The Voices and Faces Project

Highlights of our shared effort with TVFP

Project Summary:

The Voices and Faces Project (http://www.voicesandfaces.org) is a national US community of sexual assault survivors (over 300 strong) who are standing up and speaking out about the rape and abuse that they have endured, putting their real names, faces and stories on a human rights and public health issue that has great individual and social costs for women and girls. Founded in 2003 by former Leo Burnett USA Senior Vice President Anne K. Ream, – herself a survivor of rape – the organization seeks to raise awareness of the impact of sexual violence on victims, families and communities while calling the culture to a more compassionate and effective response. They are, first and foremost, an advocacy organization, one in which the voices, faces and testimony of survivors are the driving force for creating lasting social and political change.

In a world which tends to blame, isolate and silence victims, the overarching goal of The Voices and Faces Project is to create a culture where those who have survived sexual assault have a more powerful voice. They provide a space and format in which survivors can choose to “become visible,” a process that is both healing and, equally importantly, culture and system changing. Their advocacy goals are being realized through various initiatives, including a series of documentary and creative efforts, a lobbying and speakers bureau, a forthcoming book and audio documentary, and a web site that calls the public to action, hosts the public testimonials of survivors, and provides a way for those who log on to share their own stories. At the heart of every Voices and Faces Project initiative are the stories of those who have lived through violence: women and girls whose words have the power to change minds, hearts and public policy.

After decades of being driven underground, many survivors find it empowering and even life-changing to finally give voice to their experience, allowing them to reject negative stereotypes that reinforce stigma and shame. By showing survivors as being shaped – but not defined – by their experiences, emphasizing the fullness of the lives they are living today, The Voices and Faces Project is challenging stereotypes while providing a sense of possibility and solidarity for other victims who have perhaps not yet found a way or place to come forward. Equally importantly, members of The Voices and Faces Project are bringing the issue of violence against women into sharp focus for opinion shapers, policymakers and the public at large. They seek to create a culture in which those in power must encounter the women and girls affected by public policies that too often are poorly considered, uncompassionate and ineffective. The end goal is to inform the actions of community systems.

The Problem

More than thirty-five years after the advent of the rape crisis movement, rape victims still encounter powerful legal, social and practical challenges. Recent court decisions make us wonder how far we have really come. This past year, a judge in Oregon barred the use of the terms “rape” and “sexual assault” in a rape trial because of the possibility of “prejudicing the jury” (a case that The Voices and Faces Project weighed in on through public statements and its founder’s writing). Verdicts from trial juries, in the US and beyond, are equally uninformed. Only six percent of rapists will ever spend a day in jail, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. Statistics like this are troubling and telling: a reminder of how readily the culture dismisses women and girls who live through sexual and in fact all forms of violence.

Our public discourse about sexual violence, when it exists at all, is largely driven by a series of high-profile cases in which the victim is tried first and often most brutally in the court of public opinion. There is a subtext to our relentless interest in what a victim was wearing, why she chose to go out late, or how much she had to drink. That subtext is: this all might have all been avoided if only the victim had made “better choices.”

Relatedly, the notion that the “false reporting” of rape is commonplace - an assertion that is unsubstantiated by any reliable data and starkly at odds with the experiences of most working in advocacy or law enforcement - has moved from the fringes to the mainstream, contributing to a cultural climate in which women who come forward with rape charges are met with scepticism and disbelief. In the face of such realities, it is more difficult than ever for women and girls to identify as rape survivors. And yet the public testimony of survivors (inside and outside of the court of law) is a critical – if not the most critical – component of an effective advocacy strategy.

Voice and Faces Project Overview

The Voices and Faces Project believes that justice for victims is only possible when the public – which is comprised of judges as well as prospective jurors -- understands sexual violence, and encounters the voices and faces of its victims. Their goal is to bring survivor testimony to the attention of the state, the nation and, through our online efforts, the world.

Voices and Faces Project Goals

Among the project’s organizational goals for January to June, 2010 are to:

  • Expand the pool of North American survivor testimonials by 25%, continuing to interview, photograph and document survivor stories for use in future speaking, media outreach and advocacy efforts;
  • Deepen and strengthen relationships with those in the unpaid (traditional) media, knowing that these opinion shapers impact minds, hearts and public policies and inform the actions of community systems;
  • Continue to make inroads in the blogosphere, developing a new media strategy for seeding important truths about sexual violence against women and girls through a variety of online sites and zines;
  • Establish a media engagement protocol and presentation that can be shared with anti-violence organizations and partner groups in the US and beyond, with the end goal of helping to more effectively place stories grounded in survivor testimony in the media, and respond to negative media stereotypes about victims;
  • Expand speaking and policymaker education efforts, increasing outreach significantly in order to inform the actions of community systems and reach survivors who can benefit from encountering those who have also lived through violence;
  • Support the core community of artists and writers in their completion of The Voices and Faces Project book and audio documentary, knowing that such work can have a powerful impact on the culture at large, changing minds, hearts, and public policy.