SAVES

While searching for a topic to write about today, I found quite a few mass media outlets devoid of any topics pertaining to sexual assault or rape. That’s certainly not a bad thing, as we would all like to live in a world without rape or sexual assault and violence. I looked both locally and nationally and found nothing until I searched sexual assault on CNN.com where I came upon a disturbing story I had heard nothing about beforehand. The story is from August 26th and it pertained to a mass rape that happened in the Congo. Three to four hundred Rwandan and Congolese armed rebels scoured an area of the Congo systematically raping over one hundred and seventy nine women, oftentimes in front of their husbands and children.

The women were forced into the rape by soldiers brandishing weapons and often physically assaulting them before the sexual assault. After the assaults the rebels would pillage the villages and then go on to do the same in smaller surrounding villages. The event lasted for days.

The United Nations was made aware only after a routine medical visit in the area that was assaulted. However, in a follow up interview, an anonymous source was cited as stating that the U.N. was to blame for these attacks because they keep silent about the issue at hand. The source was quoted as saying that many U.N. workers except that people in the Congo suffer and there is nothing they can do to change it.

But what does this mean on a world view? First, we must look at the media, it took a bit of digging to find this on CNN, although Google does come up with a few more responses. But since August 26th, there has been little follow up except to say that the U.N. is looking into the problem and some organizations are asking the U.N. to be examined. It’s not our place at SAVES to judge people or reactions, and it’s no place for us to say if the U.N. did anything right or wrong.

However, this presents a position that places a huge problem in sexual assault cases, silence. We live in a state, a country, and a world where rape is still taboo to talk about. Silence prevents people from getting help. And ignoring the issue, or brushing it under the rug does nothing to promote knowledge, awareness, and education on sexual assault and violence.

Silence is not the answer to the issue of sexual assault in mass rape in the Congo or a single sexual assault that may have happened in your home town.The situation does give food for thought, though.

Just last week I was talking about how it’s beginning to look and feel a lot like Fall. How things can change in so little time. Here we are with windows open and fans and air conditioners still on and September coming in less than twenty four hours. But that’s life for you, always a little unexpected, and sometimes not welcome (this blogger, for one, is over the heat and ready for Fall).

What’s new at the SAVES office? For our UMF readers, we’ll have a table set up at the Student Employment Fair at the Olsen Student Center from 11-1. For any interested in possible practucums or internships, this is a great way to gain some information on our organization.

Also, Helpline Advocacy training beings on the 14th of September from 5-8 PM right here at the SAVES office, 225 Main Street on the second floor of the Holman House. The training is free to all those who will commit their time to the helpline. All we ask is that participants be 18 years of age or older and enter with a compassionate heart and an open mind.  You can visit our website for contact information or drop by the office.

We also ask that if you’re reading us, comment, let us know anything you’d like to see SAVES do to better build our presence in the community. And we also encourage discussion on the Thursday “topic” posts. Let us know what you think and maybe your discussion can spark something even great.

Look for us in the area and enjoy this last bit of summer.

“Three years ago, James M. Cameron held a position of power and trust as the top drug prosecutor for the Maine Attorney General’s Office.”

This is the opening line of an article written yesterday in the Portland Press Herald concerning former top drug prosecutor James M. Cameron. For those of you who many not have been following this case, Mr. Cameron was found guilty of 13 counts of sending, receiving, and possessing child pornography.

But what does this mean to a community of sexual assault awareness advocates? Firstly, it stands to show that child pornography falls in the light of sexual abuse. Children are very often victimized by adults and can be greatly scarred. This is a lesson a lot of people may be familiar with. However, a perhaps greater lesson is in who the person trading and partaking in the child pornography was, a seemingly upstanding, well to do citizen.

Cameron was married, had a child, held a position of power that equated to a higher intellect and income bracket. He was fighting a war against drugs to help our state. He was, on paper, what most would consider to be an upstanding citizen. However, he was trafficking child pornography.

It may surprise you to know that of “cyber predators” (a category one may place Mr. Cameron in) 99% are males of above average intelligence, have a successful career, have no prior criminal history related to sex crimes, and 91% are white, 86% are over the age of 25. These facts might surely get you thinking in a different direction about who could be a cyber predator.

We’re by no means hoping to scare people with this information or make people start thinking that everyone around them is a danger to children. However, we at SAVES are faced with an opportunity to help dispel a myth with a current and relevant article that hits close to home.  We hope you find this information thought provoking and helpful, and maybe lead to some discussion about internet safety and online predators.

Hi blogsphere,

Here we are again, and if you haven’t noticed, Fall is coming upon us. Looking out the window, you can already see some leaves changing color. Seasons always lend themselves to transitions, and we’re seeing a few changes here in the SAVES office as well, nothing that we’ll note right now, but keep an eye out for a new face in the organization.

Fall also brings a bi-annual event at SAVES, the Advocate Helpline training we offer. It is a multi-week course offered free to any who wish to volunteer their time to a worthwhile cause. And for any University of Maine Farmington students reading, some of you may be able to earn credits for volunteering. Feel free to drop by the office, or give a call to 207-778-9522 if you want to know more. Also, look in your local papers in the next couple of weeks for further information.

With autumn also comings the looming presence of return to education, whether it be grade school, college, or something from beyond, it’s something a lot of us deal with. What does this mean for us at SAVES? We’re excited to announce that we’ve recently been granted money to work with students in transitional grades to help promote awareness of the issues of sexual assault and promote healthy relationship standards. Working with other local organizations, we hope that we can help make everyone’s transitions a little smoother. The program is in it’s infancy, but we in the office are excited about where it will go.

We’d also like to give a special welcome to those students who are beginning their careers at the University of Maine Farmington (and those returning as well, of course). We wish you a safe and productive college year. And to any of our readers who are starting college elseware, we wish you the same as well.

As we stated earlier, we’re trying to do two posts a week on here, one about whats going on in the office and one about local or world events pertaining to sexual assault issues and awareness. On Thursday, look for our first news based blog and feel free to comment on it if you like.

We appreciate your reading, and we hope you keep coming back!

Let us formally welcome you to one of the newest outreach ideas we’ve been working on at SAVES in Farmington, our new blog. In an effort to reach our community even more, we’ve decided to open up this forum for people to get to know our organization a little better, as well as keep our readers up to date on events we may be promoting or attending.

We’re going to be following a pretty basic format at first. We’re going to be doing two themed posts a week, one about the going-ons in the office, and a second about news and events pertaining to sexual assault and violence issues both locally and globally.

It’s our goal at SAVES to Advocate, Support, and Educate the community on the matter of sexual assault, so we hope that this new blog will work as a tool to help our outreach. We encourage our readers to visit often and take in as much as they can.

Please remember, this is a safe place, and a new venture for our organization. With time we hope to develop a blog following and grow from that, taking in any suggestions that our readers may have concerning how we can better the blog for the audience.

We welcome you to comment, suggest, and discuss here, but do so in a constructive manner. We hope to transform this into a free and open information exchange. Feel free to visit often and we hope you’re as excited about reading our blog as we are launching it.