Sexual Harassment in K-12 Schools: Precursor to Campus Sexual Assaults and Gender Violence
The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault cites a CDC review that found an intervention program developed by a senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women, and her colleague at NORC-University of Chicago, as an effective strategy with the greatest potential for reducing rates of sexual violence.
(PRWEB) May 09, 2014
“I’ve been emphasizing for many years that K-12 schools are the training grounds for violence in relationships, as demonstrated by the public displays of sexual harassment and gender violence,” says Nan Stein, Ed.D., a leading expert on the issue and a senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women. She notes that while the numbers are distressing—with one in five women sexually assaulted in college—it’s not surprising when sexual harassment is a persistent and tenacious part of everyday life, in middle and high schools.
Responding to the growing attention to Title IX complaints related to gender violence and sexual assaults on college campuses, the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault announced April 29, 2014 efforts to address this violence. Out of 140 intervention programs reviewed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the Task Force, only two—including one developed by Stein with Bruce Taylor, Ph.D. of NORC at the University of Chicago—were identified as effective strategies with the greatest potential for reducing rates of sexual violence, even though both interventions were designed and tested with younger adolescents. Stein and Taylor’s Shifting Boundaries project and Safe Dates, the other recognized intervention were not tested with—nor meant for—college students but it was nonetheless recommended in the CDC report that they may serve as models for developing college-level prevention strategies.
More: Sexual Harassment in K-12 Schools: Precursor to Campus Sexual Assaults and Gender Violence