Framing best practice: National Standards for the primary prevention of sexual assault through education (National Sexual Assault Prevention Education Project for NASASV)

In 2008, the Rudd Labor Government identified the prevention of violence against women as a priority for action. The National Sexual Assault Prevention Education Research Project (SAPE) was established to complete a one-year project to develop and trial a national sexual assault prevention education framework. The project was to identify best or promising practice models for doing sexual assault prevention education in the Australian context with the aim of building upon existing prevention education activities to provide a framework that can be implemented across Australia by prevention educators, service providers, policy makers and funding bodies. In considering existing prevention programs the following areas were of particular interest: programs that have incorporated men as well as women, that are targeted to culturally and sexually diverse groups, and that address the specific needs of regional women and men and people with disabilities. Another key component of the consultation process was to identify programs that included some form of evaluation, particularly programs that have included steps toward assessing behavioural change. In addition, the research was to identify some of the barriers to wider implementation of primary sexual assault prevention education. This report provides a comprehensive discussion of the research underpinning the framework, along with some of the researchers' analysis of the 32 fieldwork interviews that were completed with workers and other key individuals in most states in Australia. Six national standards for sexual assault prevention education are identified and described as the framework for increasing the capacity of the sector to deliver high quality primary prevention education programs

Sexual ethics and violence prevention

Violence against women remains a pressing and unresolved global issue which has proved resistant to over 30 years of feminist activism around prevention. This article argues that many prevention strategies have been shaped by unarticulated discourses about sexuality which have focused primarily on women managing the risk of the unethical behaviour of men. An alternative conception of sexual ethics is proposed based on Foucault's work on ethics, sexuality, governmentality and power as productive and in a constant state of negotiation. I argue that all sexual encounters, regardless of the gender of the people involved, invites the possibility of ethical sexual behaviour. Given the failure of prevention strategies in eradicating intimate sexual violence to date, there is a pressing need to consider how desire, acts and pleasure can be understood from an ethical perspective to create a greater possibility of realizing an erotics of consent. This would result in alternative ways of shaping violence prevention strategies and provide new directions for law, education and negotiating intimate sexual relationships of women and men of diverse sexualities

Dangerous knowledge : the politics and ethics of research

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Conceptualising the prevention of sexual assault and the role of education

The United Nations In-depth Study on all Forms of Violence Against Women: Report of the Secretary-General (2006) surveyed 71 countries and found that on average at least one woman in three is subjected to intimate partner violence in the course of her lifetime. Between 10% and 30% of women in other studies indicated that they had experienced sexual violence by an intimate partner (Heise, Ellsberg, & Gottemoeller, 1999). In many cases physical violence is accompanied by sexual violence. In the Australian context two large-scale prevalence studies provide insight into the local experience. The 1995 Women\u27s Safety Survey found women in the 18-24 year age-bracket were more likely to be assaulted than women in other age groups: 19% of women aged 18-24 had experienced sexual violence in the past 12 months, compared with 6.8% of women aged 35-44 and 1.2% of women aged 55 and over. Only 15% of women who identified an incident of sexual assault in the 12 months prior to the survey reported it to police (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 1996). A later study in 2005 estimated there were 44,100 persons aged 18 years and over who were victims of at least one sexual assault in the 12 months prior to the survey; approximately 72,000 incidents of sexual assault were experienced by these victims (ABS, 2005). There is no argument about the pervasiveness and impact of sexual violence. The challenge we face is how to prevent it. Over the last 30 years, Australian governments have developed comprehensive multi-level strategies to try and address the needs of victims, to hold perpetrators responsible and to educate the community about how to prevent sexual and other forms of intimate violence. Over this time, it has become clear that the prevention of sexual assault is a complex task that challenges policy makers, victim and perpetrator services, educators, researchers and the communities in which we live

Sexuality research : ethics

Sexuality research and sex research differ in a number of important ways. Sex research focuses on the mechanics of sex and is dominated by biomedical discourses and most often framed from an “objective” stance. Sexuality research, on the other hand, recognizes power relations between women and men, between heterosexual and homosexual, and between cultures, and therefore is inherently political (Connell & Dowsett 1993). Sexuality and the research of sexuality are embedded in cultural and historical contexts. Both are embodied experiences that consider the complex dynamic meanings and activities, cultural signs, politics, and ethics that impact on its realization or repression

Preventing adult sexual violence through education?

An overview of research on the effectiveness of sexual assault prevention education programmes in Australia and the US is provided, considering some of the limitations and unintended consequences of the approaches to sexual assault prevention. The impact of construction of gender and sexuality on the kinds of prevention strategies promoted with a key focus on the needs of young women and men who are most vulnerable to sexual assault either as victims or perpetrators is discussed

Ethical erotics : reconceptualizing anti-rape education

This article argues that many anti-violence prevention strategies have been shaped by unarticulated discourses of sexuality that focus primarily on women managing the risk and danger of unethical behaviour of men. Sexual intimacy has therefore been dominated by discourses of fear and danger and women’s pleasure is once again invisible. An alternative conception of sexual ethics is presented based on Foucault’s work on ethics, and sexuality. The findings from in-depth qualitative interviews with 26 Australian women and men of diverse sexualities indicate that women and men regardless of erotic choice of partner have found multiple ways to explore sexual pleasure that is ethical, non-violent and where danger is reduced. This suggests a need to develop alternative ways of shaping violence prevention strategies that acknowledge both pleasure and danger. Keywords: evaluation of education, rape prevention, sexual ethics, sexual negotiatio

Sexual ethics and the erotics of consent

The issue of sexual consent remains a controversial one with legal discourses of consent dominating debates about sex and sexual violence. However these discourses operate alongside other bodies of knowledge that also seek to regulate sexual practices. In particular there is evidence of psychological, socio/cultural, feminist and religious discourses present in much of the literature (Baumeister and Tice, 2001, Card, 1991, Cowling, 1998, Krahe et aI., 2000, Mappes and Zembaty, 1997, Primoratz, 1999). Other authors in this collection will address some of these areas and their application to different social contexts, groups and settings. My approach will be somewhat different. What I wish to focus on is the role of sexual ethics. While consent is an element here, I will argue that this remains a limited concept without some consideration of how individuals as sexed and gendered bodies constitute themselves as ethical or unethical subjects within the social body and within interpersonal relationships and sexual encounters. My discussion draws on subjective perceptions and reflections based on the Australian experience and while I think the issues have universal resonance, recognition of cultural variations is important

New directions in sexual assault prevention

The central question that faces all of us who are committed to non-violence is how can we prevent sexual assault. This is a question that has been a concern of feminist politics for over a century and more recently for the last three decades. We have heard this week about the role of the law as a prevention strategy and the important work being done by practitioners in prevention. My focus in this paper today will be on community and public education. I have several areas that I want to explore with you. To begin I want to reflect briefly on how community education about rape prevention has been characterised since the 1970s. My method for doing this will be to review a series of community education posters It is not possible to reproduce the posters due to copyright restrictions. which highlight the ways in which sexual assault has been understood, identify who are the targets for the messages and the implications of these approaches for prevention. These reflections will I hope provide some insight into the discourses or knowledges regarding sexual assault prevention. I will argue that understanding these past approaches will be important for shaping future prevention strategies. In the second part of the paper I will present an alternative model of prevention which focuses on the development of ethical sexual behaviour in women and men

Women and hate crime : a useful political strategy?

Hate crime legislation has gained increasing support in the US since the 1990s by a diversity of groups who experience violence and prejudice including feminists campaigning around violence against women. Australian responses have been somewhat different. This article explores the origins of hate crime and presents a critical appraisal of the usefulness of applying hate crime to violence against women. In particular I consider how useful redefining violence against women as a hate crime would be as a feminist strategy in preventing violence. Germaine Greer has argued that 'Women have very little idea of how much men hate them' (1999:280). The consistent and repeated levels of brutality perpetrated by some men against women they supposedly love would suggest that hatred and fear of women are part of the motivation for the violence. This analysis has resulted in the United States in a 10 year campaign by the National Organisation for Women (NOW) for the inclusion of women in Federal hate crimes legislation. In Australia, a discussion of the usefulness of this approach seems to be slowly emerging. In this article, I will consider some of the dilemmas in uncritically extending categories of hate crime to include violence against women. In particular I will consider how useful redefining violence against women as a hate crime would be as a feminist strategy to prevent sexual violence