With the distribution of the open letter people were invited to an initial open meeting. Everyone was allowed to come and there was no specific agenda; factual questions were answered, issues raised that people found relevant to discuss and next steps were agreed on. Since both the victim and the perpetrator had moved to different cities, our work supporting the victim was limited to what could be called a theoretical role because the need to provide immediate emotional support for the victim was not necessary. Our contribution to their welfare was instead bound up in creating an environment in which they could be satisfied that their story was believed and that the incidences were taken seriously by the community. In order to create this environment, we decided to meet regularly to discuss the history of our student group and how its structures had facilitated sexual violence. And with the continuing relationship to the affected person, many felt like achieving this trust was something worth celebrating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
In\nefforts to limit the formation of informal hierarchies, the meetings\nwere organised in the following way: A coordination group was set up\nonly to coordinate the email and ensure the bi-monthly meetings\nwere well advertised, agendas were sent out at least 4 days in\nadvance, allowing for any amendments and additions to the existing\nagenda, and minutes were sent to all on the email list, as\nwell as the victim and her support group\nstraight after the meeting. This group consisted of 5 volunteers and\nwas meant to rotate every six months. An agenda group was formed\nafter each meeting and had the task of meeting up to set agendas and\nquestions for discussions at the next meeting. This rotating agenda\ngroup allowed members to autonomously decide what they wanted to\ndiscuss. Each meeting also had a wellbeing go-around at the beginning\nand end of each meeting. It\nwas decided to incorporate discussions around the mental health of\nthe members into the meeting rather than have separate well-being\nmeetings as many saw the separation arbitrary and there were fears\nthat separate wellbeing meetings would not carry as much\nimportance\/value to\nmembers and reproduce a division of labour\nin this process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nAfter\ninitial discussions, we decided to draw up a list of questions which\nwe aimed to tease out factors that contributed to the incident. These\nmeetings went\non\nover the course of around three years with some spells of inactivity\nand stagnation and\nwere\nattended by approximately 10-15 people. People often were confused\nabout or disagreed on what we should be doing going forward, how far\nwe should be focusing on perpetrator work and how far the contact\ngroup should be feeding back to us, for example. However,\nmany stated that these discussions had made them think about their\nown behaviour as\nwell as providing\na\nspace to share experiences of rape and abuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With the distribution of the open letter people were invited to an initial open meeting. Everyone was allowed to come and there was no specific agenda; factual questions were answered, issues raised that people found relevant to discuss and next steps were agreed on. Since both the victim and the perpetrator had moved to different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commacct.uber.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commacct.uber.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commacct.uber.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commacct.uber.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commacct.uber.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/commacct.uber.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"https:\/\/commacct.uber.space\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commacct.uber.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commacct.uber.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commacct.uber.space\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}