Photo Courtesy CCA/flier for Spring 2023 Sexual Assault Support Group
By: Claire Fisher, Features Assignment Editor
St. Bonaventure University has initiated a pilot program — a new sexual assault support group.
In coordination with Connecting Communities in Action, Victim Advocate Kennedy Scott and Amy Lanphere LMHC, licensed mental health counselor, have created a 12-week curriculum to help survivors of sexual violence cope and assimilate back into mainstream culture.
Topics such as self care, trigger responses, distractive versus active coping, psychoeducation of trauma and more will be discussed during the 12 weeks.
A key piece of the support group is its confidentiality.
“What happens in group, stays in group,” Scott said.
Even in the first week of the program, members will create a system of rules to sign and all adhere by.
After confidentiality is established, the group will work to tackle two key takeaways: understanding and real-life coping skills.
“Oftentimes, people say ‘I would do “this” in a situation’, but in reality you never know how you will react until you are in something like that,” Scott said. “It’s important to learn the literal mechanisms that happen in your brain during things like this.”
Scott describes that survivors often question why they made certain decisions during the trauma. Psychoeducation during the group helps a survivor to understand why their brain responded in the way that it did.
The curriculum also focuses on day-to-day coping.
“We want them to help navigate the world again,” Scott said. “Oftentimes, people after an assault are very isolated, but hopefully learning about self-care should give them a little sense of normalcy again.”
“We really want this to be a pathway to healing,” Tara Kent-Leonard, director of sexual violence prevention and education at Bonaventure, said. “You’re not going to heal over these 12 weeks but [the group’s goal] is to jumpstart it.”
“To know that it’s possible,” Scott added.
Scott and Kent-Leonard point out that this can be an especially important program for the college age group.
“A lot of the time these things happen, and we do not even register it as sexual assault,” Scott said. “Especially for college-aged students, this gives them a place to talk about it.”
Support can still be offered even if one is not a survivor of sexual violence.
Scott recommends encouraging friends who bring up the support group to attend.
“Even if you don’t know what to say in the moment, just let people know that you are there for them,” Scott said.
“Let the person tell their story in their own time,” Kent-Leonard added. “Let them heal as they can and understand it as a process.”
There have been discussions on partnering with the Jamestown Community College Olean Campus in future years but, as of now, this is a Bonaventure-exclusive group.
Sessions have yet to begin. If interested, please contact Kennedy Scott at kscott@cca.org for more information on scheduling.
