April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
“This month is an important time for all of us to recognize that our neighbors and friends have been affected by sexual assault,” Prevail, Inc. Executive Director Susan Ferguson told The Reporter. “Did you know that as many as 1 in 5 women in the United States have experienced rape or attempted rape in their lifetime? Sexual Assault Awareness Month is a campaign to raise public awareness about sexual violence and educate communities on how to prevent it. The 2019 campaign theme, ‘I Ask,’ champions the message that asking for consent is a healthy, normal and necessary part of everyday interactions.”
Because the color teal and the teal ribbon have been adopted as symbols of sexual assault awareness and prevention, The Reporter is turning our front page teal in each April print edition in support of our partnership with Prevail Inc.
Learn more at prevailinc.com.
The Clothesline Project
Prevail is offering the opportunity to men, women and youth who have been affected by violence to share their testimony. In 1990, The Clothesline Project was started to do just that.
Anyone who has been affected by violence is invited to express their emotions by decorating a T-shirt. Then, they can hang the shirt on a clothesline to be views by others as a testimony to the problem of violence.
Shirts are color-coded to indicate the form of abuse and whether the victim survived:
- White represents a person who died because of violence.
- Yellow and beige represent survivors of domestic or family violence.
- Red, pink and orange represent survivors of rape or sexual assault.
- Blue and green represent survivors of incest of child sexual abuse.
- Purple represents those attacked because of their sexual orientation.