What can Campuses Learn From Community Sexual Assault Response Teams? Literature Review of Teams’ Purpose, Activities, Membership, and Challenges

Abstract

Sexual assault is a public health issue, with college-age students reporting high levels of victimization. Following an increase in national attention and federal initiatives, college and universities' sexual assault response efforts are being examined. The practice of community sexual assault response teams (SARTs) may provide campuses with a model strategy to coordinate campus and community service delivery and planning, still underdeveloped or missing at many institutions. This literature review summarizes in side-by-side fashion the most current empirical literature about community SARTs and campus team approaches (CTAs) in four domains: (1) defined purpose, (2) activities to achieve purpose, (3) membership, and (4) challenges to functioning. Two searches were conducted. The community SART inclusion criteria were (a) an empirical study focusing on community SARTs as the level of analysis, (b) located in the United States, (c) published between 2010 and 2017, and (d) written in English. The inclusion criteria for the CTA were (a) an empirical study on CTAs to sexual assault and/or intimate partner violence as the level of analysis and (b) written in English. Eight articles met the criteria for community SARTs, and six articles met the criteria for CTAs. Differences between community SARTs and CTAs included community SARTs shared and more discretely defined purpose and subsequent activities. Further directions offered for the conceptual and practical development of a CTA to address sexual assault include the need for clearer definition of a team's purpose leading to response-focused coordination of activities.

Developing an Effective Campus Sexual Assault Prevention Task Force: Lessons Learned From Multiple Midwestern Universities

“…This study examining the barriers and facilitators of campus sexual assault prevention task forces adds to the existing small body of literature with the aim of understanding campus sexual assault prevention using a team or task force approach. A recent review of the campus team approach (CTA) to sexual assault prevention and response literature found that the defined purpose of campus CTAs varies and broadly tends to encompass response to and/or prevention of sexual assault (Carlson et al, 2018). Thus, the broadly defined purpose of campus CTAs may create a tension between focusing on prevention or response that dilutes the purpose and shared goals of the CTA resulting in the confusion of roles, and the development of ineffective and unfocused response and prevention activities.…”

“…The three facilitators to convening and maintaining a campus prevention task force-strong interpersonal relationships, a positive campus culture, and preexisting programming-provide areas for postsecondary institutions to foster and leverage to bring change and promote sustainability in institutional-level sexual assault prevention work. Overall, postsecondary institutions, with their clear mission statements and shared purpose of educating students, are fertile grounds for developing healthy prosperous social change efforts, such as sexual assault prevention work (Carlson et al, 2018). The finding that strong interpersonal relationships and campus culture were perceived as facilitators to campus prevention task forces, must be understood as being in tension with the barriers of lack of capacity and burdensome bureaucratic structures.…”

“…In addition, it is most common for institutions to have limited policy and prevention sexual assault assessments and plans, conducted reactively at a time of crisis rather than proactively. In a review of the campus sexual assault response team (SART) approaches to address sexual assault literature, Carlson et al (2018) found that the defined purpose of campus SARTs' varies and tends to encompass response to and/or prevention of sexual assault. This broadly defined purpose of campus SARTs may create a tension between focusing on prevention or response.…”

“…While sexual assault response focuses on the institutional and community partners' engagement after the assault, prevention focuses on the strategies to stop the violence from taking place. Carlson et al (2018) argue that institutional prevention and response efforts must thus be separated. If we are to approach sexual assault from a strong public health prevention perspective, they assert that the key to ensuring coordinated and sustainable prevention efforts is the creation of a distinct campus sexual assault prevention and policy task force representing campus and community stakeholders, such as administrators, professors, coaches, campus police, students, and local community advocates.…”

The Benefits and Challenges of a Regional Network to Address Campus Sexual Assault

“…For decades, individuals working to address violence against women in local communities have developed CCRTs and sexual assault response teams (SARTs; Carlson et al, 2018;Shepard & Pence, 1999). At a basic level, service providers realized that their ability to address these crimes were interdependent on the responses of multiple actors and organizations (Gray, 1985;Lichty et al, 2008).…”