Demonstrators join Take Back the Night

Sexual assault prevention must begin at a young age, the speaker said.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Multiple approaches must be taken to prevent sexual assaults on women and assist victims, a speaker told an audience of several dozen people before they embarked on the annual Take Back the Night march Thursday.
"There is so much child sexual abuse, so many young perpetrators out there that we need to be reaching our children before they get out into the world and offend," Staci Kitchen of Columbus, executive director of the Ohio Coalition on Sexual Assault, told the early-evening gathering at Wick Park.
The event, sponsored by the city, the Family Service Agency and the Women's Center, Women's Studies Department and Eta Sigma Gamma health honorary society at Youngstown State University, was in observance of Sexual Violence Awareness Week.
Targeting schools: Schools must be made safe from sexual harassment, Kitchen said. "Our lawmakers need to make laws that they are going to enforce and that are going to hold perpetrators accountable," and ensure that they don't continue to offend, she added.
Often, victims turn to churches for guidance and healing, so they must be prepared to offer assistance in the best interests of victims, she said.
Kitchen reminded her audience that most sexual assault offenders are acquaintances of their victims, with only 17 percent of rapes being committed by strangers.
Comments before march: "We're not just taking back the night. We're taking back our bodies. We're taking back our communities. We're taking back our right to be safe," she told the audience in brief remarks just before the group marched through North Side streets and YSU campus with a police escort.
Among other slogans, the marchers, who wore purple ribbons, chanted "Women unite, take back the night," Women united can never be divided," and "Two, four, six, eight, rape we will not tolerate." The marchers then returned to the Wick Park pavilion for a candlelight vigil in honor and in memory of women who have been victims of violence.
The coalition is a statewide network of activists, professionals and agencies serving sexual assault victims and the victims themselves. It provides training and technical assistance statewide.