Central Michigan Life

Editor’s note: In Wednesday’s edition of CM Life a page 1A article, entitled “Fewer sexual assaults reported to police,” contained inaccuracies concerning SAPA.

When Michael Carney joined Sexual Assault Peer Advocates he was not looking for just another extracurricular activity.

The Cheboygan senior signed up to make a difference.

“It started with just wanting to help my friends (who survived sexual assault),” he said. “But once I got into it, I wanted to help as many people as I could.”

The group, started in 1996, is a one-of-a-kind program designed to provide comfort for and assist survivors of sexual aggression, said Steve Thompson, SAPA’s director.

Students such as Carney go through intensive training to learn how to properly help others who have endured stalking, sexual assault, rape or any other variant of sexual aggression.

A 24-hour crisis line is available for those in need of information about how to report incidents to police, where to go for an evidence kit or simply for a “shoulder to cry on,” Carney said. Never, he said, will an advocate force a victim to report to police.

“It gives you a safe place to go after experiencing probably the most traumatic incident of your life,” he said.

In its first year, 10 SAPA members helped 12 people in an official fashion. Last semester, the group had more than 140 contacts and expects that number to grow to about 250 before the end of this semester.

All conversations with members are confidential — much in the same way as talking to a counselor or therapists — which ensures the general public cannot learn about a person’s particular problems.

Thompson has worked in the field since 1973 and during that time has been in contact with 12,000 to 15,000 people who have been victims of sexual aggression.

Of those people, he said not even a couple of dozen turned out to be fabrications.

“People who call SAPA or talk to me, they never lie,” he said.

One in every four woman — “an extremely conservative estimate,” Thompson says — are sexually assaulted before they get out of college, a testament to SAPA’s importance to those on campus.

“The No. 1 thing survivors need more than anything else is somebody to believe,” he said. “One of the great things about SAPA is ... many are just able to say somebody believes me and that in itself goes a long way to help people recover.”

Talking to someone, whether it be a friend, family member or therapists, is an important factor in the road to recovery for sexual assault victims, said Elizabeth Meadows, a psychology professor who has studied the rape-related physiological problems.

Meadows, the director of the Trauma and Anxiety Disorders Clinic at CMU, said those who are able to talk about their experiences are more likely to heal than those who try to forget about or block out the sexual assault.

She said over time, about half of women recover from their post traumatic stress disorder without professional help, and a key factor in that is the ability to talk to someone about the experience.

“Certainly that is not the only thing to make a difference, but that seems to be one of the big factors involved: Whether you try to avoid it or not,” she said.

Since SAPA is made up of college students it gives students another option if friends or family members are not available, Meadows said.

“Contacting SAPA is something women are more likely to do than contacting a therapist or something like that,” she said. “Not everybody is comfortable talking to their friends or family members.”

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