3rd International Conference on Violence Against Women
and Girls Faith Responses

As a result of this session, participants will be better able to:

• Examine the complexities involved in responding to intimate partner sexual abuse/assault cases.
• Recognize the dynamics of the multiple forms of intimate partner sexual abuse; the impact of intimate partner sexual abuse on victims and their families; the significant correlation between intimate partner sexual abuse and risk assessment including implications for custody/visitation determinations; and institutional, cultural, racial and legal issues which affect disclosure
• Explore the need for cross-training on domestic violence and sexual abuse for victim services providers, health professionals, law enforcement, and prosecutors; and how to assess the capacity of batterer intervention and sex offender treatment programs to address intimate partner sexual abuse.
• Examine the forms and dynamics of intimate partner sexual abuse in the context of teen dating violence, and the implications for professionals involved in sexual and domestic violence cases with this age group.
• Identify the links between domestic violence, intimate partner sexual abuse, and trafficking, and how to elicit this information in order to successfully prosecute trafficking cases.

As a result of this session, participants will be better able to:

• Strategize an approach to reading credibility in different situations through perceiving the numerous ways people project their true colours.
• Perceive inconsistencies between language, behaviour, voice, mannerisms, appearance, and how to determine what information is most reliable.
• Analyse the range of potential meanings behind specific mannerisms and behaviours.
• Recognize patterns in a person’s behaviour that reveal stable personality traits beyond those that are immediately observable.

As a result of this session, participants will be better able to:

• Empower the lives of those who have been victims of child abuse, sexual violence and intimate partner violence and begin the healing process, in order to transition from victim to victor.
• Recognize how to break negative self-destructive behavioral cycles that restrict one's ability to reach their fullest potential in life.
• Trace the connection between childhood abuse and adverse effects on victims in later life.
• Explore how to release unconscious, hurtful, shameful, scripts and augment self-discovery, acceptance, and release of past traumatic histories, thus developing self-sustaining skills to grow and succeed.

As a result of this session, participants will be better able to:

• Identify established best practices for Title IX policies and procedures related to campus crimes
• Evaluate community collaborations to enhance and increase safety and access to advocacy and legal support.
• Describe the ways in which sexual assault on college campuses intersects with interpersonal violence and/domestic violence.

We all encounter people we find difficult. Relating with such people lead to frustration, stress, anger and fatigue. This workshop will analyse what is happening in those exchanges and demonstrate how people can adapt their strategies to bring about more productive conversations with those they find difficult. Individual styles will be explored with an emphasis on understanding and adapting one’s style to create different results. Participants will learn how to create the right conditions for a conversation with a person they find difficult. They will also learn how to positively engage the other in a discussion about the pattern of difficult behavior. This session gives participants a straightforward approach that creates dramatic change in the outcome of relating with people they find difficult.

At the end of the session participants will have an understanding of:

• Who is a Difficult Person?
• What is Reasonable Behaviour?
• Where You Have Influence and Control
• Intervention Styles and Difficult People
• Your Personal Intervention Style Assessment
• What is Bullying?
• Dealing with the Bullying Person
• Dealing with the Chronically Angry Person
• Understanding the Anger Cycle
• The Anger Defusing Process
• Dealing with the Resistant Person
• Dealing with the Passive Aggressive Person

When people are in conflict, the negative impact of the dispute typically affects many. Unresolved conflict becomes time consuming and limits the productivity of everyone. When the people involved do not resolve it on their own, a third party facilitator may be needed to help mediate the difficult conversation for resolving the conflict. This skills-based session is designed to give participants the tools to work with disputing parties to clarify misunderstandings, identify interests and work towards options for resolving the conflict. Participants will work with scenarios that will help them prepare to intervene in difficult conversations and conflict situations.

• Mediation Overview
• Alternative Ways to Resolve Disputes
• Factors that Lead to Successful Mediation
• Understanding Conflict Dynamics
• Road Blocks to Effective Mediation
• Mediation Strategies/process
• Pre-Mediation Preparation
• To Proceed or Not to Proceed
• Introduction and Ground Rules
• Information Sharing
• Agreements that Stick
• Post-Mediation Process

Despite their best efforts to keep personal struggles separate from their workplaces, some employees are plagued with domestic violence “crossover” issues. In these cases, abusive partners violate the boundaries of the organization by calling, e-mailing, texting, and even stalking these employees, often showing up at their worksites in order to confront their victims – sometimes with fatal results. Company leaders, managers, and supervisors hate these types of events, because they are disruptive, intrusive, and create fear.

As such, their response is all too often either to terminate victim-employees or criticize them for their inability to keep their personal lives out of the company. Victim-employees often have two constant concerns when intimate partner violence crosses over from home to work: (1) fear for their lives and (2) fear of losing their jobs. In addition to firing, the victim-employee creates two immediate problems: (1) It eliminates their incomes, which may mean they may have to remain in the violent relationship if they have no financial resources to leave, and (2) They are still trapped with a violent partner, and now they have no safe harbor or respite during the day at their workplaces. What is the solution, which provides safety and support for the employee-victim and safety and an ethical response for the company? Courage.

Courageous organizations address the potential for intimate partner violence among their employees by first recognizing that it might happen (and this likelihood increases the more female employees they have); providing training and educational programs for managers and supervisors to recognize the warning signs early enough to help; encouraging all employees to reach out to company Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) for counseling, safety plans, and support; and finally, by moving past “blaming the victim” and offering realistic solutions that save the employees live and career.

This session will help domestic violence advocates, educators, and law enforcement “speak the language of business” and give them the tools they need to help educate and orient business leaders to see intimate partner violence in their workplaces as an “us issue,” as in, “what will we do about this, to support our employees and protect our company?” The program will use case studies involving intimate partner violence crossover cases, to help the participants understand the issues to develop solutions that work for the employees and their firms.

As a result of this session, participants will be better able to identify:

• How to help companies intervene safely and successfully intervene on behalf of victim employees.
• How to provide information, support, or training to companies on the realities of domestic violence issues that may impact their employees.
• State laws that can protect victim-employees from losing their jobs.
• How to help victim-employees manage their professional lives, as well as their personal lives, and protect themselves from inappropriate contacts, stalking, bullying, threats, or contact with abusive partners, while at work.

For those who work with youth, managing challenging behaviours that interfere with development, learning or success can be both frustrating and exhausting. This workshop will review challenging behaviours related to aggression, non-compliance and attention-seeking, and will provide a framework for intervening with these behaviours. Participants will analyse the effectiveness of their current approach and develop insights into what is happening when attempts at intervention do not work. They will gain a clear understanding of how to structure interactions for positive outcomes and will be provided with a coaching model to bring out the best in youth who exhibit challenging behaviours.

• What are Challenging Behaviors?
• Your Response and the Role of Empathy
• When Challenging Behavior Escalates
• Coaching and Providing Direction
• Finding Your Interaction Style
• Positioning Yourself to Coach
• Behavior Guidance
• A Coaching Model for Challenging Behaviors
• Aggressive Reactions
• Key Concepts in Defusing Aggression
• Coaching to Guide Aggression
• Noncompliance
• Key Concepts in Reshaping Noncompliance
• Coaching to Guide Noncompliance
• Attention Seeking
• Key Concepts in Attention Seeking
• Coaching to Guide Attention Seeking

This workshop will illustrate one effective advocacy-media partnership and how participants can learn from its successes and challenges. Participants will discuss how journalists and professionals who work to address sexual violence can best avoid potential pitfalls, capitalize on advantages, and successfully partner with one another to further the movement to end gender-based violence. Participants will also develop an action plan to enhance their relationships with media partners. Objectives:

As a result of this session, participants will be better able to:

• Describe the dynamics that make partnerships with news organizations difficult.
• Recognize opportunities for success by working with journalists.
• Identify five key strategies to develop and foster effective relationships with media partners.
• Develop an action plan to enhance media relationship

Cases where the perpetrator employs constructive force present unique challenges, especially when the sexual assault involves minimal to no force or when there are multiple sexual assaults. Examples of such cases include but are not limited to sexual assault by police officers, teachers, religious professionals and military members on subordinates. Constructive force cases present additional challenges to those normally encountered in non stranger sexual assault cases. To overcome these challenges, investigators and prosecutors must conduct offender focused investigations and prosecutions while simultaneously supporting victims and connecting them with the support and care they need to heal. In addition, the investigation must put the sexual assault into context by examining the power differential and history of the relationship between the victim and perpetrator to determine whether the perpetrator employed any grooming techniques or attempts to mask the crime. It must also examine the environment in which the sexual assault occurred.

As a result of this session, participants will be better able to:

• Examine multidisciplinary strategies for investigating and prosecuting constructive force sexual assault cases.
• Explore the different dynamics and legal issues involved when constructive force is used to perpetrate a sexual assault.
• Identify tools for overcoming the consent defense in constructive force sexual assault cases.
• Evaluate tools for conducting an offender focused investigation and prosecution in constructive force cases while simultaneously supporting victims and connecting them with the care and support they need to heal.

The ABCD approach to community development is an exciting and rapidly developing approach both internationally and across the UK and has been adopted by the Health and Social Care Partnership in Aberdeen City. ABCD builds on the assets that are already found in the community and mobilizes individuals, associations, and institutions to come together to build on their strengths -- not concentrate on their needs.  The workshop will help us look at ourselves as individuals as well as the communities we live and work in and challenge our thinking - if we are going to change practice we need to practice change!

This workshop will be delivered by Liz Howarth and Anne-Marie Steehouder- Ross who are passionate about the ABCD approach and have spent a number of years working with different communities in Aberdeen city and beyond.