Sexual violence prevention: A promising model and brief commentary

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This year’s campaign focuses on campus sexual violence prevention.

A general misconception about sexual violence is that it is not preventable and so services should focus solely on damage control and trauma- informed care.

While I recognize that these services are essential, I also believe that we can prevent sexual violence. By incorporating interventions that do not focus only on teaching healthy behaviors— or that place an undue amount of burden on victims or those who are deemed at “high-risk” for victimization— we can begin to target and alter the underlying cultural conditions that promote, condone, and maintain sexual violence.

Certainly, teaching consent is an essential piece to prevention work, but it is not the only piece. Rather, consent education can be wrapped into a spectrum of interventions that together promote an environment which is amenable to change. A promising model for such interventions is that developed by Larry Cohen, titled “The Spectrum of Prevention.”

Much like other change-related interventions and similar to community- organizing models, the spectrum introduces a roadmap for strategy development.

I do appreciate this model, though perhaps I would alter its shape so that the areas of development resided within a circle rather than a chronologically-oriented square. A circle would represent the cyclical and ongoing nature of prevention work. We never truly arrive at an endpoint or destination so much as continue through the cycle and encourage the work and practices to evolve further.