Blog

By: Brylie Turk, Student Outreach Intern
3 minute read

Thursday February 26th, Steve Peacock, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and member of I Have The Right To’s Board of Directors, joined Evan Dawson for an interview for WXXI’s Connections segment (see the link below). In the interview, Steve openly shares his experience of being targeted, groomed, and then sexually abused for years in his own home by his neighbor, starting at when he was only 10 years old, and how he spoke up years later, at the age of 52 years.  

I Have The Right To interviewed Christina Graziano who is Partner at Ketterer Browne & Associates (KBA).  Christina’s practice focuses on complex civil litigation in state and federal courts, including cases of sexual assault.

I Have The Right recently spoke with Inanna Balkin, a student in 8th grade at Amherst Middle School in Amherst, Massachusetts. Inanna led a campaign to get her peers, teachers, and school leaders to sign the I Have The Right To Pledge. She is a model for students across the country who are standing up and speaking out to advocate for an education free from sexual assault. Hear in her own words why Inanna chose to be an advocate and what she hopes for in the future.

By: Elizabeth Zeigler
Executive Director, I Have The Right To
3 minute read

When you remove the to-do lists, the last-minute gifting, and the hustle and bustle of the season, the holidays are about being together. 

Yet “being” together can sometimes be fraught: there is the unwanted kiss from Uncle George, the grandparent who overshares their grandchild’s news and photos, or the newcomer to the annual holiday dinner.

By: Elizabeth Zeigler, Executive Director, I Have The Right To

4 minute read

Consent is a word that is most often associated with romantic relationships and yet the concept is vastly broad and purely fundamental: the right that every human is entitled to exercise when deciding what happens to their body.  Including – and perhaps especially – young humans. Consider this story about my young daughter, Christmas, and consent.

McQuaid Jesuit, a Catholic, Jesuit school for boys in Rochester, NY engaged I Have The Right To to interact with students, parents, and educators.  Our team spent three days on campus working with school leadership, making a presentation to more than 500 high school students, facilitating a separate talk with parents, and visiting with senior boys in their classrooms. 

I Have The Right To interviewed Harrison James who is the co-founder of the Independent School End Sexual Violence Coalition (ISESVC). Harrison is a current junior at a boarding school in New England. For his contributions to the end sexual violence movement, Harrison has been honored as a Gold Medalist by the New Jersey State Governor’s Jefferson Awards and a Daily Point of Light Award by Points of Light. ISESVC is a youth-led coalition of students dedicated to anti-sexual violence mobilization across independent school campuses. Their mission is to operate a network advancing social practices and structural change in an effort to prevent sexual violence and mitigate its effects. 

One of the questions we are asked most often by parents is how to prevent sexual assault from happening to their child. Unfortunately, the only person who can prevent sexual assault is a perpetrator, but there are steps every parent can take now to open channels of communication with their child (no matter the age) about healthy relationships, sex, and consent. 

Talking about the risk of sexual assault with your child often means first talking about the opposite: healthy relationships. No matter the age of your child, be sure to regularly express to them that you want them to have healthy, safe relationships. This post talks more about how to do this.

Unfortunately, conversations with your children cannot end at healthy, safe relationships. Parents need to teach children how to identify when someone in their community is not acting appropriately and what they can do about it. Read on for how.

By Michael Hill and Alex Prout

To my children, you have seen all too well that the institutions that are meant to protect you often fail and that justice is often unfairly on the side of whoever has the most to lose. I vow to do my part to change this. Here is my Father’s Day promise to you.