Justine

“Ultimately, victim advocates were in a difficult position. They understood the betrayals of the Title IX system better than any other administrator on campus, but they lacked the power to change anything. Instead, they were witnesses to the same predictable horrors, tasked with performing a delicate balancing act: how do you warn a survivor about a system designed to betray them without discouraging them from using it?”
― Nicole Bedera, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence

“The notion of intrinsic motivation or self-generated drive is held as the ideal, but ADHD is characterized by motivation difficulties. There is nothing wrong with extrinsic motivation, using accountability to others and rewards to help you get engaged in a task, which you can think of as outsourcing accountability (which is not the same as outsourcing responsibility).”
― J. Russell Ramsay, The Adult ADHD Tool Kit: Using CBT to Facilitate Coping Inside and Out

“Most schools fulfill this legal obligation by providing services that won’t involve a perpetrator, such as academic accommodations or healing resources. At Western University, victim advocates would broker agreements between survivors and their professors to get extensions on assignments or excused absences. They would also help survivors submit paperwork to receive refunds for classes they dropped or failed due to the strains of their traumatic symptoms. To improve survivors’ mental health, the Counseling Center hosted group therapy for sexual assault survivors and offered one-on-one counseling at a cheaper rate than the insurance co-pay at most private practices. Advocates also had a small fund available to cover survivors’ trauma-related expenses. Overwhelmingly, survivors who received these resources benefited from them. Some called them life-changing. However, few survivors felt comfortable actually using them. Especially more than once.”
― Nicole Bedera, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence

“a survivor was pressured into dropping their complaint, then it became “their choice” to walk away. If administrators dismissed key evidence during an investigation, then it was proof the survivor “didn’t build a strong enough case.” If the complex bureaucracies around Title IX led a survivor to miss an email or use the wrong form or contact the wrong person, then “they went about things the wrong way.”
― Nicole Bedera, On the Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence