USU President Noelle Crockett (left) and CAPSA director Jill Anderson (center) join Big Blue in urging citizens to respond to sexual assault by Start to Believing.
CACHE COUNTY – The local Citizens Against Physical and Sexual Abuse (CAPSA) organization is partnering with Utah State University to Start by Believing.
At a recent meeting of the Cache County Council, Sara Fitzgerald told council members that CAPSA received 750 crisis calls in 2021 where sexual assault or rape was the primary issue.
Moreover, in January and February of this year, she said that CAPSA has already helped more than 100 sexual assault victims.
“That’s a higher number that we’ve seen in recent years,” Fitzgerald said. “I want to talk about the best way to response to this, which is to Start by Believing.”
Utah State University is kicking off Sexual Assault Awareness Month (April) by participating in its fifth annual Start by Believing Day, in collaboration with CAPSA.
Start by Believing is a national campaign intended to help create a culture where survivors feel safe to come forward and receive the support they need to heal.
On Wednesday, April 6, pledge booths with be available on USU’s Logan, Price and Blanding campuses for students, staff, faculty and other community members to take the pledge to Start by Believing and support survivors when they disclose an experience of sexual assault.
Fitzgerald said that Start by Believing means shifting the response from blame to support when survivors disclose incidents of sexual violence. Historically, victims of sexual violence have been blamed for the crimes against them in ways victims of other crimes have not.
According to the 2021 Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Misconduct, the top reasons students did not tell anyone about their experience with rape or sexual assault included shame, fear and not thinking their experience was serious enough.
“When we question a survivor’s experience, rather than start by believing, we cause them to feel that they are responsible for what happened to them,” said Jenny Erazo, director of the Sexual Assault & Anti-Violence Information (SAAVI) office.
“This ultimately leads to overwhelming feelings of guilt that will stop them from seeking the supportive resources they deserve and create immense barriers to reporting.”
Fitzgerald urged that county council members take the Start by Believing pledge.
Council member Gina H. Worthen asked whether the increase in reports of sexual violence was the result of “ … women being more willing to report it or is it actually an increase?”
“It’s hard to say,” the CAPSA public information officer replied. “It could be the result of more reporting.
“The hard part with statistic like this is that we might never really know. That being said, we also know that a lot of people don’t report. So, we know that this number of 100 reports of sexual violent in our community is probably actually 3 or 4 times that.”
Fitzgerald concluded her report by expressing CAPSA’s gratitude for this community’s support and the hope that the Start by Believing effort can make a difference in the life of a sexual assault survivors.