{"id":75610,"date":"2019-01-31T17:07:37","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T23:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=75610"},"modified":"2019-02-04T10:09:06","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T16:09:06","slug":"survivors-of-sexual-assault-help-other-survivors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/survivors-of-sexual-assault-help-other-survivors\/","title":{"rendered":"Volunteers and survivors of sexual assault help other survivors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Chris Schulz<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Medill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"dropcap\">Medical advocates always hope they will not receive this notification during their shift. Even though they have trained for the scenario, are certified by the state to respond and have volunteered their time for this exact reason, it is still heartbreaking. The notification means that someone, somewhere in a hospital in Chicago has just disclosed that they survived a sexual assault.<\/p>\n<p>Medical advocates are dispatched on these calls by the organization they volunteer with, such as YWCA-Chicago or Resilience, notified directly by staff at the hospital.<\/p>\n<p>Although she stresses that every case is different, Lindsay Cogan always tries to start her interactions with survivors by communicating: \u201cThis isn\u2019t your fault. I believe you. You have options.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Cogan, on the development staff with Resilience, is a volunteer medical advocate as well for the Chicago non-profit that aims to heal and empower survivors of sexual assault.<\/p>\n<p>The medical advocate\u2019s role is to support the survivor in whatever way the survivor chooses. Survivors must first consent to receiving an advocate\u2019s services, and some may decline the help. For those that do consent, advocates can help navigate paperwork, clarify medical and legal jargon, or explain the rights a survivor is entitled to during emergency medical treatment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJust your presence, in that space&#8230;makes the process a little bit easier, sometimes\u201d said Cogan.<\/p>\n<p>Almost all the medical advocates at Resilience are volunteers, but this goes well beyond the type of casual volunteering you might do on Thanksgiving or as a day of service with your office. Medical advocates must complete 40-60 hours of training before ever responding to a call, and Resilience asks that they commit to two 12-hour shifts every month for a year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cVolunteers are the foundation of what we do here,\u201d said Brittny Blackwood, the Advocate Volunteer Coordinator at Resilience.\u00a0 \u201cI really do not have words or measurement to say how much we appreciate our volunteers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Most of the medical advocate volunteers have had personal experiences with sexual violence. Many are survivors themselves. Crisis intervention presents many opportunities for a volunteering survivor to relive their own trauma, and Resilience goes to great lengths to ensure that there is adequate support at every step of the process.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s a big, important part of our program. They never want you to feel burnt out or emotionally drained,\u201d said Morgan Gorsuch, another volunteer medical advocate with Resilience.<\/p>\n<p>Volunteers are encouraged to contact supervisors before or after a call for emotional or logistical support. Each month, volunteers are required to participate in a supervision, either one-on-one with Blackwood, or in a volunteer support group.<\/p>\n<p>The concept of re-engaging with such a personal trauma is foreign to many outside of the realm of crisis intervention.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of times folks who aren\u2019t familiar with this kind of work can\u2019t really grasp why someone would put themselves in a situation to really hold trauma space for somebody else,\u201d said Blackwood.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is a luxury, and a burden, to experience someone else\u2019s pain but&#8230;to be alone would be worse.\u201d said Gorsuch. \u201cI would much rather traumatize myself a million times over to help these people on the worst days of their lives.\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>If you or someone you know is dealing with sexual assault, you&#8217;re not alone. Confidential help is available free in Chicago by calling 888-293-2080 or nationally at 1-800-656-4673.<\/p>\n<div class=\"featurecaption\">Photo at top: Resilience, formerly Rape Victims Advocates, has been supporting sexual assault survivors through Chicago hospitals since 1974. That year, OB\/GYN Dr. Natalie A. Stephens founded the organization with 10 medical nurses to address a serious need they had observed. Working at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, they noticed survivors left in a worse emotional state than when they had arrived. (Chris Schulz\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Chris Schulz Medill Reports Medical advocates always hope they will not receive this notification during their shift. Even though they have trained for the scenario, are certified by the state to respond and have volunteered their time for this exact reason, it is still heartbreaking. The notification means that someone, somewhere in a hospital [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":75613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,675,4559],"tags":[707,3511,128],"class_list":["post-75610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-interest","category-health-and-science","category-social-justice","category-winter-2019","tag-community-service","tag-healing-from-sexual-assault","tag-mental-health"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Volunteers and survivors of sexual assault help other survivors - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/survivors-of-sexual-assault-help-other-survivors\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Volunteers and survivors of sexual assault help other survivors - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Chris Schulz Medill Reports Medical advocates always hope they will not receive this notification during their shift. 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