(Photo courtesy Zebra Coalition)
ORLANDO | Zebra Coalition and the Victim Service Center (VSC) of Central Florida have been partnering up since 2018 to support LGBTQ youth who have been victims of sexual assault.
“There’s a significant rate of young people who come to us who have experienced victimization on some level and a lot of times it’s sexual assault related,” says Heather Wilkie, Zebra Coalition’s executive director. “And we know that LGBTQ individuals are at a much higher risk for sexual assault.”
This led Wilkie to reach out to VSC in 2018 about partnering up to apply for a federal grant that would allow the two organizations to offer support to LGBTQ sexual assault victims, as well as create programs to raise prevention awareness.
“For Zebra, we work with ages 13 to 24, and Victim Service Center serves all ages,” Wilkie says. “So this partnership let’s them expand their outreach to LGBTQ individuals and then we are expanding our support for sexual assault victims.”
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women awarded Zebra and VSC an initial grant in 2018 of $300,000. A second grant was awarded late in 2020 bringing the total to $750,000 to support a five-year program.
“With that funding, we were able to develop two new positions,” Wilkie says. “One was a position at Zebra Coalition for outreach focused on sexual assault in the LGBTQ community and the other was a position at Victims Service Center.”
VSC is a crisis center that provides services to victims of abuse in all forms in Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties and maintain a 24/7 sexual assault hotline. Thanks to the grant funding, VSC has been able to establish Rainbow Resilient, a weekly support group for LGBTQ victims of sexual assault, and designate a victim advocate and crisis counselor that focuses solely on the LGBTQ community.
“The partnership between the Zebra Coalition and the VSC is unique and important because it provides Master’s level crisis intervention, victim advocacy and outreach services exclusively dedicated to the LGBTQ community,” says Lui Damiani, VSC’s executive director.
That LGBTQ-specific care, which is provided at VSC by crisis counselor Kevin Fox, allows both organizations to address issues disproportionately impacting to the queer community.
“It’s important that while we are working with our young people we understand the trauma they face as it relates to sexual assault oftentimes that’s paired with a lot of unhealthy behaviors that we know the queer community experiences on a higher level,” Wilkie says. “Substance abuse issues, victimization for human trafficking, engaging in unhealthy behavior for survival like survival sex work; all of these things that happen to our community. This funding has given us the opportunity to be able to educate the community on those issues.”
The grant funding has not only let Zebra and VSC educate each other, but allowed them to develop LGBTQ-specific sexual assault victim training which they provide to groups outside of their own organizations. Zebra Coalition has provided their LGBTQ-specific sexual assault victim training to other groups including teachers and providers in the medical community.
With April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Zebra will be looking to raise awareness on sexual assault prevention, even with a pandemic going on.
“Last year, we developed an online campaign called ‘Where’s the Line?’ specifically addressing consent,” Wilkie says. “This year, we will be continuing to educate through online campaigns since it isn’t completely safe to gather still.”
If you are a victim of sexual assault, contact VSC’s 24/7 Sexual Assault Hotline at 407-500-HEAL.
For more information on Sexual Assault Awareness Month as well as information on Zebra and/or VSC’s programs, visit ZebraYouth.org and VictimServiceCenter.org.
