, justice, reconciliation and healing, and the speakers will discuss these issues and help attendees to build upon the expertise that already exists in the community to engage African American men and boys in ending gender-based violence.
I started working as an Advocate supporting survivors of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Stalking in 2007. In my first year of advocacy, I interacted with survivors whose abusers were using technology against them. This looked like sending intimate images to their workplaces, creating fake Craigslist ads with rape fantasies, or simply just repeated and unwanted contacts via many platforms. When I was approached by Dana Lockhart of SPD’s Victim Support Team in 2016 to start doing more work on this space in our community, not enough had changed. I felt I still wasn’t giving survivors sufficient solutions to what we now call Tech-Enabled Coercive Control (TECC). Dana began organizing the Tech-Enabled Coercive Control (TECC) Working Group; and we partnered with community-agencies, the University of Washington, and other City of Seattle departments to start digging into what we could do.
The Youth and Family Empowerment (YFE) Division of the City of Seattle Human Services Department (HSD) is seeking applications from agencies interested in providing systems navigation and addressing trauma for 18 to 24-year-old people harmed by the criminal legal system in Seattle. Approximately $4,910,333 in HSD General Fund dollars is available through this RFP. HSD intends to fund a maximum of 25 proposals. Initial awards will be made for the period of January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020. While it is the City’s intention to renew agreements resulting from this funding opportunity on an annual basis through the 2023 calendar year, future funding will be contingent upon performance and funding availability.
Harmful and erroneous attitudes about rape and sexual assault pervade our society. That is the reason why Denim Day exists – it is an anti-sexual violence campaign that is acknowledged worldwide every April. In Italy in 1992, a man raped a woman who was wearing a tight pair of jeans at the time. She reported the rape and the man was convicted. The case was appealed to the Italian Supreme Court. The court overturned the conviction in 1998 due to their belief that because the woman’s jeans were so tight, there is no way she could have been raped – in their view, she must have helped the man remove her jeans, thereby implying consent. The following day, the women of the Italian Parliament showed up to work wearing jeans in protest of the outrageous decision. This protest sparked an annual, worldwide Denim Day campaign against destructive attitudes about sexual assault.
