The focus of this Technical Assistance Guide is to help sexual assault service providers build, expand, formalize, and maintain strong interagency responses to sexual violence. It includes a brief overview followed by Practice Tips, Ways to Build SART Excellence, and Key Resources.

Civil sexual harassment and criminal sexual assault differ in many ways, including the standards of proof, consequences for individual and organizational defendants, and relief for victims, among other factors. While these issues are complex, this training bulletin provides a concise summary to clarify key concepts and distinctions.

The purpose of this guide is to assist physicians, nurses, and other clinical health care providers in meeting their professional obligations in identifying and providing intervention and treatment to older victims of sexual violence. It includes introductory information, such as definitions and a problem statement, as well as scenarios. Additionally, it discusses issues relevant to health care providers, such as practice recommendations, provider responsibilities, gathering patient history, examination, and evidence collection.

The purpose of this guide is to provide advocates working in community-based sexual assault programs with an understanding of sexual violence in the military and to offer resources to support their collaborative efforts with military personnel in responding to the needs of survivors and preventing sexual violence.

This training bulletin offers a very brief summary of the issues, primarily serving as a guide to other relevant resources.

Some law enforcement agencies have assigned female officers to sex crimes cases, assuming that victims will feel more secure and that women officers will “naturally” or intuitively respond better to these cases. But a better approach is to invest in quality training for all officers regardless of gender, and to set high expectations for anyone who interviews sexual assault victims.

In a training bulletin entitled, EVAWI addresses the question of whether or not evidence collected in association with a non-investigative report should be submitted to the laboratory for analysis. In short, the answer is “no.” The bulletin goes on to explain the rationale for this answer.

If you are a victim of stalking, it can be critical to maintain a log of stalking-related incidents and behavior, especially if you choose to engage with the criminal or civil justice systems. Recording this information will help to document the behavior for protection order applications, divorce and child custody cases, or criminal prosecution. It can also help preserve your memory of individual incidents about which you might later report or testify.

As a federally funded project of AEquitas, the Stalking Prevention, Awareness, & Resource Center (SPARC) provides education and resources about the crime of stalking. SPARC aims to enhance the response to stalking by educating the professionals tasked with keeping stalking victims safe and holding offenders accountable, and also to ensure that allied professionals have the specialized knowledge to identify and respond to the crime of stalking.

Stalkers can be unpredictable and dangerous. Whether through in-person or through the use of technology, stalkers use a variety of strategies to invade the lives of their victims. Most stalkers use multiple tactics and can escalate their behavior(s) at any time. You have no control over the stalker’s behavior and are not responsible for what they do. However, it can be useful to think of steps you might take to keep yourself and loved ones safe. This process is called safety planning.

Unfortunately, despite growing public awareness of the prevalence of stalking and the dangerousness posed by stalkers, there remains a lack of information and knowledge of how to identify and respond to stalking techniques that are growing with technological advances and emboldened perpetrators. Further, victims still report that the criminal justice system minimizes – or deprioritizes – stalking-related crimes when they are reported. This article includes three key strategies for successful investigations and prosecutions.

This training bulletin delves into questions that have been raised with the philosophy of Start by Believing, and other victim-centered and trauma-informed approaches. In particular, the discussion centers on one specific manner of attack: Defense cross-examination aimed at exposing the law enforcement investigation of a sexual assault as biased.

This training bulletin addresses the question of whether criminal justice professionals’ participation in Start by Believing compromises their ability to remain objective, potentially opening up police and prosecutors to attacks by defense counsel and/or losing cases at trial. While such attacks are possible, arguments are provided that can be used to explain the purpose of the campaign and defend the rationale for criminal justice participation.

EVAWI offers a template PowerPoint for a research-based presentation that communities can use to explain the rationale for the Start by Believing campaign. This template can be tailored to the unique needs of each individual community.

Created by End Violence Against Women International, Start by Believing is a public awareness campaign dedicated to changing the way we respond to disclosures of sexual assault. The website includes many resources for professionals and the public, and Explore Your Options which provides information for sexual assault survivors and support people.

New Hampshire offers this statewide protocol on the care of patients who have experienced sexual assault. This protocol is a statutory mandate for all hospitals and physicians in the state of New Hampshire providing medical forensic exams to victims of sexual assault. The Protocol is continually being revised in an effort to improve evidence collection outcomes for patients who have experienced sexual assault, to maximize the continuity of care for patients who have experienced sexual assault.

This statement was written in response to a statement released by ATIXA on “Trauma-Informed Training and the Neurobiology of Trauma.” However, we want to open with a general statement about the value of trauma-informed practices for sexual assault interviews and investigations. These apply regardless of whether the investigation is conducted for criminal justice purposes, civil litigation, or campus Title IX adjudication.

Compiled List of Domestic Violence Arrest Provisions by state/territory.

This compilation includes a comprehensive look at the rape and sexual assault laws in all fifty states, U.S. Territories, U.S. Military, and federal jurisdictions. The coverage ranges from laws against rape and sexual assault, abuse, misconduct, or battery to marital rape and sexual assault related to domestic violence.