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Development of the Platform for Assistance to Victims of Sexual Violence

Iva Peterková

5/23/2023

Development of the Platform for Assistance to Victims of Sexual Violence

We are developing the Platform for Assistance to Victims of Sexual Violence thanks to the support of Norwegian funds.

The system of assistance to victims of sexual violence is fragmented, and there is currently no professional platform to share know-how and connect different institutions, organisations and professionals. In many cases, individual organisations and institutions act inappropriately with victims: burdened with stereotypes and misunderstandings of traumatisation, they misinterpret their actions and downplay the manifestations of trauma or violence. The aid system thus places an extreme burden on victims, discouraging them from addressing their situation and often failing to address sexual violence appropriately.

We are responding to this problematic situation with a project aimed at contributing to the effective establishment of interdisciplinary cooperation in the field of assistance to victims of sexual violence by strengthening the capacity of the Platform for Assistance to Victims of Sexual Violence, which is being established at the upcoming PORT Centre, and transferring the experience from this Platform to the wider system of assistance.

We will contribute to this through:

- Expanding the data base: we will conduct extensive research as well as our own quantitative research,
- Training and competence development of the Platform's experts and practitioners
- Methodological anchoring of the Platform and
- Informing interdisciplinary collaboration and ensuring know-how transfer
The partner organisation of the project is the research agency MindBridge Consulting, Inc. which provides expertise in the field of quantitative research within the project.

The project Development of a Platform for Assistance to Victims of Sexual Violence is supported by the Norway Grants 2014 - 2021 and is implemented from 1 November 2022 to 30 April 2024.
The project coordinator is Iva Peterková (iva.peterkova@profem.cz).