Our Partners

CounterQuo
www.counterquo.org

The Victim Rights Law Center, the first nonprofit law center in the nation solely dedicated to serving the legal needs of sexual assault victims, and The Voices and Faces Project, a national documentary initiative that seeks to bring the stories of sexual violence survivors to the attention of the public, have joined forces. Together, we are launching CounterQuo: an initiative that will challenge the way that we, as a culture, respond to sexual violence. Counter Quo seeks to develop a blueprint for challenging the way that our culture responds to sexual violence— and a system of accountability for those who will be charged with executing such a plan. Our goal is to foster new alliances and information sharing between anti-violence leaders from the worlds of advocacy, law, media, public health and the academy. We encourage the development of fresh ideas and honest dialogue, and consider best practices from other social, legal and public health movements. Facilitating discussion is important, and we expect that there will be a lot of it as we share information and challenge existing modes of thinking.

But, discussion is only the beginning, a means to our end goal of creating lasting social and legal change for survivors. It has become conventional wisdom in anti-violence circles to believe that silence stands in the way of justice. Through slogans and public statements— "stop the silence, end sexual violence" – great faith has been placed in testimony. There has been an implicit promise in the language of the rape crisis movement: if victims speak out, their words have the power to create change. CounterQuo began as a series of discussions between the Victim Rights Law Center and The Voices and Faces Project— discussions that considered how the rights and representations of sexual violence survivors are impacted by law, media and the public engagement of survivors. With the founding of CounterQuo, we seek to engage others in our conversation, one that has been characterized by respect, candor, inclusion and a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom (and one another).

Boston Area Rape Crisis Center
The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC) is the only rape crisis center in the Greater Boston area and the oldest and largest center in Massachusetts. Their vision is to end sexual violence through healing and social change.