[Music.]

[Text: Sexual Assault Across the Lifespan National Technical Assistance Project Podcast Series.

Building community collaborations to serve victims of sexual violence in later life Part 3: Deepening the conversation.

In 2012, Risa Breckman from the NYC Elder Abuse Center, Jean Callahan from the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging & Longevity, and Joy Solomon from the Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale worked together to put on a colloquium to talk about the sexual rights of older adults, which included conversations about sexual violence in later life.  

In this podcast, they reflect on the collaborative process that allowed them to bring this important topic to light in their community.]

Jean Callahan: I'm Jean Callahan. I'm the director of the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging and Longevity.

Joy Solomon: I'm Joy Solomon, I'm the director of the Weinberg Center for Elder Abuse Prevention at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale.

Risa Breckman: And I'm Risa Breckman and I am the deputy director of the New York City Elder Abuse Center.

Joy: So do you guys remember when we started talking about the idea for colloquium and thinking about it? 

Jean: It was at a coffee shop in August of 2010.

Risa: The coffee shop setting, I think, was conducive to us. It's this informal setting, and I think we were just at our most creative selves almost in this informal setting, just having a couple of hours together trying to think about what might be... We didn't even have an idea for the event at the time, I think. At the time, I think we were maybe thinking, maybe victim assistance, domestic violence, sexual assault... It was gonna be all of those things, but we didn't quite know what the event was gonna be. Do you remember that? 

Joy: Yeah, and I remember also thinking that we wanted it to not be a typical training program, that we wanted there to be people leaving with a lot of questions, that we didn't wanna create some kind of training where we would give information and have people leave like that, that we wanted people to participate and come to the table and really just be the first step in the conversation. Thinking about sexuality in so many facets whether it was healthy or not and then kind of figuring out how could we join those things together in one day.

Jean: I remember that being a real struggle for us, of the idea of this healthy sexual behavior and sexual abuse, can we even talk about that in the same day? Because people already so misunderstand sexual behavior in older adults as it is, that we worried a lot about marrying those two subjects for a day, and in the end, I think it worked really well, but we had to be very clear about which topic. I think we broke it up into morning and afternoon and talked about both of those things upfront to be clear with people, because both are so important and so under-recognized and yet so different. And I think the thing that brought me in was encountering cases where sexual assault is discounted in older adults and not, sort of the ageism around that, but I became, I think, equally interested in this ideal of healthy sexual behavior, especially in congregate settings. That was a big topic for us. So I definitely learned a lot in the process of planning it as well as being there on a topic that I wasn’t as focused on and I think a lot of people walked away with that.

Risa: So, coming together and having that conversation at the coffee shop, I think helped us understand that there is this intersection, the intersection of sexuality, sexual assault, and sexual rights, and how do we have a conversation about that, rather than having an event where we pretend that there are all these answers and have people lecturing and to give people a chance to not have answers, to explore something together. And having a day like that, we realized, would be really quite unusual for busy professionals to really be able to come together and to feel safe and comfortable saying, "I really don't know," and that I thought would be really unusual and important.

Joy: And I remember I think on that day that we also, I think you brought it up recently at the event, how sexuality is such a personal thing even when you come to work with your professional hat that maybe you're supposed to leave your personal values at the door, but how often that that's part of the conversation, how you work or how you do things or think about things, and how that may raise certain issues.

Jean: I think that emerged more gradually. I think we all recognized sexual abuse as an issue and as a problem, but it was helpful, I think, to develop this idea of how sexual behavior is. It's also, I think, a good idea to start off with Mark Lassise talk about the sex talk which was great, and it was very even-handed but up-front treatment of healthy sexual behavior in older adults and this idea that you don't know what's happening if you're not asking and you're not listening. And I think that was the right way to start the day to get people kind of thinking about that there is sexual behavior in older adults, over a period of... I mean we talked every Monday for nine months.

Risa: Oh, yeah!

[laughter]

Risa: We had it in May, right? August to May and our fearless leader getting all those calls organized.

Jean: But it did emerge, it was a good process to develop an idea and have input, but have that core group kind of plan and develop.

Risa: So then, but how many are involved into this expanded core group? 

Joy: Well, I think I remember we talked about who we would invite because we really wanted to make sure with the gamut of healthy sexuality all the way to sexual assault, there were a lot of different layers of professionals that might be involved, and we wanted to make sure that we included people from all of those disciplines. And I think in creating the day, we kind of wanted to have the voice of a lot of people. So I remember at first, we had Bonnie Brandl, and I think it may have been Bonnie that recommended Holly to join, and then we wanted to make sure we had a law enforcement person. I think it was you who suggested the Queens DA, and then we got to Diana Mejias. She was on the phone, and then when we thought about sexuality in the nursing home and the right to sexual expression in the nursing home, we included Robin.

Risa: And then Margie Fisher too, right? 

Joy: Right, and that's when we added the Queens DA.

Risa: Yeah, she's great. And then she brought in Diana, that's right.

Joy: That's right.

Risa: So that was the core group. And there were so many great conversations.

Joy: And then also the development of the afternoon sessions where we tried to think about all of the issues that would come up, and tried to get really multidisciplinary people. A lot of them have met each other to have conversations together and then lead these workshops. So that was pretty interesting, too.

Jean: I am glad that we did a sort of brief... The monograph, just a brief piece that came out quickly, because it takes so long to publish something, and we would've lost momentum, so I think it was important to do both.

Risa: I do, too.

Jean: And better than a white paper, I think. It's very accessible and really sums up the day well. So yeah, that M.T. did a great contribution as well.

Risa: It was just so momentous. There's something about that day that was... Sometimes you put on conferences or events, and at the end of the day, you're just exhausted, and it's like, "Oh, it's over." But for me, there was a sense of loss, in a way. Loss of the core group, those conversations that got so deep talking about sexual rights and what does that mean, and how does that really play out at a facility, and all the interest, just those interesting conversations. It was... And then just to see how engaged everybody was, and how thankful people were to have this kind of forum. So we have to do something again. I know that you've been encouraging that, and we have to go back to that coffee shop and come up with the next one.

Jean: Yeah.

Joy: Okay.

Risa: Yeah.

[Music.] 

[Text:
For more information about the colloquium and to access the monograph from the event, visit www.nyceac.com/exploring-the-sexual-rights-of-older-adults-toward-healthy-sexuality-and-freedom-from-victimization-in-later-life/.

For more resources on working with victims of sexual violence throughout the lifespan, visit www.nsvrc.org/projects/lifespan.

For training or technical assistance, contact resources@nsvrc.org.

Thank you for joining us!

Copyright National Sexual Violence Resource Center 2014.  All Rights Reserved.  Parts of this document may be reproduced, copied, modified, or adapted for individual educational purposes only.  Commercial use and distribution of the contents of the document are not allowed without express and prior written consent of the copyright holder.

This project was supported by Grant No. 2011-TA-AX-K023 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice.  The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this program are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.]