KCSARC: Giving Voice, Creating Change, Instilling Courage

| By: Committee for Children

 King County Sexual Assault Resource Center (KCSARC) has been a longtime friend of Committee for Children. This was a natural development, since both organizations are in Seattle and both aim to keep children safe from sexual abuse. And KCSARC does such valuable work here in King County that we wanted to share it with others around the country in the hopes that their methods and success can be replicated. So we asked KCSARC’s deputy executive director, DeAnn Yamamoto, to tell us the basics of what they do. Here’s what she had to say.

King County Sexual Assault Resource Center's purpose is to alleviate, as much as possible, the trauma of sexual assault for victims and their families. The organization's mission is to give voice to victims, their families, and the community; create change in beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors about violence; and instill courage for people to speak out about sexual assault. We’re an interdisciplinary organization, so we work collaboratively across advocacy, treatment, policy development, and prevention disciplines.

Intervention and Advocacy

We began in 1976 as King County Rape Relief, establishing a 24-hour resource line to address the immediate needs of victims and give information and support around the clock. As calls began coming in, it quickly became apparent that not only did adults need support and assistance, but so did parents of child victims. To address the dearth of written information, in 1979 we wrote the first book ever published to teach parents how to talk with their children about child sexual abuse. Titled He Told Me Not to Tell, it’s a wonderful primer for parents and has been printed in ten languages in eight countries. At last count, over a million copies have been distributed, and we recently published a new edition available for free download.

To respond further to victims of sexual abuse, in 1986 KCSARC began to build what is now one of the largest and most comprehensive legal advocacy programs in the nation. We work to help individuals and families navigate the legal system, which can be a lengthy and confusing process, and to access other needed services to support healing.

Therapy and Parent Education

KCSARC is a fully licensed mental health agency offering empirically based, trauma-focused interventions for children, youth, and adult victims of sexual assault and child physical abuse. To further support families, we offer Parent Education and Family Services, which meets the needs of parents and others through psycho-education. We attempt to enroll every parent or guardian of children in therapy in parent education so they can learn accurate information about sexual assault and offending behavior in order to better support the child or adolescent victim.

Community Outreach and Accessibility

Our Prevention and Education arm offers such services as working with communities coping with returning sex offenders; a project called POP!Tech, designed to prevent sexual assault crimes facilitated by digital technologies among high-risk youth; and an array of sexual assault prevention workshops through prevention and community advocacy work.

We also work hard to make our services as accessible as possible, which is why we established Dando Voz. Spanish for “giving voice,” Dando Voz offers all of our services in Spanish. And we reach out to homeless youth with the Phoenix Project, which works to improve outcomes for homeless youth victimized by sexual violence. The project uses innovative practices to create greater access to case management and therapy for this highly marginalized population.

Social and Policy Change

In 2010 we established CourtWatch, which is a court monitoring program that gathers information about the courts through observation. Court monitoring includes the observation of court proceedings, as well as conducting research on individual cases, court practices, and procedures. CourtWatch engages volunteers from the community to observe civil and criminal proceedings related to sexual assault and child physical abuse. Although there are court monitoring programs throughout the nation and world, CourtWatch is the first in King County, and in Washington State, to focus on sexual assault cases.

Innovation

Here at KCSARC, we’re always working to improve and expand our innovative approach to ending sexual violence. A couple of recent examples are:

• 100 Conversations: The 100 Conversations campaign encompasses 100 different conversations on topics that youth can explore with peers or adults. The topics discussed range from on- and offline safety, healthy relationships, and values to the underlying conditions that support a culture of rape, power, control, and violence.
• BE LOUD:  This video is filled with kids reminding the adults in their lives why it's important to talk about safety, and why those conversations are key to keeping kids safe from sexual assault.

DeAnn Yamamoto started at the King County Sexual Assault Resource Network in 1984 and is now deputy executive director. When she isn’t overseeing her team of clinical therapists, legal advocates, and crisis counselors, she can be found making jewelry, playing in the pit orchestra for live theater, and spending time with her daughters.