Newswise — News outlets are reporting that over the weekend at least 15 high school students, all male, allegedly watched while a female classmate was raped and assaulted for two and a half hours. The incident, which took place in Richmond, Calif., occurred on school grounds during a homecoming dance. No bystander intervened or called police. Some joined in the assault, raping and beating the victim themselves. The 15-year-old girl was found unconscious beneath a park bench, following a report by an individual who overheard witnesses discussing the assault. She was airlifted to a hospital in critical condition.
Of all the disturbing facts of this case, perhaps the most confounding is that at least 15 teenage boys stood by watching a brutal assault on a peer and did nothing to stop it. The questions – why did this happen? Why didn’t anyone help? Why did the assailants, instead of hiding their crime, invite others to join in? And, perhaps most pressing – how can we keep this from happening again?
Leaders of the “Green Dot” bystander education program at the University of Kentucky are tackling these issues head-on. “Green Dot” is a program designed to empower bystanders to stop violence and sexual assault when they see it, and to create an atmosphere of intolerance toward violence in their schools. The program gives young people tools to interact with their peers, telling them that attitudes promoting violence are “not cool.”
Following several years of implementation on the University of Kentucky campus, “Green Dot” is now being taken to Kentucky high schools, courtesy of a $2 million Centers for Disease Control grant. The grant will fund a long-term study to determine the efficacy of “Green Dot” in changing the culture of school populations.
The study will involve approximately 28,000 high school students in 26 Kentucky high schools. Half of the schools will serve as a control group, while students in 13 schools will receive “Green Dot” training. Surveys will evaluate students’ baseline attitudes toward dating and sexual violence and will continue over time to evaluate social norms and attitudes within each school population. The study hypothesis states that students who receive “Green Dot” training – as well as those in their peer social groups – should experience increased awareness of dating and sexual violence, as well as improved “bystander skills” allowing them to address and reduce tolerance for violence among their fellow students.
Kentucky’s work with the “Green Dot” program provides an innovative model for violence prevention among young people.
The University of Kentucky can provide several experts to comment on violence prevention, causes of sexual violence and the impact of sexual violence on young people. Experts available include Carol E. Jordan, director of the UK Center for Research on Violence Against Women, Ann Coker, principal investigator of the “Green Dot” CDC study, and personnel of the UK Violence Intervention and Prevention Center (the group charged with implementing “Green Dot” on the university campus) and the Bluegrass Rape Crisis Center.
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