The Atlantic: Teaching Sexual Assault Prevention Through Comedy
The Atlantic reports:
At Catharsis’s flagship military client—the Great Lakes Naval Base, where the company has been active for two years—anonymous reports of rape have dropped between 50 and 70 percent since the program started. More detailed surveys, usually designed to detect sexual assault instances where people’s willingness to report and conflicting definitions of “rape” can complicate surface statistics, confirm those statistics. In fact, the program has been so successful that the military has begun referring to the program as the “Great Lakes Model,” one they hope to emulate on other bases, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby, who said the work at Great Lakes Naval Base was on the leading edge of “implanting comprehensive, evidence-based methods of sexual assault training and prevention.”
“They’re really a model not just for the Navy but for the whole military,” he told reporters recently.
But, Murphy and Stern are quick to point out, these statistics—while encouraging—are complicated and sometimes even counter-intuitive. Sexual assault reports can dramatically increase after a prevention program begins working, before they begin to subside.
“That’s really important to remember,” Murphy says, “In most situations, if you’re really doing the right thing, you’ll see that your reports go up before they go down.”
