Prevention Is the Point: A New Approach to Sexual Assault with Jess Ladd and Kristin Hatcher
Updated: 10 minutes ago
Far too often, we hear about sexual assault after it happens. But what if we could stop it before it begins?
This week on ROAR, Danielle is joined by two women working at the forefront of an effort most people don't talk about nearly enough: prevention. Jess Ladd and Kristin Hatcher are the co-founders of the Fund to Prevent Sexual Assault, an organization with a bold public health vision: to reduce rape in the United States by 70% by the year 2050.
They're funding ambitious research, breakthrough prevention ideas, and innovators who are reimagining what safety could look like in terms of sexual assault. We talk about why prevention has been chronically underfunded, what real progress could look like, and why this work has to be led by people committed to sexual safety and agency. We also get into the Epstein files, the role of porn and gaming culture in shaping teen behavior, why a perpetrator-led organization might actually be the most powerful model—and a whole lot more.
This one will make you think. And even better, give you some hope for the future.
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT
Why the field has historically focused on response over prevention—and why that has to change
Why prevention isn't just school assemblies and consent lectures—it's a full public health approach, like what worked for teen smoking
The driver's ed analogy: why we've built so many guardrails around getting in a car, and almost none around a teenager's first sexual experience
The role of porn, TikTok, gaming culture, and the manosphere in shaping teen norms around consent
Why some people—including some in the sexual assault field—believe prevention is impossible, and what the research actually says
The Epstein effect: how high-profile cases shape public understanding, and complicate the work
The 5% statistic that should change the way every parent thinks
What you can do right now, from your role as a parent, employer, PTA member, or just a person who cares
THE THREE GRANTEES
The Fund ran an open call focused on preventing high school-age, peer-on-peer rape perpetration using technology or social media. They received over 100 applications. Here are the three they're currently funding:
1. Teach Us Consent
An initiative originally from Australia, now expanding to the U.S. They're using social media to teach young people about consent through the platforms they're already on. 🔗
2. The Kaisa Project
This project is working inside gaming culture—one of the primary spaces where teen boys spend time—by partnering with streamers who already have large followings. 🔗 Find them via PreventSA.org
3. Is This Okay?
A standalone web app functioning as an AI-powered coach for young people navigating sexual and romantic situations. Teens can use it to evaluate whether a situation was consensual, what they might do differently, or how to approach something they're planning. 🔗 Find them via PreventSA.org
RESOURCES
Listen to ROAR with Danielle Davies: Women, Culture & Impact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. New conversations every Tuesday.
Full Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and lightly cleaned up. It may contain small errors.
Progress, I think, is going to require us realizing there's humans on both sides of the equation here. And until we can come to terms with the fact that we all love somebody who's been harmed, but we all just statistically speaking know and probably love somebody who's caused harm, like how do we reconcile with all of that? Like, this is a human problem that's going to take human solutions and us just reckoning with that fact. It's this is hard work. That was part of the conversation from the women from the fund to prevent sexual assault and this is ROAR.
Hi everybody, this is Danielle Davies, the host of ROAR. Far too often we hear about sexual assault after it happens. But what if we could stop it before it begins? Today on Roar, we're speaking with two women at the forefront of an effort most people don't talk about nearly enough, prevention. I'm honored to be joined by Jess Ladd and Kristin Hatcher, co-founders of the Fund to Prevent Sexual Assault, an organization with a bold public health vision to reduce rape in the United States by 70% by the year 2050.
They're funding ambitious research, breakthrough prevention ideas, and innovators who are reimagining what safety could look like for women and girls. We'll talk about why prevention has been underfunded, what real progress could look like, and why this work has to be led by people committed to women's safety and agency. We'll also touch on how cultural forces from institutional failures to the ongoing public reckoning with sexual violence in the news make prevention work both urgent and complex. Welcome Kristin and Jess. I'm so happy that we're managing to do this.
Thank you for having us. Excited to be here. I'm thrilled. So, I'm going to just jump right in because I don't want to take up your whole day, but and I do have a lot of questions, but regarding rape and sexual assault, most of the public conversation and even funding has focused on response after assault, not prevention before it. Why do you think that imbalance has persisted?
And was there a moment where you thought if we don't change the approach, nothing is really going to shift or change? Yeah. so let's dive in. Well, what's that moment? Let's get into it.
sorry. We'll just jump right in. Forget where you're from, you know. Yeah. So, I guess a little bit of background.
So, Kristin and I met when we were working together on the survivor support side of things. So, we were working at an organization called Callisto that built an online platform to support survivors on college campuses and really helped to empower survivors around their decision of whether or not to report their assault and to help detect serial offenders. And we found that work of being on the survivor support side of things so important and so critical. But there's very much this sense of well, nobody should need a platform like this in the first place. Exactly.
Right. And there was this sense of, you know, if you're supporting survivors, but the systems that they're reporting into are so broken and don't result in the outcomes that they care about, you're only getting part of the way there. And so we became interested in also how do you make sure that there are options for survivors after their assault if to stop their perpetrator from doing it again that actually work. So we became sort of increasingly fascinated about what would that look like, right? How do we even approach that problem from that angle and how do we not keep putting the onus on women and girls to protect themselves, but actually say why does this behavior begin in the first place on the part of perpetrators and what do we do about it?
So, it's been kind of fun to switch that frame and that lens because it gives us a lot of hope and it gives us a lot of sort of creativity and the opportunity to be thinking at this problem from a totally new angle that to your point like it just isn't talked about that much from that side of things. It's not It seems like it's like just don't and that's correct, but you know, you got to get to the source of the why. why people are behaving in this way. And also, you know, when you said putting the onus on women, one of my earliest episodes, I interviewed a woman who teaches a self-defense class for women, and a lot of it is, and she was great, and she's like, a lot of it is awareness and all this stuff, but she's like, you know, she gets a lot of push back that we shouldn't have to teach women self-defense. And she's right, we shouldn't have to, but unfortunately, until we work on preventative measures are, you know, these are our options.
So, thank you guys for step Sorry, I'm from New Jersey. Everybody's guys thank you both for stepping up into this space and looking at it from a new framework. I know I appreciate it and I know for just being a mom to a girl or just knowing women at all, I appreciate it. So, thank you. One of the things we think about too is just what's the relationship between prevention and support.
So, I think sometimes we get caught in this false dichotomy that like what should we do with our limited resources? Should we support survivors or should we try to stop harm from happening in the first place? And one of the things that we've heard from working survivors with survivors in the past is that a reason that many people take action is to stop this from happening to the next person. So in a lot of cases, what a survivor actually wants is prevention.
so to us, these two concepts are quite linked together. That's also so powerful because even just any you hear about people bringing something up or going to court or fighting against the p you know legally fighting against the person who perpetrated against them and so much of the time that's what the harm has already been done to that person. So what is the impetus to step up? And you're right, it's to prevent it to for the next person, which is actually just speaks so strongly to the people who do that because they're often in a not a great place to even be able to do that with the systems that don't really support them, which we will get into. But let me ask you a question.
I know you know obviously the fund is to prevent sexual assault and how do you define prevention in this context like beyond awareness or education are there ways to actually reduce assault? Yes. Me luckily I mean when we think about right the way that we've traditionally been doing prevention it's mostly sort of school-based education right which doesn't happen in all schools in many schools doesn't happen to do any sort of consent education especially not anything that's to the degree needed to really change behavior. but there's a lot of potential of school-based education, how you get that to work because it is a case where often teens just don't really know what they're doing. And they're learning about what normal looks like from porn, right?
That's their model of what consent looks like. That's how they're they're learning to communicate with each other. those are the norms that are being reinforced. And so we think that school-based sort of programming can be a really key component of how do we prevent this, but it's not the only component. So when we think about what really worked in the past to change other issue areas like say teen smoking, it wasn't just about right the school-based lectures on tobacco being bad for you, right?
It was a massive marketing campaigns. it was working with television producers to make sure that, you know, it wasn't being shown to be cool to smoke, right? So, it really was a shift in the way that we advertised about that issue in terms of that online content, in terms of PSAs that were happening, right? I remember opening up, oh, I think it was 17 was maybe the magazine that I read back in the day and there just being full page ads from the truth campaign around tobacco and tobacco companies taking advantage of you and lying to you. And so when we think about what's maybe the parallel for sexual assault prevention, I think we can't just be depending on this school-based method.
We also need to be layering on these larger culture change pieces and thinking about the digital environment that kids are increasingly spending more and more of their time in. Whether that be from porn or Tik Tok or YouTube or the manosphere these days or so many different influences or these new apps that are sort of undressing apps for your peers. like it's this whole environment that is normalizing rape really and not providing a lot of alternatives of what to do instead. And then another key component that we've seen be really promising and that is working is treatment. Is that when a young person does cause sexual harm, there is very effective therapeutic treatment out there that can dramatically reduce their probability of committing that type of harm again.
But right now the only youth that ever get that treatment are those who have been convicted of a crime. And so, but if you think about where we're going with therapy these days and online and anonymous therapeutic support, you know, more AI powered therapeutic approaches which have a lot of downsides and we're still figuring it out and there's a lot of fear there, but we see a lot of potential of saying, how do we take some of these things that we know work in a very particular setting, say a school or a therapeutic environment, and how do we riff off of those to create new versions that are maybe more scale? available, more anonymous, don't require an institution to have to be involved as a gatekeeper between a young person and that type of support messaging, what have you, that will prevent the sexual assault perpetration behavior. Okay, real quick. If you're listening and thinking more women should be hearing conversations like this, the best way to support the show is just to follow or subscribe wherever you are.
It really does help it reach more people. Thanks so much. Okay, back to the show. I have a question. So, I mean, obviously I have a lot of questions, but I spar them on a question.
So, you know, when you talk about 17 magazine and Truth Social and or not Truth, oh my god, not at all. Different actually. Totally different. When you talk about 17 magazine and the and the huge push to get kids away from smoking, which I feel like is back in the day because well, that's a whole other story. but you did see that however there were there were the bad guys.
The people we were against were organizations, right? They were structures. They were big businesses. You knew who the perpetrator was and you could actively work with them against them, you know, in conjunction with what they're doing. And even I mean obviously cigarette makers could stop making cigarettes, but they in some ways joined with these campaigns to say, "Hey, this is dangerous.
" I mean, I'm sure they're sneaking it in where they can, but maybe nobody sue me. but they were at least to make themselves look good saying, "Yeah, no, don't do this. We agree. " What do you do in the case where you know your perpetrators are everywhere? There is no source of do you know what I mean?
There's no one entity or 10 entities to go after. There's at or you know at the at the pinnacle the height of the pinnacle there's boys everywhere and I know women rape also but predominantly we happen to see rape by men. So, how do you go after or how do you approach such a large population? Yeah, this is such a good question. I think here's a metaphor that's that's top of mind for us a lot of the time because I think you're right.
Like this is not a problem of a few bad actors. A lot of times in the media, we hear these sensational stories that are true, but it's sort of like the individual monster. And when we understand this as a problem of individual monsters or rape as a rare and random thing, like how unfortunate it happened, it's just not the right conceptualization of the problem. So, here's something we think about when we when we get in a car to drive for the first time at 16 or 15. what are all of the things that as an individual, as a family, as a community, as a like political environment, we've done to make that experience safe.
So, you've taken driver's ed there are, you know, you have turn signals on your car, you put your seatbelt on, there's on-ramps to the highway, there's a speed limit, there's highway patrol. you know, you might get pulled over. Like there's all of these things both from like a built environment and from policy and education that have gone into making that experience safe. But as these researchers that we really admire Hers & Khan, they're out of Columbia. Lots of good thinking on this.
This is really their metaphor. But we're sort of doing the equivalent with sex of like turning our eyes when our kid grabs the keys and walks out the car out the door to drive the car for the first time. Like there's almost nothing to support the experience of a kid having sex for the first time. And until we think about like all of the different levels of intervention that could go into making that a positive consensual experience, we're never going to get as far as we need to in terms of solving the problem. That was great.
Thank you. I really appreciate that analogy. That was a really great way to look at it. And I and it's interesting, too, because there are so many guard rails when you first learn to drive. I'm my daughter just got her license 2 months ago.
So, it really you're feeling it. You're feeling I was when you said and they go out the door and you look away. I was like cuz you know you're tracking. I'm like okay she's down the street. She's made a left.
you know, you're right. You're you're concerned and your concern does not end when she gets in the car and neither actually does your action because we are I am especially now because we do have these devices and very good point that nobody is there to kind of guide them into their first sexual experience or any sexual experience. and as a parent, there's not a lot of support for you having a kid that you know eventually may have sex unfortunately to tell if I'm the one telling you that. It's okay. It's okay.
I'm for Yes. Yes. I'm aware of Sorry, we'd have to go down that road. Parents need support as well because this is tough stuff and like you know, you don't want your kid to be navigating this solo and parents need support as well. We need all of us at different layers thinking about how to support younger folks.
Yes, absolutely. And so let's talk about so how the fund works is you're raising money and then you choose through applications, right? You have applicants who are applying to basically be the recipient of these funds. These are the projects that you see viability with at this moment. Correct or close?
Okay. So, would you guys be willing to share one of the an example of a prevention idea or a pilot you're funding that you feel hopeful about? Yes, we have three. So, I don't want to have to choose because they're all so No, we do a quick overview of all three because they're to hear about them. Yes.
Okay, great. so we have we have three grantees. Yeah. They all applied through this open application process that was focused on how do we prevent high school age peer-on rape perpetration. So, we're focusing on a very particular behavior at a very particular age.
And they the other aspect of the open call was everyone who applied needed to be using technology or social media to directly reach young folks who are at high risk of perpetrating or have already caused harm. So it was a pretty narrow focus for an open call. We got over a hundred applications from Wow. Congratulations. Thank you.
from lots of different fields for folks who had ideas that fed like fit that pretty narrow criteria. Just that alone is so hopeful. Like just that alone that there are that many people or organizations thinking about it is just because some of what you're saying is making me like and then other parts of what you're saying I'm like okay good continue. I'm sorry I cut you off. Yeah.
No, us too. I mean we didn't know this is the first time we've run this incubator so we didn't know what we would get. You know, we were we were hoping that we'd get at least 20, but we were clicking refresh on the submission deadline to see how many because we really didn't know. But our assertion in starting this was that there isn't a shortage of ideas. There isn't a shortage of people who care about this issue.
There's a shortage of capital to invest in things that are promising. And so ideas don't get tested because there just isn't the funding available to do it. So, we wanted to create a fund that would mobilize capital and see how much change we could actually create. Oh, yes. I have so much to say on that, but continue.
I'm not going to do it. And now our fabulous grantees. Yes. And our fabulous grantees. Okay.
So, after that process, we unfortunately only had funding to support three, but they're fantastic. And one of them was an existing organization that were helping expand what they're doing. and the other two started from scratch and that were probably wouldn't have happened if not for that open call. So it's a mix. So the first one is called Teach Us Consent.
It is an initiative out of Australia originally that we're helping expand to the US and they are using social media in a way that I have never seen to teach young people about consent online right through their phones and on the social media platforms that they are already on. And it's just their campaigns that they're doing, their messaging that they're doing. It's so smart. It's so clever. They have so many sort of following follow words followers who are enthusiastic about their content.
It's it's so slick. It's really fun to see an organization doing online consent education in a way that is high quality, scalable, appeals to young folks, is meeting them wherever they're they're at. It's just it's excellent. And so we're excited about the type of content that they've created in Australia and how might they riff on that for a an audience in the US and build their audience in the US. and they've been really effective at then using that online following to help advocate for changes in policy to create cons consent education, age appropriate consent education in schools in Australia.
And while now is maybe not the time to be doing a big federal policy play around consent education in schools in the US, certainly trying to begin to understand the US market and figure out how to how to in a market where it is trying hard to do policy change right now, how might you kind of work around that, right? And find another way to educate young folks. so that's one of our initiatives run by That's awesome. And can I know they're not in the US market yet, but online, can we access them now already just to check it out? Okay, great.
And I'll have that in the show notes so people can check it out, too. Yeah, all of them have their own website these days. And so that's one. the next one is the Kaisa project and it's using looking at sort of misogyny in the gaming industry and rape culture in online gaming where young boys are spending so much time on online games often or watching streamers who are streaming what they're playing on Twitch or YouTube. And this project is engaging streamers who already have pretty high followings among sort of teen boys and helping them create content that is authentic to that influencer's voice that will actually reach young person young people and combat rape culture, normalize consent, and combat misogyny in gaming culture.
And so we think that's really clever and they're testing out all these new approaches of how do you reach an influencer? How do you recruit them? How do you give them the training and support they need to create content that is high quality and authentic and that will resonate with an audience? And then they're collecting data on did that work. So they're beginning to test not just the method for how do you get these folks on board to create this content, but how do you help support them in creating content that actually changes attitudes and behaviors.
So, that's super cool. Oh my gosh, this is so great. Okay, so great. And then, the last the last project, which is this Okay, is a sort of a standalone web app right now to help young folks figure out whether or not a sexual situation they had or romantic or flirting situation that they had was basically consensual or not, and to what degree. And especially if they might have done something that they're feeling kind of weird about or they feel like they got signals from another person that were not 100% enthusiastic and they're trying to interpret that, giving them support to try to diagnose what happened in that scenario and what might they have done differently or what could they do in the future.
or when they're planning something like around hooking up with somebody or what have you, being able to give them advice around what they're planning and whether or not it is sort of appropriate, whether or not they could think about it differently, what's the right way to approach it. So Priya, who's building that project, has been also thinking about how does that not just be a standalone product that you, you know, you advertise on social media and let young people become aware of, but how do you also embed that product in other spaces where young people again already are so they can be using a tool like that as sort of a AI powered coach around these sort of relationship and romantic and sexual decision making. I love that the that what you mentioned is if they think that they have done something or if it's like hey maybe this is you know not the way you want to go forward in the future. It's not like a yes the police are coming to my house right now. It's a way for them to learn and model and kind of grow and develop because like you said so many of these kids have absolutely no concept of what is going on of what is appropriate of what is not appropriate and it's you know it's obviously up to the only people who talk about this with them I think are their parents occasionally in school and I guess it all depends on the relationship parents have with their kids.
So, I think that's a great a great kind of anonymous tool for kids to look into. I think it's great, but you know, we'll see. I think this is awesome. So, these are your three these are the three grantees. Yes.
That's amazing. And what is their timeline? Like, do you guys have a timeline? Is it a year? Less time than that.
We want to we want to get some ideas tested and deployed and see what works. So this cohort incubator cohort kicked off in January and they are building and we'll have a demo day in June for them to share what they've made and some of the preliminary data around what they've found and learned from teens interacting with their products and campaigns. That's great to know. I'm going to include that also because this is great. let me ask you another question.
What are what are the biggest misconceptions people have about preventing sexual violence? And what do you think what cultural, institutional or political barriers make those misconceptions so persistent? because it is so m it's just so prevalent and I and I'm I'm just grateful that people are addressing it. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, so some people don't believe that it's possible to prevent perpetration, and that's also true of some folks who work in the sexual assault field. Don't believe that it's actually possible. And so, yeah. and really, I mean, okay, go ahead. I was like, that's a dis I mean, it's a pretty dismal outlook because yes, there are always going to be I mean, it's like the same thing like well then don't care that you're messing up the climate because we I mean there are multiple reasons to protect your environment.
There are multiple reasons to try to get this through to kids. If you can help one person, you've helped somebody. So anyway, didn't mean to Yeah. And I think when there's that conception, I think it's a couple things. I mean, I think one is it's not being aware, you know, of the in-depth lit literature around that there have been things that have worked in the past and there are things that work.
but I think some of it is also from some folks who I've talked to this belief that rape is natural, right? that it's a inevitable biological thing that people, especially men, are driven to do and it's just like genetically encoded and therefore bound to happen. like there is that belief from people in this community in the less in people who work in the sexual assault field more you know I'll go to a conference and some guy will be next to me in the buffet line and have a follow-up question about my talk and we'll get into it a bit but that is a belief that a lot of people hold and so which I guess is it's sort of the boys will be boys belief related but it's it's not taking into account how much and to what degree, right? So many of our behaviors, especially in a sexual context, are really culturally defined and constrained. And right, you can see across cultures, across places, rates of sexual assault are very different from one another.
Right? There's so much evidence that this is not just something that is consistent everywhere, will always be consistent everywhere. there's a lot of evidence to show that this is something that has been changed and can be changed and will continue to change. you know and that might go up or it might go down, right? Rates of sexual assault have been going up among young people and so which is pretty disturbing I have to say.
So even you just saying that some people think that just gave me like a visceral reaction, right? Like I'm like oh like who I am making awful faces in this podcast. who thinks like this, you know, right? So, and I okay, there's got to be a trauma response to people in these in this field who are doing this work just hearing that. So, how do you and that's just a sentence that you just said to me in a very safe space and a very good conversation.
How do you bring survivors, community leaders, and researchers together in ways that protect trauma while still advancing impact? I mean, I think like maybe a comment that goes back to your previous question a little bit but relates to this one is the obvious thing to say is part of what keeps us from moving forward or having the rate of progress we'd like is this is just a hard thing to talk about. you know, like sexual assault is hard to talk about, but also just saying the word sex is not a thing that you easily table for conversation. Like when people ask me what I do at a dinner party, it's like, well, you're about to get more than you bargained for. You know, like this isn't like a pleasant cocktail party topic to discuss.
And it being hard to talk about is part of why it's hard to make progress, right? And if we're to go like a layer deeper than that, I think the truth is progress, I think, is going to require us realizing there's humans on both sides of the equation here. And until we can come to terms with the fact that we all love somebody who's been harmed, but we all just statistically speaking know and probably love somebody who's caused harm. Like how do we reconcile with all of that? Like this is a human problem that's going to take human solutions and us just reckoning with that fact.
It's this is hard work. Oh my gosh, you said that so well. And it and it's such a frightening statistic, too, because you want to say, and of course, as a woman, I know so many people who've been impacted by sexual assault, and I want to say, but I don't know any men who've who've perpetrated. I don't know a single one of them. All the people that I hang out with are great guys.
And I and I'm sure that a lot of them think they are, too. It's just that, and I'm not talking about like violent assaults either, but just things that have gone that were not appropriate or not acceptable and nobody wants to admit that about themselves. Nobody wants to admit that about each other. so I think that the way that you're perceiving it or the way that you're looking at fixing the problem or helping to fix the problem is a substantial part of why you're going to succeed. So fingers crossed.
Fingers crossed. And I think part of why we feel hopeful too is I think sometimes this conversation gets a little stuck on like we're not stuck, but sometimes we talk a lot about like was it legal or was it not? And education centers on like was it legal? Here's how to make it legal when our experience with teenagers is they want to be good partners and people want to be good at having sex generally speaking. So like the what's possible is not just like don't rape somebody.
It's setting kids up for success in terms of being good partners and that's what they want. So there's just a different way for us to approach this that feels like full of hope and possibility and also just meeting kids not just where they are but with the tools and resources they want to be great people in the world and in relationships. This just you just are making me think of something totally like off in left field, but I'm just curious what your thoughts are on it. And I could be again totally off in left field, but when you just said the thing most people want to be good sexual partners. I've spoken to for last season we did a podcast episode with Alex Robbie is a sex therapist in Philadelphia.
And then this season, it's not out yet, but we did a sex round table with her and a health developer, a health company developer and a pelvic floor specialist to talk about kind of it was fun. It was mortifying, but it was very fun. It was super fun. " Cuz this I'm going to resist a surge to dive in with you on this, but I have so many things to say on that front. Well, their language, you know, their everyday language is different than my everyday language.
And so, it was really interesting and especially when I already recorded with Alex, for some reason, it didn't show you could not see my reaction when she was saying certain things. " you know, then that's that's just the culture I grew up in and you know, but I'm curious, you know, we when you said you and Alex says that a lot, what people want is to be good partners for each other. They want to have good sex with each other. This is this shouldn't this shouldn't be It's like people are embarrassed to say, I want to have good sex with my partner. Like, you shouldn't want this.
This shouldn't be part of the conversation. do you ever think that kind of our puritanical approach to sex in this country has, you know, the whole this, you know, wait until you're married? don't do it. Like the virginity aspect of purity, all this stuff contributes to this because we're never talking about we're really never talking about having good sex. We're talking about having legal sex, having safe sex, what to do if you have sex, what to do if you get pregnant, all the complications from sex.
Nobody's really addressing it as a positive. And I just am curious what your thoughts are on that. This isn't necessarily my lane of expertise. I don't think anybody I mean, this is an opinion. This I guess like to make this as nerdy as possible in response.
So my background is public health and so I would I guess there's a way to think about this that maybe like sidesteps the morality issue which is probably an important one but I'm just not the expert to speak on that. I would I would guess that there is this is related. but I think there's just this basic component that like probably in most human lives between the time somebody is born and the time they die they will have sex. And so we should think about that as part of the life course of being a human. and how do we support people through that moment in time just like we would look at other important moments across a life course like this is part of being human that just yes thank you may think you weren't the expert at that answer but that was exactly that I think that's would be such a much better way to present sex to people to adolescence who are coming up like this is this isn't something you have to be embarrassed out and all these I mean even when you just said it I went you know right yeah like oh we are so okay thank you for that back to the moment in time that we're at which is just fantastic I'm going to ask you obviously you know it's been in the news or it was until other things have been in the news but the ongoing release of the Jeffrey Epstein files has reignited conversations about power accountability and particularly systemic failure from your vantage point, how do high-profile cases like this shape the public understanding of sexual violence and how does prevention work address the deeper cultural forces beneath these individual acts?
I mean, you know, it's almost like we were talking before about the tobacco industries. You look at somebody like Jeffrey Epstein, you're like, well, he's it's him. It's it's him and his people. But it's not just him and his people. So, I'm just curious what how that you know, sometimes they say all publicity is good publicity, right?
I mean, you're you're hearing about this in the news. " But does it how does it affect the work you do? Yeah. I think what you say, Chris, we think about this a lot. Yeah.
So, I think some of what I see happening around people's reaction to the Epstein files is I do think it's opening a bit of a conversation around how do sort of cultural norms shape things like either the feti fet I'm not going to say this word right fetishization I'm pronouncing that super wrong but fetishizing sort of young girls right and the bodies of teenagers basically as being the sort of sexual fantasy and how that's problematic and how that has all of these spillover effects on women and the way that we live our lives and on probably also like men and what they're being taught to be attracted to. So, I've seen conversations about that I've never really seen before. I've seen more conversations online about kind of examples of how we as women are sort of groomed from an early age in many ways by the media that we're consuming and and clips being shared of examples of that across the media. So there is a little bit of a conversation that I see happening around the cultural norms that we all are exposed to and aware of that are that are separate from just you know powerful men. I think there's also conversations right about the total lack of accountability and how folks who all know each other are protecting one another and supporting one another and right that we've seen time and time again and I think it's when we see that among particularly powerful people we might think that it's well that's only true of this group of powerful men but that's true of folks everywhere right that's true of high school students right you protect your friends and you protect your friends even when they're accused of something bad and because you want to be a good friend.
And so I'm not trying to minimize what's going on here, but I am trying to say that doesn't just happen in this one scenario. That there are networks of folks who support one another and support perpetrators in causing harm. And in the case of high school students, often that's because they don't know what else to do, right? they're not given some other script for what does it look like if your friend is accused of doing something wrong or you're aware that they were doing something wrong. How do you intervene?
How do you say that's not okay? Like how do you call them out on that and correct that behavior? So there's so many different ways that this supporting people who are causing this harm can look like in different contexts that I find really interesting to explore. I I love how you just mentioned, you know, how do you say something almost like providing a script for a kid like this is what you can say because I remember when I was a kid there was a huge push for, you know, teen drinking and and it continues. You know, there's always substance abuse and there's there's which was a really negative thing to say, but the work continues, right?
It's not fixed. There are still teens who are using substances to their detriment. But I remember like a big thing was the script you could use at a party. " Or basically like kind of almost playing along like you did this, but so that you would not self ostracize, right? I mean, the whole thing was saving face as a teenager, as like a 14-year-old.
How could you say it to your friends in a way that didn't make you afraid of the situation? but I feel like that's a script that so many young people could learn or and frankly clearly adult people could learn and that would be helpful. Anyway, thank you for that. Did you want to add anything to that, Kristin? I know you were both talking at the beginning of that question.
No, I think I think Jess's got it. Okay. All right. Well, I have another thing. You're both women.
I'm a woman. ROAR celebrates women who lift up other women. How has your experience as women shaped how you lead this work? And do you feel that it should be female leadership in the future of prevention, funding, and strategy? Or do you feel that this should, you know, cross the spectrum and everybody has to get involved?
We need all of us. Yeah, we absolutely need all of us. And I think it's really important that all genders be part of this conversation and be part of leading solutions. And I think this is maybe a way that we are a little bit different from some other funders in the field where we're a survivor-led organization. We think it's really powerful to have survivor-led organizations.
In some ways, the organization best positioned to prevent perpetration would be perpetrator-led. Oh, and that's a very controversial thing to say. and it would be challenging for that organization to raise any money. But if you're thinking about who actually has empathy, who actually understands people who cause sexual harm and might have ideas on how to prevent the causing of perpetration, it is people who have caused sexual harm and we don't engage them as part of that conversation. So not only are like survivors of all genders and therefore even if you are focusing on survivor-led organizations you would have leadership of all genders in those organizations but when you're you're talking about prevention and who actually understands like you know what are these networks of boys who are supporting each other what are their norms how what would they say to each other realistically right the person best know who knows that of what's going to work or not is a teenage boy right like how do we empower not just victims or not just people who know victims or empathize with victims but who empathize in some ways with those who cause harm to be part of the solution, right?
How do how do we have there be a way not just to make sense of your trauma as a victim by working in the space, but how to make sense and take accountability and rectify the harm that you've caused by being part of the space and figuring out how do we do that well? How do we do that in a space where there are a lot of survivors and how do we make sure that they're feeling safe and supported and held is critical to figuring out how to do this. But when we only say that only one type of person is allowed to propose a solution or lead an organization in this space, I think we're really we're losing so much of the creativity and ideas and perspectives that would be essential to actually solving this problem. Are there any organizations in that space that are perpetrator-led? Not that I know of.
And it's interesting too because you know you think about like there are okay again in the alcohol space you often have people who were addicted and have recovered from substance abuse who speak about it. And I mean my own sister is somebody who does this. I mean, she was an addict and now she I mean, she doesn't speak on stages, but she speaks at a lot of meetings. She works with a lot of people because she knows all those trigger points. She knows personally and profoundly every single step.
So, it makes so much sense what you're saying. I wonder if it's just it's such a raw feeling. " But it is a really good perspective to have. I agree that would that would help with the collective responsibility. Yeah.
And there are perpetrators, not many, but who have taken public accountability and making steps to repair. So there's this book called South of Forgiveness that's that's written by a perpetrator and his victim together and it is about the journey that they went on to repair harm for him to take accountability. They're they're public. They gave a really powerful talk at TED Women years ago, but it's online. and it's this really interesting example of a guy who raped a woman, you know, taking accountability for that publicly, you know, and with, you know, proper deference to all of the preferences of his victim, right?
has kind of been able to talk about like why he did that and take accountability for it and try to be part of the solution going forward. And I think that's such an interesting model. And I think it's really important that all that was done right with the full consent and of the victim of him, you know, being public and talking about this and taking the role that she's comfortable with within this space. But I think that that story can be so powerful and can create so much more change sometimes because when it's told by a perpetrator to other potential perpetrators then it might be necessarily coming from a victim, right? That it can be powerful to have a survivor story in there too.
But sometimes people just shut down if they're young boys when they're thinking well that's not really you know as relevant to me versus from you know really understanding how does this behavior happen and how does it happen by people who aren't necessarily like evil monsters right so I think a thing that can happen when we look at Epstein or Weinstein or any of these high-profile cases is we create this narrative of the only people who cause this harm are folks who are rotten to the core or sociopathic or just you know the baddest of the bad guys and we lose the realization that all of us are capable of creating sexual harm. All of us. And it's to different degrees. But it's trying to understand how do how do we how do we all then take the responsibility of not being that person? And how do we all if we have caused harm take accountability ourselves for that and try to make the world better after that happens.
Quick pause because if you're listening to Roar, I have a feeling you're exactly the kind of person I write for. I send out a Substack newsletter where I go a little deeper, more personal stories, behind-the-scenes thoughts, and honestly, some of the things we don't always say out loud here. I'd love to have you there. And now, back to your regularly scheduled podcast.
Well, I'm all for making the world better. you know, you're reminding me of you know, when you're talking about it coming from the perspective of a perpetrator, even just I don't know how I jumped from this to that, but even just the movies or pop culture, it's always coming from the perspective of the victim. and very rarely right from the anything that's from the perpetrator is like so negative and we need I and I don't want to make it women and men but for the for this particular podcast I am we need male allyship in this and interestingly there's a movie that Amy Poehler made called Moxie and unless you have a teenage girl you probably haven't seen it but since I do I've seen it many times and she's actually looking at me down the she my husband and we've seen it a bunch of times and it's great and in it there is a really great male ally and of course he's like he's also like the love interest and he's like the most amazing guy in the entire world. like you're like of course like this would be but it's it's an awesome thing to see how they've made a teenager in kind of today's society kind of play that role as a male ally. " And we're like, "Oh, no.
This is this is exactly what it's like. This is the experience of being a girl in a high school. This is the experience of being a girl in the supermarket. You are always on. You are always watching.
You are always careful in a way that a boy doesn't have to be. My daughter actually just was in her first little fender bender the other day. I mentioned she just got her license, but she also just had her first fender bender. " Because whereas my son has also been an offender bender and he's the first one out of the car. We're like, "Did you help?
" But for her, it's just a different thing. So, I think that I know you were talking about the perpetrator model, but I feel like even showing male allyship as like examples of male allyship in a broader sense to a broader community could be helpful in some way just to see what good people really look like. I think a lot of us are very accepting, especially my generation. There's a whole generation of, oh, and there are the people that boys will be boys and this is what we did and we were just kids and we didn't know. And when I look back now, I'm like, oh my god, I'm so horrified by so many things that occurred just around me in my life, in my high school education, college education, the things you saw were so wrong, clearly wrong.
and it and it takes that kind of flashlight moment to see it. But sometimes we absorb things best through pop culture and you know there's no pressure, right? We're just watching a movie and look how much you can learn. I'm sorry that I just totally went off course but you should both watch that movie. Moxy, if you could done I please Thank you.
It's today on your flight home. I'm gonna ask two more questions for you because especially when I just said when I look back, right? So, I'm talking about I'm having my 30-year college reunion this summer. So, right, I'm looking back at that time period. When you look ahead 5 to 10 years, what signs of progress would tell you this work is moving the needle?
I love this. so, oh, I just hit my laptop. Whoops. That's fine. I'm dodging the question literally by the form of just whacking my laptop out of the way.
so there's a few ways that we think about this. One is just how many ideas have we seated? How many new things are we trying? There's so much that hasn't been done when we think about how could we prevent sexual assault. Like there's so many things we could try.
Jess and I routinely are texting each other or sending each other Slack messages that are like what about what if? What if we did this? Have you heard of that? What about? I mean there's just so much we haven't tried.
So we our goal is to mobilize capital and get ideas tested and tried like let's just do things. A lot of them won't work. That's okay. But just having this sort of posture of we're going to try things and sort of by doing that our hope is that people see it. And right now you have to be it doesn't really make a lot of sense to be a person with an idea about how to prevent assault.
Like you have to be a little delusional to try it because the ecosystem to support you doesn't it's really tough sledding, right? Like you've got to find money. There's not much around. You kind of got to bootstrap it. You got to figure it out yourself.
there's so many things you got to do. And so part of what we want to do is create the platform and ecosystem to make it easier for you to try and for you to feel less alone in doing so. So that's some of what we think about in terms of like near-term goals. And then also like how do we just create the digital ecosystem where if you're a person who has caused harm or if you're a person who's experienced harm, there's the resources and tools that you need to start towards healing and accountability. What would that look like if that existed for teens?
Wow. Okay. And I love this because I, you know, your goal, your overall goal of 2050 is reduce rate by 70%. But I love that they're smaller term goals and you're looking at that. So, and you spoke about funding.
So, what can we as listeners, as people who aren't doing this work, but are supporting this work or at least mentally supporting it, emotionally supporting it, what can we do? What can we do for you? What can we all what can every listener do whether an ally, a parent, a teacher, an employer or a policy maker do tomorrow to prevent to contribute to prevention? So I think there's a lot that people can do within their own roles and with their in their own communities. So I mean obviously you can donate to our fund.
Come on online, sign up for our newsletter. you'll get to learn about the issue area too and our grantees and we have lots of information to just educate people about the issue a little bit more and about all the potential solutions to the issue right but also I think right within everybody's role or you know the many roles that each of us hold there's actions you can take right whether it's at your workplace trying to ensure that it's a place where there isn't sexual harassment or sexual harm that when that does happen it's dealt with appropriately if you're on, you know, the PTA or you're involved in your kid's school, making sure that there's evidence-based programming happening from an early age for, you know, not just your kid, but all of the kids that surround them. I think on the legislation side there's so much that can happen that should happen around really ensuring that young folks are you know getting both the education they need but also exposed to this sort of online digital space that's like actually healthy and supportive of them and their well-being and mental health in general, right? Not just at this issue and not to problematic content.
Kristin, what else would you add? O yes, all of that. also we're just really open to conversation. So if people want to reach out, if they have ideas about things to be done or people we should talk to or approaches we could take, we no one except for your podcast listeners can know. But the contact us button on the website goes to my email.
So I will read it. So if you have ideas or connections or anything, reach out. Like we really do believe that this is a problem that's going to take all of us. " And actually that might mean that you're one of the best positioned people to help us. we're really curious about perspectives from outside the field or people who have expertise in marketing or social media or building technology.
Like how do we get more minds just thinking about how to solve this problem? Yeah. And this is an issue where people are wanting to learn what's happening in their local community and what are nonprofits there. Again, just like contact us. We have a database of over a thousand nonprofits across the country and what they're all doing and their missions and their websites and where they're based.
So, we can also send along data to you about what might be happening in your state or in your community with organizations already there working on this issue, whether that be on the prevention or the survivor support side of things. And many of those have volunteer opportunities. Many of them are looking for funding themselves. Often they have really small budgets that they're operating off of. So there are so many different ways to get involved in this.
I have to say too, you know this is a dark subject. Obviously this isn't fun. We want this to end. This isn't something that you want you know you want to put yourselves out of work obviously, right? Like that's but the prevention side of it is the exciting part.
Like it can grow, it can help. It's like it's uplifting. So sometimes I feel like you know people are like I can't even turn on the news. Everything's everything's awful and they're right. There are many awful things but this on the prevention side I feel like it's so uplifting and there is so much room for growth.
I mean nothing's being done not a lot. So there's so much opportunity that it just feels like you're making something possible that's really needed. So, thank you both for doing this and thank you for being on here. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you wanted to cover? Well, I did want to say why we're focused on teenagers.
Oh, please do. So, that's a good idea, Jess. Yeah. we talked a little bit about why prevention but so a thing that we've discovered from our research is when you read literature reviews or meta-analyses about what type of prevention work it's clear that right earlier works better. So you can have really good programming in college and it can make a difference, but it's not going to make as big of a difference if some of that same programming was happening in high school.
And it depends on the kid, right? A lot of kids these days don't have sex right until after they graduate high school. Most kids don't have sex until after they graduate high school. But so many of the norms that young people are learning around sexuality, around consent are happening in high school, right? When they're first hitting puberty, when they're first running across pornography, which is unfortunately happening younger and younger, and that pornography can be very violent that they're running across.
but it's it's really clear that if you start early, you can make such a big impact on this issue, which is true of so many other issues, right? Another thing that we've learned from our research is that perpetration behavior often does begin pretty young. and that around 5% of teen boys will rape a girl before they graduate high school. and that 40% of boys who rape a girl in high school will continue to do it in college. And so a lot of the time about this, yeah, it's really terrifying.
And we know that half of rape survivors are first assaulted before they're 18 on the victimization side of things. Half. So when we talk about this issue, we often talk about it happening in college, which it does. It's probably one of the highest risk times in your life is in college for both perpetration and victimization. But a lot of it does happen earlier, too.
And we're often that has this huge ick factor or we're used to thinking about child sexual abuse as only being adult on children. But a huge proportion of what is child sexual abuse, the abuse of minors, right, is happening by teenagers on other teenagers. And we just don't talk about it as being that type of problem. And so both we find that really disturbing and we think that's a huge opportunity because if you can reach young folks when they are developing, when they're first figuring out what it is that they want to do in the sexual sphere, when they're first figuring out who they're attracted to and how to flirt and how to tell somebody likes them and all of that, right? Like if we can support them at that age of making good decisions and you know not creating harm and if they do doing that repair and not doing it again.
It can be really powerful of the long-term impacts right of that young person who's getting those norms at that age and who do they grow into when they become an adult and what behaviors do they do then? You know, it's like it's like you guys said it these hard conversations like that could not be a harder conversation and and so therefore it's the most important kind. So I'm just hugely hopeful too, right? Like it's really like I have two young boys to hear the 5% stat for me like I almost can't and I like I almost can't. but the reason I can is because the literature that's emerging around intervention at this age is so hopeful.
like it's such a modifiable behavior at a young age. So if we are able to sort of stick with the conversation to look at this issue in the eye like the possibility of behavior change is very real like all we need we need to enter into the moment and we can we can make things different for the next generation of kids. Absolutely. Absolutely. I have so much I could stay on the phone with you.
I could stay on this for like many hours because I feel like I could we could delve off into different directions. but I'll I'll let you wrap this up. I'm so grateful to both of you for being here. I'll have all the information for people to find out more about the fund, the grantees, how they can donate, how they can support you, how they can support their communities in the show notes and I'll send out an email as well. So, thank you both so much for being here.
Thank you, Danielle. Thanks for the work that you do as well. This is important. Thanks. Oh, thank you.
I appreciate that. I'm so grateful for this conversation with Jess and Kristin because it takes something that can feel overwhelming and distant and makes it clear that prevention is actually possible and that when women step in, something powerful can happen. Next week, we're moving into a different kind of conversation about power. What it looks like in the workplace, how it's experienced, and how women can navigate it without losing themselves in the process with Jingjin Liu. If this episode made you think of someone, send it to them.
That's how these conversations keep going. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week on Roar.
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