CAPSA attempts to raise awareness
Attendance was sparse at a musical event hosted by Community Abuse Prevention Services Agency to raise awareness about sexual assault Tuesday evening in the Taggart Student Center.
April is nationally recognized as Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Raising awareness about sexual assault can be difficult, because people don’t want to be affiliated with it, said Jenny Aguilar, CAPSA’s rape crisis coordinator. Getting people to understand there is a problem is a key factor in solving it, she said.
In the past, Aguilar said, CAPSA has hosted candlelight vigils or asked people to leave their porch lights on in recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, but the events haven’t received much support.
“I think it’s the stigma,” Aguilar said, explaining that people are very cautious about attending events of a sensitive nature.
A few community members and USU students gathered in the Sunburst Lounge to listen to several bands and a short speech. It was the first time CAPSA had hosted such an event.
“I wish more people were here,” said Britta Berge, who works for CAPSA.
USU alumnus Joey Harrison, who attended the event, and Aundi Robison, who played the guitar with the band Tragic Something, agreed it was too bad there weren’t more people in attendance.
“It’s for a good cause,” Harrison said.
Rebekah Alpisa, the director of both Cache County Victim Services and the Cache County Children’s Justice Center, spoke for about 15 minutes about the history of CAPSA and the importance of raising awareness about sexual assault and abuse.
Alpisa said 27 years ago in Cache County there was no place for a woman to go if she or her children had been raped or abused. Aguilar said the first CAPSA volunteers sheltered victims in their own homes. Today there is an anonymous CAPSA shelter in Logan, and a new one is scheduled to open in 2004, Aguilar said.
Alpisa said Cache County has changed from having one of the lowest prosecution rates for sexual assault in the nation to having an organization that is held as an example nationwide.
“It has now become a very small and very effective army,” Alpisa said of CAPSA and its volunteers.
CAPSA has a Sexual Assault Response Team that a victim can activate with a phone call, Aguilar said. Victims can be examined at the SART clinic rather than at the emergency room, which can be more intimidating and minimizes the time victims have to retell what happened to them, she said.
Aguilar said sexual assault happens quite frequently in Cache Valley. A vast majority of rapes in the valley are committed by someone the victim knows, she said.
“We rarely see stranger rape happen here,” she said.
Utah has the 15th highest rate of reported rape in the country, Aguilar said.
-katrich@cc.usu.edu