Effective Modalities for Healing from Campus Sexual Assault: Centering the Experiences of Women of Color Undergraduate Student Survivors

Abstract

In this article, Jessica C. Harris, Nadeeka Karunaratne, and Justin A. Gutzwa examine the modalities Women of Color student survivors perceive as helpful in healing from campus sexual assault. Existing scholarship on healing from campus sexual assault largely relies on the reduction of psychological symptoms of trauma, an understanding that is often race-neutral and founded on the narratives of white women. Centering the experiences of 34 Women of Color undergraduate student survivors, this qualitative study reimagines healing through a race-conscious lens and positions it as a community-oriented and culturally contextual process that is often at odds with the ways US institutions of higher education aim to support survivors of sexual assault on their campuses. The authors’ findings guide implications for how institutions and individuals can account for and support student survivors’ multiple and intersecting identities in their healing journeys and also inform future research that centers minoritized students’ experiences with sexual assault in postsecondary contexts.

Understanding nonbinary college students’ experiences on college campuses: An exploratory study of mental health, campus involvement, victimization, and safety.

“…They may be reluctant to seek help on campus. She may experience similar fear, invisibility, and erasure as her cisgender woman of color peers express, especially as counseling centers are often staffed by people who do not have the cultural competence required to meet the needs of sexual assault survivors of color (Harris, 2017a(Harris, , 2020. Additionally, though, they may experience the feeling that, as Black trans woman activist Ashlee Marie Preston (2020) puts it, "all Black trans women truly have is one another, because [they've] been exiled from every sector of society."…”