Making the invisible, VISIBLE

By Joan Tabachnick, Kieran McCartan, and David Prescott

For 30 years, each of us has struggled with this essential question: How can we make the invisible visible? How can we create good research and emerging practice in the most effective way? This is especially true when our working lives sit at the intersection of research, policy, and practice, each of which often has different ways, means, and justifications to enable making the invisible visible.

In the world of sexual violence prevention, the question is how to prove that something didn’t happen because of an essential intervention, education program, or other factors that protected against harm. Disentangling evidence from practice and “proving” the effectiveness of an intervention is difficult in any field and especially so in an emerging field like sexual violence prevention. In the last 30 years we have seen incredible change – most importantly in the general acceptance of strategies to prevent the perpetration of sexual violence from members of the public to frontline professionals, to national policy makers and transnational organizations. In the wake of ATSA’s name change, with new funding for prevention, more acceptance of this perspective from the victim advocacy community, and new research emphasizing the importance of primary prevention on preventing the perpetration of sexual abuse, we were all feeling optimistic.  

Unfortunately, in the USA at this moment, we are now heading in the totally opposite direction and diametrically opposed to international trends, especially those in other anglophone, westernized countries (i.e., UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway, to name a few). 

Last week, this question of how we make things visible became even more important, Ironically, April is sexual violence awareness month, and yet in early April the US Center s for Disease Control’s Office of Violence Prevention was gutted, leaving research funding, national organizations, and local sexual violence prevention programs adrift (NPR, 2025).  More than two-thirds of the staff lost their jobs, jeopardizing essential programs to prevent child abuse, child sexual abuse, sexual assault, and gun violence. 

Except for one or two articles and a few organizational statements (including one from ATSA), the world has been silent.  In fact, it seems that the public has not become aware of these changes and their impact.  Much of this is due to the onslaught of political and social change and commentary going on in the USA and its reverberations around the world. Yet the impact of these cuts and layoffs will be felt by countless numbers of people for many years to come. 

Again, how do we make the invisible, visible?  How can we help people feel these changes today, this week, this month. How do we highlight the importance of prevention, its messaging and investment to communities and individuals, when the people that sexual violence prevention activities support do not often bring attention to themselves, and the topic is uncomfortable and challenging for society.

The people who benefit the most from our prevention efforts may never know anything about our efforts  because we have been successful and they have never experienced harm. More than ever, we need to shine a light on this.

What exactly are we losing?  For decades, the CDC has offered research about the risk and protective factors for those who have been sexually abused or those who have perpetrated sexual abuse.  They have also offered critical surveillance data, strategies for preventing sexual abuse, and the funding and guidance to evaluate the results.  And for decades they offered funding for research and for programs specifically through Rape Prevention and Education (RPE) funding that has been essential for the victim advocacy movement.  Again, removing this funding and these staff will not be immediately felt in the next days or weeks ahead. However, it all signals a shift in societal (or at least governmental) perspectives on the importance of sex and relationship education as well as sexual violence prevention. It will doubtless take years to re-focus communities’ attention on the scope of these issues.

While we don’t have that key strategic advice about what is the one thing that would make a huge difference.  We do know it is important to do something and look for hope in what others are doing. We need to look to our international colleagues, as well as those in related fields, for help, support, and direction.

We find hope in the courage and tenacity of our colleagues.  ATSA did not just issue a statement, they issued a call to all ATSA members in the US to contact their elected officials to emphasize the importance of research-informed policymaking in the effort to eliminate sexual violence.  If you have not done this yet, please make those calls. 

We find hope in movies and stories that take the risk to expand the narrow narrative of sexual violence, perpetrated by monsters lurking in the shadows.  Look for a new thoughtful documentary film called “Predator” that is really an expose on the salacious TV show called “To Catch a Predator”.  According to the film’s director, this offers insights into the complex experiences of those whose thoughts and desires do not match who they are on the inside.

We find hope when people begin to talk about institutional courage rather than institutional betrayal.  This challenges us to think about what we can do when we hear stories of sexual abuse and what can do within our institutions whether they are campuses or youth serving organizations or faith-based communities or government agencies.  How we can come together as communities to argue for and establish the need for sexual abuse prevention and the impact that it has across society. When leaders choose to face the harms that have happened and take the time to listen, that alone can make a difference.  And when leaders choose to ask what can be done to repair the harm, that can be incredibly healing for everyone.  The Center for Institutional Courage is collecting the research and hopefully make these stories of courage more visible. 

The CDC and the Division of Violence Prevention are essential to our work.  We cannot remain silent.  We need to find ways to talk about the importance of their work, their research, and their funding to continue our efforts on behalf of society.  Please don’t give up; look for places of hope that can help sustain us in the weeks and months and possibly years ahead.