By Mary Ellen Stone,
King County Sexual Assault Resource Center

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month—a time to speak out about a pervasive problem that impacts about 25 percent of our community.

In 2015, more than 200 Renton residents sought help because of a sexual assault. More than half of those residents were children and teens.

This April, Renton Mayor Denis Law and Sound Cities Association are speaking out by promoting Sexual Assault Awareness Month in Renton and more than 30 cities in the region. Watch your city’s newsletter, social media outlet, or website for information about resources available victims and ways to prevent sexual assault.

Stopping sexual assault and sexual violence in our community will take a major shift in how we think about sexuality, relationships, gender roles, and violence in our culture. The cumulative effect of speaking out has a tremendous impact. We can’t stop what we can’t talk about.

All people can have conversations about sexual assault, consent, and boundaries in their families. King County Sexual Assault Resource Center’s tools (http://www.kcsarc.org/sexual-assault-awareness-month-1/) provide concrete ways for adults to make sure children can talk about their body and concerns about touching, as well as information for teens about consent, healthy relationships and boundaries.

The media has not always been a source of accurate information about sexual assault, but I’m encouraged by recent intelligent portrayals of sexual assault and its impacts in film and culture. Accurate stories help start conversations about what assault looks like, how it happens, who the victims are and who assaults them.

“Spotlight,” this year’s Oscar winner for best picture, highlights the importance of independent journalism coverage of sexual assault and abuse. The film illustrates, in a clear and understandable way, how silence about sexual assault allows abuse to continue and how good people can look the other way.

The children victimized in the Boston Archdiocese sexual abuse cases portrayed in ‘Spotlight’ lived on the economic edges of the community. Poverty made them more vulnerable and less likely to be believed had they come forward. When we refuse to consider that some individuals can be offenders, or when certain types of people are not perceived as credible victims, we aren’t able to see assault when it occurs.

As more people share their experience of sexual assault, the harder it is to ignore—the harder it to excuse or explain away.

The campus sexual assault survivors recognized by Lady Gaga at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony provide us with another stark reminder of what sexual assault and its victims look like. Our sisters, brothers, neighbors, friends; anyone can be a victim of sexual assault.

By defining sexual assault as just that — sexual assault or rape — we begin to put the responsibility where it belongs: on the offender, not the victim. The White House’s campaign on campus sexual assault, It’s On Us (http://itsonus.org/), provides just one example of changing the conversation.

We can’t stop what we can’t talk about. Until we can talk openly about sexual assault and the factors that contribute to it, we won’t be able to stop it.

Keep talking.

Mary Ellen Stone is the executive director of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center. The Center’s 24-hour resource line is 888-99-VOICE (86423)