National Sexual Assault Conference 2023: Beyond all-or-nothing Responses to Accountability

The 2023 National Sexual Assault Conference® was held in San Francisco, California, August 22-24. The conference theme, Equity in Action, called for conference participants to fearlessly pursue a world free from sexual violence and address change across systems and institutions. This session was part of the Prevention track, sponsored by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center with funding from the Centers for Disease Control Prevention. Learn more and access session materials here.

Our culture has an ingrained habit of all-or-nothing responses to when harm happens, often focusing on punishment and removal of the person who caused harm from the community, or ignoring the behavior as well as ignoring survivors’ diverse needs.

The time is long overdue to examine how to address what accountability for harm means, what options for responding to harm exist, how to build more options that are steeped in survivor needs, and why expanding responses to accountability prevents sexual harm from happening again.

In this session, Monika Johnson-Hostler, Sandra Henriquez, Karen Baker host a discussion on expanding options for accountability in workplaces, communities, and society and the potential impacts on survivors, people who cause harm, our communities, and prevention.