July 2018 Community Education E-bulletin

Welcome to the July 2018 edition of Hope House's Community Education E-bulletin!​

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. Denim Day Funds Raised
2. Hope House Donation Needs
3. Sexual Assault
4. Domestic Violence
5. Miscellaneous News
6. Parents' and Youth Service Providers' Section

 

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Denim Day Funds Raised
Approximately 50 agencies, businesses, schools, and churches in our five county service area participated in Denim Day this April by wearing jeans in support of survivors. Some groups choose to collect donations for Hope House in addition to their awareness efforts. Funds raised this year totalled over $3,000. Thank you for your support!  

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Hope House Donation Needs
Monetary donations are most needed.  Individuals have the option of donating ​online.  Please note that a portion of your online donation will go towards PayPal fees.  Donations can be mailed to Hope House, P.O. Box 557, Baraboo, WI 53913. We also appreciate gas cards, gift cards (Walmart, Kwik Trip, Walgreens, Kohl’s), taxi vouchers from Baraboo Taxi, and used cell phones, iPods and iPads.  Please note that we are not accepting used stuffed animals/plush toys, used toys, clothes (except for new sweatshirts and sweatpants), shoes, used books, furniture, TVs, bar soap, hats, scarves or travel-size bottles of shampoo, conditioner, or body wash. Current needs include the following:

• Kitchen: Can Openers, Paper Towels
• Food: Cereal, Juice Boxes, Carnation Instant Breakfast, Canned Food (tuna, chicken, fruit)
• Cleaning Supplies: Disinfectant Spray, Toilet Paper
• Program Supplies: Sunscreen, Bubbles, Frisbees, Tote Bags

​Special Note about Travel-Size Items: We encourage those looking to donate travel-size items to donate them to the Backpack Project. The Backpack Project strives to provide Baraboo School District students who are financially challenged to enter the school doors on the first day ‘just like everyone else’ and to show these children the community supports and encourages them to learn and do their best. If interested in donating towards this project, please contact Becky Hovde at 608-963-8230 or Hivebiz65@gmail.com.

 

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News
Sexual Assault

• Former University of Wisconsin student sentenced to 3 years for sexual assaults, choking, stalking: “The state Department of Justice handled the prosecution. Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel said in a statement that he was disappointed Cook got only three years and he deserved a much longer sentence. ‘The Wisconsin Department of Justice is disappointed that Alec Cook did not receive the much longer sentence the prosecution team recommended, and we still believe that is what Alec Cook deserves’”…Read more​
• Aaron Persky, Judge In Brock Turner Case, Recalled: “Residents of California’s Santa Clara County voted Tuesday to recall Aaron Persky, the judge who sentenced former Stanford University student Brock Turner to six months in jail for sexual assault. Following months of sparring between opposing factions, the pro-recall campaign won the June 5 special election to remove Persky from the bench. Persky holds an elected judicial position, and his term was set to end in 2022. He is the first judge in California to be successfully recalled since 1932”…Read more
• The Creator Of ‘The Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill Of Rights’ Was Just Nominated For The Nobel Peace Prize: “Amanda Nguyen, a rape survivor whose 2016 bill of rights established consistent rules and procedures for prosecuting sexual assault crimes, was nominated by California representatives Mimi Walters and Zoe Lofgren. Amanda is also the founder of Rise, a national civil rights nonprofit that focuses on helping make rights for rape survivors consistent across state and country lines”…Read more​
• Actor and survivor Terry Crews brings his fight against sexual assault to Capitol Hill: “‘As I shared my story, I was told over and over that this was not abuse,’ he said. ‘This was just a joke. This was just horseplay. But I can say one man’s horseplay is another man’s humiliation.’ ‘I’m not a small or insecure man, but in that moment, and in this time following, I’ve never felt more emasculated,’ he admitted. ‘As I watched women and colleagues in my industry come forward to share their #MeToo stories, this shame washed over me again and I knew I needed to act.’ Since he came forward, Crews said, ‘thousands of men have come to me and said me too.’ He urged the lawmakers to ensure the ‘Survivors' Bill of Rights’ is enacted in all fifty states”…Read more
• Brendan Fraser’s #MeToo Story Is Why More Male Victims Don’t Speak Out: “It read, in part: ‘Although it was concluded that Mr. Berk inappropriately touched Mr. Fraser, the evidence supports that it was intended to be taken as a joke and not as a sexual advance’…This is how we victim-blame men: not for drinking too much or wearing the wrong clothes or seeking salacious fame, but for not playing along when another guy crosses a line. The villains here invoke the same fraternity of silence that gaslights and suppresses female victims. Terry Crews, an actor with a #MeToo story much like Fraser’s, shared an email from the music producer Russell Simmons, who advised him to give his abuser ‘a pass,’ as if the assault had happened to someone else, unknown to either man, and then, in a way, nonexistent. To do so would have reinforced the toxic assumption that men are invulnerable to these attacks — that to be a victim is, essentially, to be a woman”…Read more

• A rape victim was just awarded $1 billion. Jurors told her: ‘You’re worth something.’: “‘What that number stands for is the most important thing,’ he said. ‘We don’t care what we end up finally recovering from this company. We know they don’t have $1 billion. But it’s what 12 people in the state of Georgia said a victim of rape is worth that echoes louder’”…Read more
• He went AWOL after being sexually assaulted. After 30 years, the Navy finally believed him: “For years afterward, Phillips said he felt as if the Navy continued pretending none of it ever happened, as he continued to be denied mental health services from Veterans Affairs. The Navy repeatedly denied his requests for a discharge status upgrade to ‘honorable,’ even as Phillips continued to insist that he was assaulted. But then last week his phone rang. His attorney was calling with the news Phillips thought he would never hear. On Phillips’s fourth attempt, the Board for Correction of Naval Records agreed to discharge him honorably”…Read more
• High School Valedictorian's Mic Cut When She Talks About Campus Sexual Assault: “‘The class of 2018 has demonstrated time and time again that we may be a new generation, but we are not too young to speak up, to dream and to create change, which is why, even when some people on this campus, those same people –’ Seitz said before the mic went off. Her speech, then barely audible, continued, ‘... in which some people defend perpetrators of sexual assault and silence their victims.’ People in the audience began yell, ‘Let her speak!’ School officials did not turn her microphone back on. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the school's principal, David Stirrat, stands by the decision, saying, ‘We were trying to make sure our graduation ceremony was appropriate and beautiful.’ Seitz told CBS San Francisco station KPIX-TV, ‘The school continually censors students. It wasn't an easy thing to do to go up there and say what I said or tried to say.’ She told KPIX that she was sexually assaulted by another student, and when she reported the assault to high school officials, they did not take any action”…Read more

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Domestic Violence

• Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse: “The people who called into the help hotlines and domestic violence shelters said they felt as if they were going crazy. One woman had turned on her air-conditioner, but said it then switched off without her touching it. Another said the code numbers of the digital lock at her front door changed every day and she could not figure out why. Still another told an abuse help line that she kept hearing the doorbell ring, but no one was there. Their stories are part of a new pattern of behavior in domestic abuse cases tied to the rise of smart home technology. Internet-connected locks, speakers, thermostats, lights and cameras that have been marketed as the newest conveniences are now also being used as a means for harassment, monitoring, revenge and control”…Read more
• Domestic Violence Still Counts: NNEDV’s 12th Annual National Census: “Today, the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) released results from the National Census of Domestic Violence Services (Census) in its 12th Annual Domestic Violence Counts Report. For 24 hours, the Census surveys domestic violence programs across the United States and territories to create a one-day snapshot of the services provided to survivors and their children…On this year’s Census Day, 11,441 requests for services could not be met due to a lack of funding”…Read more
• Attorney General Further Jeopardizes the Lives of Domestic Violence Victims: “‘This heartbreaking decision further jeopardizes already vulnerable victims of horrific domestic violence who have nowhere else to turn,’ said NNEDV President and CEO, Kim Gandy. ‘I hope individual immigration judges will use their own discretion to take these factors into account, and provide humanitarian relief to these survivors and their children.’ ‘Asylum in the United States is, for many victims of domestic violence, literally lifesaving. Those affected by today’s decision have already faced extreme violence, and this decision will send them back to horrific abuse, or even death. In some countries, abusers are injuring and maiming their victims with impunity, and asylum seekers have nowhere else to turn,’ continued Gandy. While this ruling does not definitively prevent all domestic violence survivors from seeking asylum, the increased barriers may be insurmountable for the most vulnerable victims, many whom have no access to an attorney”…Read more...Read related article: Sessions Says Domestic and Gang Violence Are Not Grounds for Asylum
• Domestic Violence Expert Resigns From NFL Players Association Commission: “‘The Player's Association contacts that I have would welcome those ideas, tell me they were eminently doable, but that they had to get kicked down the road because 'It was the Super Bowl, it was the draft, it was the season,' she says. ‘And I would come back and reiterate my suggestions, and eventually I found that communication would just die on the vine.’ ‘I realized very little, if anything, was going to happen’”…Read more​

 

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Miscellaneous

• Today’s Masculinity Is Stifling: “While society is chipping away at giving girls broader access to life’s possibilities, it isn’t presenting boys with a full continuum of how they can be in the world. To carve out a masculine identity requires whittling away everything that falls outside the norms of boyhood. At the earliest ages, it’s about external signifiers like favorite colors, TV shows, and clothes. But later, the paring knife cuts away intimate friendships, emotional range, and open communication”…Read more
• Hands off my data! 15 more default privacy settings you should change on your TV, cellphone plan, LinkedIn and more: “It’s not just Google and Facebook that are spying on you. Your TV, your cellphone provider and even your LinkedIn account have side hustles in your data. But, in many cases, you can opt out — if you know where to look. I dug into a bunch of popular products and services you might not think of as data vacuums or security risks and found their default privacy settings often aren’t very private. So I collected here some common settings you can change to stop giving away so much”…Read more
• Want To End Sexual Harassment? Landmark Study Finds Ousting ‘Bad Men’ Isn’t Enough: “But a major study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine outlines a more comprehensive way of looking at sexual harassment within organizations and identifies the strongest predictor of such behavior. Surprisingly, it has little to do with individual perpetrators. The study finds that the strongest, most potent predictor of sexual harassment is essentially the culture of the company ― what the researchers call ‘organizational climate.’ If employees believe that their organization takes harassment seriously, then harassment is less likely to happen, according to the 311-page report released Tuesday. That faith in fair treatment acts as a deterrent against bad actors and encourages workers to speak up about harassment ― key to keeping bad behavior at bay”…Read more
• Rashida Jones Made A PSA For Time's Up About Workplace Sexual Harassment: “They wanted to make something, she said, that was ‘not ultra didactic, not going to be necessarily just for women, something that could travel on the internet, something that's filled with facts, and hopefully a little bit entertaining that could help educate people a tiny bit’”…Watch it here​

 

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Parents' & Youth Service Providers' Section

• The Talk: How Adults Can Promote Young People’s Healthy Relationships and Prevent Misogyny and Sexual Harassment: “But research suggests that far fewer young people are 'hooking up' than we are commonly led to believe. This focus on the hook-up culture also obscures two much bigger issues that many young people appear to be struggling with: forming and maintaining healthy romantic relationships and dealing with widespread misogyny and sexual harassment. What's more, it appears that parents and other key adults in young people's lives often fail to address these two problems. Making Caring Common's new report, The Talk: How Adults Can Promote Young People’s Healthy Relationships and Prevent Misogyny and Sexual Harassment, explores these issues and offers insights into how adults can begin to have meaningful and constructive conversations about them with the young people in their lives”…Read the summary, tips, and resources here​
• 13 Reasons Why Toolkit: “Following the Netflix release of 13 Reasons Why in 2017, many mental health, suicide prevention, and education experts from around the world expressed a common concern about the series’ graphic content and portrayal of difficult issues facing youth. Resources and tools to address these concerns were quickly and widely disseminated in an effort to help parents, educators, clinical professionals and other adults engage in conversations with youth about the themes found in the show. In advance of the release of season 2, SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education) brought together a group of 75 leading experts in mental health, suicide prevention and education as well as healthcare professionals (see full list below) to develop tools to help encourage positive responses to the series. In just a few short months, this group has developed a toolkit providing practical guidance and reliable resources for parents, educators, clinicians, youth and media related to the content of the series (suicide, school violence, sexual assault, bullying, substance abuse, etc.)”…View here​

• In the #MeToo Era, Raising Boys to Be Good Guys: “Dr. Kane stresses the importance of breaking gender stereotypes in small, everyday practices. For example, she recommends assigning boys the kinds of household chores typically given to girls, like mending clothes and dusting furniture and nurturing younger siblings. Likewise, promoting emotional expression — the freedom to be vulnerable and sad, rather than just angry and strong — as well as celebrating creativity and quiet introspection are also key to countering patterns of gender inequality”…Read more
• Helping Youth Handle Rejection: “It's a painful reality that shootings and other acts of mass violence are horrifically common in the U.S, spreading grief to individuals, families, and communities…One factor in these violent incidents that is only recently being widely acknowledged is the role misogyny and entitlement play in driving the young men who commit these acts. A recurring pattern is that they are turned down by a specific young woman, or believe that women are somehow denying them the love and sex they’re owed, and decide to exact violent revenge for these slights. While there are other elements, such as gun access, that play a role in these incidents, we cannot ignore the ways entitlement and rage act as motivators…One of the ways we can work towards a world in which acts like this no longer happen, a world in which people, and women in particular, aren’t afraid their ‘no’ will make them a target of violence, is to make a concerted effort to help the young people in our lives learn to deal with rejection in healthy ways. With that in mind, we’ve put together recommendations to assist adults in doing exactly that”…Read more​

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