Ethical Storytelling for Education, Awareness, & Outreach

THE POWER OF STORYTELLING

Storytelling is a powerful communication tool in the sexual violence advocacy field. From support groups, to statehouse Advocacy Days, to #EmbraceYourVoice campaigns for SAAM, to fundraising efforts, storytelling practices are central to the work of supporting survivors and ending sexual violence.

Naturally, those who do community awareness and outreach¹ work also look to storytelling when creating trainings and awareness events. With a background in survivor advocacy, many awareness and outreach professionals have stewarded a wide range of survivor stories that impacted and mobilized them. In efforts to “effectively engage the larger community in efforts to support survivors…and to eliminate sexual violence” ¹, it is logical that awareness and outreach professionals share stories that impact the community in similar ways.

Pedagogical storytelling practices are well supported by academic findings and Indigenous methods² of teaching, learning, and community-building. Narratives (stories), “engage our thinking, emotions, and imagination all at once.”³ Adult education researchers M. Carolyn Clark and Marsha Rossiter write, “The telling of stories makes the learner not the receiver but the actor, moving from a cognitive understanding of an idea, principle, or concept and linking it to their own experience.”⁴ Said differently, stories are a simple yet effective tool in experiential learning.⁵

There are two common approaches to storytelling in awareness and outreach work: 1.) Sharing local survivor narratives and 2.) Sharing narratives reflected in the media. With either approach, it is important for awareness and outreach professionals to carefully consider the narratives they share and how they frame them. Like any powerful tool misused, storytelling can be harmful. By aligning narratives with the ethics, standards, and values of the sexual violence advocacy field, it is possible to use storytelling to promote positive change and avoid causing harm.

ALIGNING STORYTELLING PRACTICES WITH ETHICS, STANDARDS, AND VALUES

 

A. Confidentiality

The Code of Professional Ethics for Victim Assistance Professionals published by The National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA) and the National Advocacy Credentialing Program (NACP)® outlines “respect [for] the client’s rights to privacy and confidentiality”⁶ as a key ethical principle for working with survivors. Confidentiality is not only a best practice, it is required by by many of the grants⁷ agencies receive. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in particular requires advocates to protect “personally identifying information and personal information”⁷ of survivors. This includes directly identifying information (names, addresses, etc.) but also “any other information, including date of birth, racial or ethnic background, or religious affiliation, that would serve to identify any individual.”⁷

As such, it is not ethical to share survivor stories in trainings and awareness events that share a survivor’s identifying information without their explicit permission and involvement. Advocates working in rural or otherwise close-knit communities in particular should be mindful of what information could identify a survivor in practice. A story may not include the name and location of a survivor, but it may identify that they are a Latina lawyer or a man with 5 children who attends the Baptist church. These details may not explicitly disclose a survivor’s name and address, but they could effectively violate a survivor’s confidentiality.

To avoid sharing unneeded and potentially identifying survivor information when storytelling, awareness and outreach professionals should create clear and specific objectives for their trainings and events. Creating objectives early in the planning process reminds professionals to align their methods and activities with their objectives. When storytelling, professionals should ask themselves alignment⁸ questions, such as: “Why am I including this narrative or this piece of information?” and “What does this detail add or accomplish?”

Asking such alignment questions, a professional may find there are storytelling methods that align with the training or event’s objectives while protecting survivor confidentiality. Narratives do not have to reflect the factual details of a single survivor’s experience to educate audiences about the realities of sexual violence survivorship. Trainers can craft composite case study scenarios that illustrate common survivor experiences and showcase barriers local survivors face. For more information on case study as a tool for adult learning, readers can reference this article on Case Study-Based Learning from MindTools.⁹

B. Survivor-Centered Practices/Consent

Confidentiality is just one component of ethical storytelling. All services, including awareness and outreach services, should be survivor-centered.¹ Per OAESV’s Core Standards, this includes “ensuring the right of the survivor to make the choices and decisions about their process.”¹ Survivors own their stories, and as such they should have the opportunity to give consent before their stories are shared.

Consent should be freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, and specific.¹⁰ Even if a survivor’s name and identifying information are changed, agencies should allow survivors the opportunity to opt in or out of their stories being shared. Agencies should be explicit about how storytelling practices would maintain a survivor’s confidentiality, in what scenarios these stories would be shared, and for how long. Agencies and advocates should be mindful of any power dynamics at play when making requests of survivors. A survivor may not want any aspect of their story shared, but they could feel indebted to the organization and hesitate to say no. Agencies and advocates should do everything within their control to create conditions in which survivors can say “yes” or “no” freely.

When planning events like “What Were You Wearing?¹¹” or other survivor storytelling exhibits, agencies could also consider sharing an open call to the public for written story submissions. Open calls can mitigate the service provider/service receiver power dynamic at play when agencies make direct asks to survivors who receive their services. Sharing an open call can support conditions for freely given, informed, and specific consent. Open calls may also provide a platform to survivors whose stories are less often shared. When opening calls, agencies should include information about how to reach an advocate and other support services as appropriate.

Yet another approach to survivor-centered storytelling is to support survivors as they share their stories themselves. Some survivors find sharing their stories with live audiences (or recording their stories to be shared with live audiences at a later date) empowering and healing. In 2024, OAESV is collaborating with StoryCenter¹² to facilitate workshops for survivor storytellers. As of December 2023, these workshops are open to survivors as well as advocates interested in the workshop process. Contact storytelling@oaesv.org for more information. Members can also view recordings of OAESV’s Fall 2023 Seasonal Training Series on Survivor Storytelling facilitated by StoryCenter. To access these recordings and accompanying resources when they are available, visit the OAESV member portal.

Survivor-centered and consent principles should also be considered when incorporating survivor stories from the media in our trainings and events. In recent years, resources¹³ by and for journalists covering sexual violence have become readily available. Resources such as “Use the Right Words: Media Reporting on Sexual Violence in Canada” by Femifesto and collaborators uplift best practices for engaging survivors throughout the reporting process. They advocate, “Before sending a story to an editor or sharing it with anyone else, make time for the survivor to review their comments. There may be something they feel uncomfortable with and want edited or removed.” ¹⁴

Still, too many media stories featuring survivors (or deceased victims) of sexual violence do not use such survivor-centered and consent-based practices. True crime media in particular has gained widespread criticismm¹⁵ in recent years for its exploitative depictions of violence without the consent of survivors or the surviving loved ones of deceased victims. Even in cases where a survivor is interviewed, it is still possible that the survivor was not allowed to review their comments/consent to other aspects of the storyteller’s framing before publication.

When including or referencing a media story about sexual violence in a training curriculum or awareness event, professionals should research the process that went into creating the piece of media at hand. Professionals should familiarize themselves with the ethical practices outlined by Femifesto and collaborators, Storycenter, and other journalism/storytelling experts and consider the following alignment questions:

• Was the survivor engaged throughout the reporting/storytelling process?
• Did the survivor have agency in telling their story?
• Since the time the story was published, has the survivor discussed the story publicly? and if so–
• Does the survivor still approve of their story being shared?

The most reliable way to ensure that the media narrative is survivor-centered/told with a survivor’s consent is to choose media published by or in close collaboration with survivors. Some survivors film themselves telling their stories and upload videos to YouTube or other social media sites with the express objective of sharing their stories far and wide. Survivors often use art to tell their stories in ways that feel true to them. Awareness and outreach professionals should consider showcasing these different ways of storytelling, including performance, music, poetry, and visual art.

C. Accurate Representation/Anti-Oppression

Accurate representation and anti-oppression principles are integral to NOVA’s Code of Ethics as well as OAESV’s Core Standards. NOVA’s Code of Ethics outlines that victim service providers shall, “Remain committed to their own professional education to ensure proficiency in services and adhere to best practices and evidence-based research”⁶ and “promote anti-racist, inclusive crime and violence prevention as a public service and an adjunct to victim assistance.”⁶ OAESV’s Core Standards highlight that awareness and outreach professionals are to “expose the community to accurate and up-to-date information about sexual violence.”¹

Whether incorporating local survivor stories or media stories about survivors, awareness and outreach professionals should consider how the narratives they uplift reflect statistics and relate to existing cultural narratives surrounding sexual violence. The narratives uplifted in trainings and events should represent the variety of ways survivors experience sexual violence and counter inaccurate narratives and stereotypes that harm marginalized communities.

The importance of uplifting a variety of survivor stories can be seen in research that connects cultural sexual violence narratives with disclosure rates. “Rape scripts,” defined in Rachel Thompson’s article for The Guardian as “mental scenarios constructed from ideas and stereotypes about how rape is typically supposed to play out,”¹⁶ impact who identifies as a survivor of sexual violence. Thompson’s article quotes psychologist Heather L Littleton explaining, “The more someone’s experience with rape differs from their script … the less likely they are to label it as such.”¹⁶ By extension, if survivors do not see their experiences reflected in the narratives awareness and outreach professionals uplift, it is less likely that they will access the supportive services professionals aim to promote.

Because common rape scripts often do not reflect statistical realities of sexual violence victimization, professionals can look to statistics for guidance as they select narratives to include in their trainings and events. Today, common rape script narratives hold that sexual violence typically occurs when a male stranger (often a man of color) uses a weapon to overpower and violate a (typically white) female victim.^{16, 17} While this narrative does reflect some survivors’ experiences, statistics show¹⁸ that 80% of survivors know their assailants, that weapons are used only 11% of the time, and that men are also survivors of sexual violence. Racist narratives that depict Black men as predatory and violent toward white women, as articulated by NAESV, reinforce “a cultural obsession with black-on-white stranger rape, at the expense of the vastly more common intra-racial acquaintance rape.”^19*

Many individuals who attend our awareness events and trainings enter our learning environments already exposed to common and stereotypical rape scripts. To accurately discuss sexual violence and avoid causing further harm to marginalized communities, awareness and outreach professionals should prioritize uplifting narratives that counter stereotypes and reflect statistical realities of sexual violence survivorship. Professionals should elevate the host of research that indicates Black women are not only disproportionately impacted²⁰ by sexual violence, but also disproportionately disbelieved when they disclose. One review of the literature finds that “black women are less likely to disclose rape, prosecutors are less likely to pursue criminal charges against an assailant when a black woman is the survivor, and jurors are more likely to believe that a white survivor’s assailant is guilty than a black woman’s assailant.”²¹ For more information on the influence of anti-blackness on modern rape law, readers can reference Constructing Race and Gender in Modern Rape Law: The Abandoned Category of Black Female Victim by Jacqueline Pittman.¹⁷

To ethically and “effectively engage the larger community in efforts to support survivors…and to eliminate sexual violence,”¹ awareness and outreach professionals should continue their anti-racist and anti-oppressive educations and listen to marginalized survivors and advocates. By listening and learning, professionals can more effectively uplift a variety of survivor stories, including narratives that do not reflect stereotypical rape scripts. By elevating a variety of narratives and reflecting current research, professionals create conditions where survivors see themselves in the stories we tell and more effectively “disseminate messages…that support survivors” in the broader community.¹

D. Trauma-Informed Practices

In recent years, trauma-informed²² principles and approaches have gained recognition and popularity in the victim assistance field. With this increased visibility, integrating trauma-informed approaches when working with survivors has become second nature for many direct-service advocates. However, trauma-informed approaches should not be limited to direct service work. OAESV’s Core Standards outline “Trauma-Informed Services” as a core service administration standard, meaning all services should be provided in a way that “is based on the knowledge and understanding of trauma”¹ and that “does not cause further harm and that supports the well-being of survivors and co-survivors.”¹

With 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men²³ experiencing attempted or completed rape in their lifetimes, it should be assumed that survivors and co-survivors are present in our learning spaces. To create trauma-informed trainings and events, professionals should be mindful of material that may be triggering for survivors, co-survivors, and others experiencing the impacts of vicarious trauma.

“Triggers” are defined as “sensory reminder[s] of the traumatic event: a noise, smell, temperature, other physical sensation, or visual scene.”²⁴ When faced with triggers, survivors may experience panic and other overwhelming physical, emotional, and behavioral responses. Because creating a psychologically safe environment is a foundation for adult learning²⁵, a triggering learning environment is antithetical to the goals of awareness and outreach professionals. A learning environment created with trauma in mind avoids including material and activities that are likely to be triggering for survivors.

It is important for professionals to recognize that triggers vary from survivor to survivor based on their own traumatic experiences. Still, to avoid storytelling practices that are likely to be triggering for survivors, awareness and outreach professionals should carefully consider the images and violent/graphic details they include in their trainings and events. As discussed in the “confidentiality” portion of this article, aligning the features of a training/event with written objectives can support ethical, effective storytelling. Professionals should ask themselves alignment questions, such as: “Why am I sharing this image or detail? What does it accomplish?” and “Is this survivor story impactful without sharing graphic details of the assault?”

Aligning storytelling practices with objectives and trauma-informed care principles, awareness and outreach professionals will likely find that graphic images and details are not needed. As articulated by Femifesto, “Many people have experienced violence in their own lives and already know what it looks like; a reminder is not needed.”¹⁴ The utility and impacts of violent images are debated among journalists.²⁶ A recent survey of journalists found that participants, “believe graphic images are not inherently more powerful vehicles for journalistic impact than less graphic images.”²⁷ With this information, professionals will often find the risks of including graphic content outweigh the benefits.

Still, there are times when graphic imagery or details are useful in training efforts. For example, advocates, law enforcement officers, and healthcare providers may benefit from seeing example images of strangulation injuries so they know how to identify the signs. In these cases, and in all cases where storytelling practices may be triggering for participants, awareness and outreach professionals should incorporate content and trigger warnings. For further discussion, readers can reference “An Introduction to Content Warnings and Trigger Warnings” from the University of Michigan. As the resource explains, “content and trigger warnings can empower students to take care of themselves however and whenever it becomes necessary.”²⁸ Warnings should be given at the beginning and throughout trainings/events as new themes arise. Professionals should also share information about supportive resources early in their trainings/events in case a participant needs support during or after the training or event.

Trauma-informed storytellers should also consider the impacts of vicarious trauma when training allied professionals. The American Counseling Association defines vicarious trauma as, “the emotional residue of exposure that counselors have from working with people as they are hearing their trauma stories and become witnesses to the pain, fear, and terror that trauma survivors have endured.”²⁹ Vicarious trauma can often relate to burnout and compassion fatigue, which are known to negatively impact a professional’s personal life and their ability to serve their clients.³⁰ When training advocates, law enforcement, healthcare providers, and other ‘first responders’ who witness trauma regularly, awareness and outreach professionals should be mindful to use storytelling “in a way that does not cause further harm and that supports the well-being of survivors and co-survivors.”¹

CONCLUSION

Storytelling is a powerful pedagogical tool to engage adult learners.⁴ Due to the sensitive nature of sexual violence stories, ethical storytelling requires careful consideration and framing. This article presents a strategy for aligning storytelling practices with the ethical standards and values of the sexual violence advocacy field. This article aims to support professionals working at rape crisis centers as they align their storytelling practices with their ethics. This article also aims to provide a framework for rape crisis center staff to discuss ethical storytelling with community partners and allied professionals. As the NOVA Code of Ethics outlines, victim assistance professionals have ethical obligations as professional collaborators: “In relationships with colleagues, other professionals, and the public, Victim Assistance Providers shall…Provide constructive and informed critical feedback to colleagues when determined necessary for the betterment of services.”⁶ With collaboration and intentional alignment, it is possible to harness the power of storytelling to uplift survivors and to “engage the larger community in efforts…to eliminate sexual violence.”¹

This project was supported by Grant No. 15JOVW-22-GG-00917-MUMU awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice, to the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of Justice.

References and Resources

“*For Indigenous American communities, interracial violence is more common than intraracial violence.31”

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6. National Organization for Victim Assistance and National Advocacy Credentialing Program. 2021 Revised Code of Professional Ethics for Victim Assistance Professionals. https://www.trynova.org/office-for-advocacy-ethics/. Published 2021. Accessed December 19, 2023.

7. Victim Rights Law Center. VAWA, VOCA, and FVPSA confidentiality laws: a comparison chart. https://victimrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/VAWA-2022-VOCA-FVPSA-Comparison-Chart.pdf. Published 2022. Accessed December 19, 2023.

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20. Black women, sexual assault, and criminalization. National Black Women’s Justice Institute. Published April 2021. Updated April 2023. https://www.nbwji.org/post/black-women-sexual-assault-criminalization. Accessed December 19, 2023.

21. JC Nash. Black women and rape: A review of the literature. Brandeis University Feminist Sexual Ethics Project. Published June 12, 2009. https://www.brandeis.edu/projects/fse/slavery/united-states/slav-us-articles/nash2009.pdf. Accessed December 19, 2023.

22. Infographic: 6 guiding principles to a trauma-informed approach. Published September 17, 2020. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/orr/infographics/6_principles_trauma_info.htm. Accessed December 19, 2023.

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24. Chapter 3: Understanding the impact of trauma. In: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US). Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services. Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; 2014. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/. Accessed December 19, 2023.

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28. University of Michigan. An introduction to content warnings and trigger warnings. https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/inclusive-teaching/an-introduction-to-content-warnings-and-trigger-warnings/. Accessed December 2023.

29. Fact sheet #9: Vicarious trauma. American Counseling Association. Published October 2011. https://www.counseling.org/docs/default-source/trauma-disaster/fact-sheet-9—vicarious-trauma.pdf. Accessed December 19, 2023.

30. Cocker F, Joss N. Compassion fatigue among healthcare, emergency and community service workers: A systematic review. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2016;13(6):618. doi: 3390/ijerph13060618

31. Five things about violence against american indian and alaska native women and men. National Institute of Justice. Published May 2023. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/249815.pdf Accessed December 19, 2023.