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Category: General Announcements
Resources: The State of Sexual Violence Response Conference
The NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault
Thank You for a Successful Conference!
We want to extend our deepest gratitude to all who joined us for The State of Sexual Violence Response in New York City conference. Your participation as an attendee, panelist, or moderator made this gathering a powerful space for learning, collaboration, and advocacy.
We are excited to keep the conversation going. On this page, you will find the conference agenda, presentation slides, and resources shared by our panelists. We are currently compiling notes from each session, and additional resources will be added as they become available. Keep an eye out as we also upload pictures from the event in the coming weeks.
Stay tuned for our upcoming white paper, which will reflect on key insights and next steps identified during the conference. And don’t forget to mark your calendars—we’re already planning next year’s conference!
Thank you for being a part of this essential dialogue. Together, we continue to build a stronger, more comprehensive response to sexual violence in New York City.
Keep reading and click the links below for conference resources.
Conference Photos
Click here for conference photos.
Conference Materials
Digital of Cyber Boundaries: Addressing the Growing Crisis of Cyber Sexual Assault
Presenter: Lana Ramjit, Director, Clinic to End Tech Abuse, Cornell
Description: Technology can be used to facilitate harm, including harassment, stalking, and even sexual abuse. Advocates have increasingly gained awareness and understanding of technology-facilitated harms. In this session, we move beyond awareness, devoting the majority of our time to response. We will discuss relevant statutes and laws in NYC addressing cyber violence, prepare to help survivors navigate their criminal and civil legal options, and learn strategies that survivors can take immediately and without legal counsel.
Conference: The State of Sexual Violence Response in New York City
The NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault
We’ll be bringing together stakeholders from various sectors, including healthcare, law enforcement, social services, advocacy, and government, as we discuss gaps in our current system of response and how we can work together to truly meet the needs of survivors in NYC.
FY25 Sexual Assault Initiative
On-Call Sexual Assault & Domestic/Family Violence Volunteer Advocates Needed
The Kering Foundation Will Host Its Second Annual Caring For Women Dinner in New York
Published on: July 18, 2023
NEWS PROVIDED BY Kering
To Celebrate Its 15th Anniversary, the Foundation Will Raise Funds to Benefit NGOs That Address Gender-Based Violence and Support Survivors
Co-Chairs include Salma Hayek Pinault and François-Henri Pinault, Oprah Winfrey, and Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai
NEW YORK, July 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — To celebrate its 15th anniversary, the Kering Foundation will raise funds through its second annual Caring For Women Dinner to benefit NGOs that address gender-based violence. Co-chaired by Salma Hayek Pinault, François-Henri Pinault, Zoë Kravitz, Cindy Sherman, Christy Turlington Burns, Olivia Wilde, Oprah Winfrey and Malala Yousafzai, the sold-out event will take place on Tuesday, September 12th at The Pool in Manhattan. The inaugural Caring For Women Dinner raised over 3 million dollars.
This year, net proceeds will benefit the Malala Fund, National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), and New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault.
Hosted by award-winning journalist Lisa Ling and attended by Kering’s Houses, including Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Brioni, and Pomellato, as well as friends from Christie’s, Ginori 1735, Cartier, Caruso, Hearst, and Neiman Marcus Group, among others, this year’s event will revolve around the theme “Strength In Numbers.”
“Among the many lessons learned since creating the Kering Foundation is that there is enormous strength in community, and gathering together a strong coalition of friends, partners, and allies at the Caring For Women Dinner is one way we can take collective action to address this systemic but solvable problem,” says François-Henri Pinault, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Kering and Chairman of the Kering Foundation. “Despite alarming setbacks for women’s rights around the world, there has been heartening progress to address violence against women in the last 15 years, and we must continue to harness the power of collaboration and solidarity to ensure that all women can lead fulfilling lives free from violence.”
Since 2008, the Kering Foundation has worked toward a world free from gender-based violence by partnering with local, feminist NGOs in six countries. By supporting survivor-centered services, implementing programs to break the intergenerational cycle of violence for future generations, and mobilizing internal and external networks to take action for gender equality, the Foundation aims to reduce and ultimately eradicate gender-based violence.
Aligned with the Foundation’s core values, the organizations chosen to receive funds from the Caring For Women Dinner are:
Malala Fund: An organization dedicated to giving every girl an opportunity to achieve a future she chooses, Malala Fund was founded by Malala Yousafzai, the youngest-ever Nobel Laureate, and her father Ziauddin. By amplifying girls’ voices, holding leaders accountable, advocating for resources and policy change, and investing in local education activists in regions where the most girls are missing out on secondary school, Malala Fund is working for a world where every girl can learn and lead. Funds raised will support Afghan organizations providing alternative learning opportunities for girls living under the girls’ education ban and global advocacy to pressure the Taliban government to reopen girls’ secondary schools.
New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault: The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault was founded in 1999 to prevent sexual violence and reduce the harm it causes through education, research, and advocacy. The Alliance works closely with local leaders and stakeholders to develop and implement promising practices and policies, raise public awareness, and create sustainable change for survivors. Funds raised will support the Alliance’s Project DOT, a unique, research-backed sexual violence prevention program that works with at-risk youth, training and empowering them to become impactful organizers and change-makers to combat sexual violence in their own communities.
NNEDV: A leading voice for domestic violence victims and their advocates in the US, NNEDV represents the 56 state and U.S. territorial coalitions against domestic violence who in turn represent 2,000 local domestic violence programs and the millions of survivors served annually. Funds raised will support NNEDV and the Independence Project, a credit-building microloan program for survivors of domestic violence who experience many forms of financial abuse. NNEDV tracks and reports survivors’ payments to the three credit bureaus to help build a good credit history.
About the Kering Foundation
Worldwide, 1 in 3 women is or will be a victim of violence during her lifetime. Since 2008, the Kering Foundation combats this violence that affects all cultures and all social classes. To maximize its impact, the Foundation works with a limited number of local partners in six countries: France, Italy, Mexico, the United Kingdom, the United States and Korea.
The Foundation supports local organizations that provide comprehensive and tailored services to women survivors, and works to change behaviors and attitudes by engaging youth, in particular boys, to promote gender equality. In 2019, the Kering Foundation began supporting programs to address the origins of gender-based violence, in order to break the intergenerational cycle of abuse.
The Foundation also seeks to create safe and supportive workplaces for survivors, both at Kering and through mobilizing other companies. In 2018, with the FACE Foundation, the Kering Foundation founded “One in Three Women”, the first European network of companies engaged against gender-based violence.
About Kering
A global Luxury group, Kering manages the development of a series of renowned Houses in Fashion, Leather Goods and Jewelry: Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Brioni, Boucheron, Pomellato, DoDo, Qeelin, as well as Kering Eyewear and Kering Beauté. By placing creativity at the heart of its strategy, Kering enables its Houses to set new limits in terms of their creative expression while crafting tomorrow’s Luxury in a sustainable and responsible way. We capture these beliefs in our signature: “Empowering Imagination”. In 2022, Kering had over 47,000 employees and revenue of €20.4 billion.
SOURCE Kering
Budget Hearing, Youth Services: Project DOT
Testimony of Shilpy Chatterjee, Senior Prevention Coordinator
New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault
Submitted to the New York City Council Committee on Youth Services
Oversight Hearing on the Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year 2024
March 22, 2023
I would like to thank the chair, Council Member Stevens, and each member of this committee for the opportunity to speak with you. My name is Shilpy Chatterjee. I work as the senior prevention coordinator for the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. I am here today to talk with you about the critical importance of sexual violence prevention for young people in New York City and to ask for $125,000 in support for our Project DOT youth empowerment program through the Young Women’s Initiative.
For over twenty years, the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault has worked to prevent sexual violence and reduce the harm it causes through education, research, and advocacy. We lead impactful sexual violence prevention programs and are a prominent provider of training and technical assistance to organizations and professionals who support survivors.
Sexual violence prevention programming that focuses on teenage girls is essential in light of escalating violence experienced by youth, which has dramatically risen in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s recently released Youth Risk Behavior Survey: 2011-2021confirmed that the rate of sexual violence experienced by girls have been growing and is at a pace far outstripping the violence experienced by boys.[1] According to this study, 14% of high school-aged girls report having been physically forced at some point to have sexual intercourse when they did not want to (compared with 4% of boys), and, in 2021 alone, 18% of American girls experienced sexual violence (compared with 5% of boys). Importantly, the rates of girls experiencing sexual assault and sexual violence of any form have been rising, as noted in the 2011 to 2021 period. The trends for sexual violence are moving in the wrong direction; evidence-informed, proven sexual violence prevention initiatives focused on the needs of girls are urgently needed.
To address this need, the Alliance launched Project DOT in 2014 to focus on sexual violence in a way that leverages community strength and prioritizes young girls’ leadership development. DOT was designed together with youth collaborators, community-based organizations (CBOs) as well as sexual violence prevention experts, to focus on social norm change, healthy relationships, practicing consent, safe bystander engagement techniques and leadership skills.
We work together with several youth-serving community-based organizations and schools to broaden the reach of DOT to a diversity of young women of color and LGBTQIA youth. For example, during this school year, the Alliance together with the Kingsbridge Heights Community Center (KHCC) launched a new partnership with Bronx Theatre High School to bring Project DOT programming to their LGBTQ-identified students. DOT participants in that cohort are students between the ages of 14-18 years; 100% of are LGBTQIA- identified. This is a school with an enrollment that is 60% Latino, 34% Black, 2% White. 90% of the student body come from economically disadvantaged homes, and 28% of the students live with a disability.
When we recently asked youth from a Project DOT cohort about the affect the program had on them, one young woman talked about the day her group learned about emotional abuse. “That impacted me a lot because I guess I experienced that firsthand. So, hearing that lesson – a switch kind of flipped in my head: ‘Oh! This person was emotionally abusing me!’ I guess he is considered an abuser in a way. I went through so much. It made me more aware. Now I know what to look out for, so I don’t go through stuff like that again. I actually went home, and I analyzed my entire life that day. But it wasn’t in a bad way. It was more so like…it just made me more aware of my surroundings and the people I let into my life.”
Project DOT runs after school and in the summertime over 8-10-week periods. Nearing the end of the series, and after the group has built up trust between its members, the young women will make presentations to each other about the sexual violence-related topics that they have learned about. For most, this is the first time they have been asked to speak in front of a group about a sensitive subject. Tackling this challenge is an important part of their leadership development. As a DOT facilitator, I witnessed the impactful presentation of a particular young women during a recent DOT presentation day. This 17-year-old girl, who had immigrated to the U.S. from an African country, felt safe and supported by her cohort to make a presentation about a subject that was personal for her and relevant to her culture: female genital mutilation. Though this topic is not part of the DOT curriculum, her presentation focused on something that 20 million women around the world face. And her lesson opened the eyes of her cohort to a form of abuse most had never heard of. Working with youth, I know that young people have a fear of how people look at them. They can be hesitant to do anything that might make them stand out. For this young lady to feel that she could speak about something most people in the U.S. do not know about, and that is outside of the curriculum, showed real leadership.
After presenting to each other, participants conclude their DOT series by leading community activities and a public awareness campaign. Past cohorts of youth have launched radio shows, community teach-ins for adult caregivers, and focus groups with parents to foster opportunities for intergenerational dialogue on healthy relationship and dating practices. This extends the impact of the program beyond the youth participants and positions them as leaders in their communities.
To prevent sexual violence across New York City, it is essential that we train and empower youth. Our Project DOT is a proven program that changes young women’s lives and initiates ripples of impact throughout theircommunities. We are asking for the Council’s continued support through the Young Women’s Initiative of $125,000 to support this transformational work to prevent sexual violence from reaching New York City’s young people.
The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault works citywide on several initiatives to combat the effect of this form of violence on our city. Please support our funding request of $500,000 through the Initiative to Combat Sexual Assault that allows us to run our Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner Training Institute, and our funding request of $300,000 for a new initiative to support our OutSmart collaboration with CVTC of sexual violence prevention in nightlife spaces (i.e. bars, restaurants, clubs).
I thank you for your time and attention and will welcome your questions.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [2011-2021] Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
Testimony: Expanding Abortion Access
Testimony of Sam Skaller
Senior Campus Coordinator
New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault
Before the Committee on Women and Gender Equity
July 1, 2022
Good afternoon, Chair Cabán and the members of the Committee for Women and Gender Equity. I want to thank you for convening this critical hearing to expand reproductive rights access in New York City and for allowing me to testify before you today.
My name is Sam Skaller (she/they), and I am the Senior Campus Coordinator for the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. The mission of the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault is to prevent sexual violence and reduce the harm it causes through public education, prevention programming, advocacy for survivors, and the pursuit of legal and policy changes. In doing so, the Alliance works to disrupt systems and institutions that, unfortunately, can retraumatize survivors when they most need our support.
I would like to thank Council Member Cabán for her leadership by introducing this package of bills that aim to expand reproductive justice to those in New York City.
I am here today to advocate for the interests of survivors of sexual violence for whom the services and supports offered through this legislative package is critically important.
Bodily autonomy is about power. Power over your own bodies while respecting the power others have over their bodies.
As a sexual violence prevention educator, the entirety of my work revolves around bodily autonomy. I’m invited to colleges and universities all across the city to empower people to understand the right they have to their own bodies and how to respect others’ bodies. I provide educational trainings, student conduct support, and referrals to hundreds of students, faculty, and staff in New York City and beyond. Over the last 7 years working in this field, I’ve spoken with thousands of people who have had their bodily autonomy violated by a spouse, a partner, a stranger, a family member, an employer, a professor, or a politician. The commonality amongst the perpetrators of sexual violence is abusing power. Without informed consent, those perpetrating sexual violence combine their own power and the power they’ve taken to violate someone’s bodily autonomy. On June 24th, 2022, without the informed consent of the vast majority of Americans, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe v. Wade thus using their power to violate our bodily autonomy. Government institutions spanning from the Supreme Court to this elected body, and everything in between should never replicate the actions of abusers. Eliminating protections for people seeking bodily autonomy after becoming pregnant for whatever reason is an example of an institution abusing its power to violate our bodies. While here in New York State and New York City abortion access remains legal, we should not breathe easy.
According to the CDC almost 3 million women in the U.S have experience rape related pregnancy. Women raped by a current or former intimate partner were more likely to report a rape-related pregnancy. Of women who were raped by an intimate partner, 30% experienced a form of reproductive coercion by the same partner. Specifically, about 20% reported that their partner had tried to forcibly impregnate them when they did not want to or tried to forcibly stop them from using forms of birth control. About 23% reported their partner refused to use a condom. [1] Reproductive violence is sexual violence.
We at the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault know that sexual violence disproportionately impacts people holding historically marginalized identities and intersecting identities. Gender diverse communities, ability diverse communities, Black and Brown communities, AAPI communities, Indigenous communities and every intersection in between have not only historically been purposely excluded from the state’s bodily autonomy rulemaking but have and will continue to experience sexual violence at rates higher than that of their cisgender, able-bodied, white counterparts.
While there are no specific data points for NYC to quantify people’s experiences with reproductive and sexual violation, we at the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault can qualitatively, anecdotally, and humanly argue that one instance of reproductive and sexual violation is too many.
We urge the elected officials sitting here today to use the power and platform they have to take any measures necessary to ensure that despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade, that New York City will be a place for bodily autonomy, choice, and freedom.
With that said, we’d like to share our support for this legislative package (Int0458, Int0466, Int0475, and Int0507.) Each of these Introductions align with our values for bodily autonomy, as they ensure equitable access to reproductive health, protect those seeking abortion services, and track the reproductive needs of New York City.
As this committee moves to take action in strengthening access to abortion and reproductive healthcare, we ask that you consider expanding Int0465 to explicitly require all of DOH-MH annual reporting be anonymous as to not breach the confidentiality or identity of any patients seeking medical care.
Thank you so much for your time today. We look forward to working with you and the whole of the City Council to ensure these important pieces of legislation become law.
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/sexualviolence/understanding-RRP-inUS.html
Alliance Statement on the Overturn of Roe vs Wade
We support choice today. And we will support choice tomorrow
The Alliance commits to an active role in the struggle for reproductive justice in response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
The right to the choice not to continue with an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy is an essential, non-negotiable component of the support that survivors of sexual violence deserve after sexual assault.
In standing with survivors, the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault supports ready, safe, and unrestricted abortion access in our city and beyond. We deplore today’s decision by the Supreme Court to strike down Roe vs. Wade. Today’s decision will not end abortions in the United States – but it will make abortion much less safe and more difficult to obtain. Today’s decision will disproportionately impact BIPOC communities as well as pregnant people from other marginalized identities. This is a justice issue. And we pledge to do everything within our power to advocate for survivors’ access to abortions if they want them through policy and activism.
-NYC ALLIANCE AGAINST SEXUAL ASSAULT
Alliance Senior Prevention Coordinator Interviewed About the Impact of the Roe Decision
Senior Prevention Coordinator Shilpy Chatterjee was recently interviewed in Urdu on Voice of America, a news channel with over 4 million subscribers across various platforms and is broadcast across the world.
Feminist activists are concerned about the US Supreme Court’s removal of constitutional protections for the right to abortion. Shilpy Chatterjee of the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault says the decision has pushed [back the progress of] women’s rights movements.
“Abortion has always existed, it is as old as pregnancy. By overturning Roe vs Wade now it is being made unsafe and life threatening.”
This interview is in Urdu and can be viewed below!
