April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. We’ve been busy with education and awareness campaigns this month, including the National Day of Silence and International Anti-Street Harassment Week, and yesterday, we participated in a Denim Day Bronx March event at the Bronx Museum of Arts.
Even though the school will be closed for Spring Break next week, RAPP is inviting you to join us at the Denim Day rally and press conference at NY City Hall on Wednesday April 27, 2016!
For the past 17 years, the Denim Day campaign in April commemorates Sexual Violence Awareness Month. The campaign was originally triggered by a ruling by the Italian Supreme Court where a rape conviction was overturned because the justices felt that since the victim was wearing tight jeans she must have helped her rapist remove her jeans, thereby implying consent. The following day, the women in the Italian Parliament came to work wearing jeans in solidarity with the victim. Denim Day was a response to this case and the activism surrounding it. Since then, wearing jeans on Denim Day has become a symbol of protest against erroneous and destructive attitudes about sexual assault. In this rape prevention education campaign we ask community members, elected officials, businesses and students to make a social statement with their fashion by wearing jeans on this day as a visible means of protest against the misconceptions that surround sexual assault.
By wearing jeans on April 27, Denim Day, you…
- Send a message to survivors that you support them in their healing.
- Commit to become more educated.
- Break the silence surrounding sexual violence!
A landmark research study, “Partners and Peers: Sexual and Dating Violence Among NYC Youth,” co-published in 2008 by the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault and the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health’s Center for Youth Violence Prevention, found that NYC youth are victimized at a rate twice the national average. Among the study findings:
Sexual and dating violence are extremely common among NYC youth.
16% (or more than one in six students) reported experiencing sexual violence at some point in their lives
Dating violence is often inclusive of both physical and sexual violence.
71% of youth who experienced threatening behaviors from a dating partner also experienced physical violence from that dating partner
Likewise, 63% of youth who reported experiencing sexual violence from their partner experienced physical dating violence from that same partner
Youth experience sexual violence from people they know.
89% of youth who had experienced sexual violence at some time in their lives said it was committed against them by someone they knew, such as their dating partners, family members, and other acquaintance
If you choose to start the walk in Brooklyn, please visit www.denimday.nyc.
Your RAPP Coordinator, Erika Miller, will be meeting directly at City Hall at 11 am.
