Survivors are taking control of their sexual assault on campus using this app

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Survivors are taking control of their sexual assault on campus using this app

‘Giving survivors agency has a ripple effect’

There is an ongoing problem with sexual assault on college campuses. From high profile cases involving a Stanford swimmer, to ones that are dug up months after, to stories that are never told. Case by case, story by story, it’s clear that university and legal institutions alike are struggling to provide the proper means of support for survivors of sexual assault.

To combat this, organizations like Project Callisto are working to empower survivors to seek the justice and healing they deserve. Callisto is a web-based app that partners with universities to tackle the way sexual assault is reported at colleges across the country.

Survivors can record their case on their own terms, and report their assailants by submitting the record to their school’s Title IX office, or keeping the record on standby until another student submits a record with the same perpetrator, allowing the two to step forward together.

babe spoke with Anna Kim, the Director of Communications and Marketing at Callisto, about the goals of the project and why it’s so important to empower young women in a society that seems resistant to their success.

The project started after CEO Jess Ladd said ‘the process of reporting assault was more traumatic than the assault itself’

“She didn’t feel like she could find the support services she needed. There are a lot of barriers that stand in the way between survivors and the services they need to access healing, access justice, etc. That experience was really formative for her.

“Callisto itself has been running as its own organization since 2014. We have two pilot campuses, and we are now with nine colleges, about to announce a 10th and 11th, and potentially more before the fall. There is a recognition across the country that sexual assault is a problem, and we’re not doing all we can to address it, to put agency back in the hands of survivors so they can take control and make decisions that are best for them.”

Jessica Ladd giving a TED talk

Callisto offers three options to make sure survivors are empowered and get the services they need

Record: “We recognize that survivors that do report typically don’t do so for about 11 months. Callisto takes you through a trauma-informed process, done with a bunch of trauma experts, to take the information that a survivor has after it happens and store it in a secure way. This means that a) they’re having a really positive disclosure experience and b) the record is secured, it’s saved, it’s there in case they want to do anything with it down the road.”

Report: “Survivors can report and submit that record directly to their school. Most students these days, and most people these days, are really accustomed to having technology be their first entry point into any sort of coping or decision-making. It’s probably less scary to have that first reporting interaction happen online in a controlled environment rather than talking to a person who you may not even know.”

Match: “One the barriers we recognize is that survivors might have difficulty framing what happens to them as sexual assault. More likely it happened from someone they know, and there are a lot of different things that might make it difficult for a survivor to come forward. With the matching feature, they can put in the perpetrator’s information and that information isn’t going to go anywhere unless somebody else identifies the same perpetrator. Once that other person identifies them, then that information is going to go to the school. Essentially, they don’t have to go forward alone – they can go forward together. This also recognizes something that we know, that most assaults that happen on a college campus are by repeat perpetrators. When we asked survivors, ‘what is your primary motive for reporting?’ most often, it was because they wanted to protect others.”

These options help survivors access their desired outcome, whatever that may be

“There isn’t a clear vision in terms of the direct output, because we want it to be that survivors would benefit from Callisto because one of those options are going to help them on their journey to healing or to seeking justice. For some users, that’s just creating a record and making sure they have that peace of mind that if they want to take further action with it, that’s there and ready for them. For others it might actually be going and reporting to the school so they can start that process with the university. Maybe their end goal is they don’t want their perpetrator on campus anymore and with matching, maybe they feel what they really care about is protecting their community and they feel empowered to do so.”

The app has a unique recording process different from traditional reporting

“We looked at the neurological effects of trauma on the brain — memories can come at different times and can be triggered by different things. Being able to have that form waiting for you to go through it and say, ‘OK, I’m not really comfortable filling this part out now,’ but then later you remember something, you can go back and put it in. Having that flexibility and privacy to do it in a place that feels really secure to you without the pressure of talking to someone is the primary difference in the experience that Callisto facilitates for the survivor.”

Callisto hopes to decrease societal stigmas about sexual assault

“There are a lot of misconceptions about consent. The more we can provide survivors to give optimal narratives of their story, without introducing preconceived notions, we’re setting them up to succeed in terms of whatever their desired outcome may be. Empowering them with their story is critically important.”

Reception has been overwhelmingly positive

“It’s illustrating a latent demand – so many of our partner schools are really enthusiastic about identifying solutions to this problem that they recognize is a huge issue and really want to get ahead of. They’re institutions that really care about protecting their students, about empowering survivors, about creating better systems who might deal with sexual assault.”

Callisto works hand-in-hand with students and university officials

“We host, we set it up, we try to make it as easy as possible for our partners, and we do surveys with our partners, and all indications have been super positive. We really want to support the implementation and roll out – we really see ourselves in partnership with the schools in terms of their needs.”

There is already a high success rate

“During our pilot at Pomona and University of San Francisco, we saw reporting increase dramatically. On one of the campuses it quadrupled from the year before. These early indications show that it does really help students who want to report.”

The ‘false accusation’ criticism is entirely false

“False accusations by all evidence, literature, and data is very, very, very, very rare. The greater concern is that people who are experiencing sexual assault, because of the numerous barriers that stand in their way, will never access the support services they need. For those who are willing to report, it isn’t an easy experience. It’s really difficult to imagine situations where people would go through such a process based off of a false accusation.”

Image from the It Happens photo series by Yana Mazurkev

Callisto is unique compared to other similar platforms

“The main feature that’s pretty unique about Callisto is the matching feature. To our knowledge, no other product has that feature. Using this idea of an information escrow to minimize that first-mover’s disadvantage for survivors who might want to take some sort of action. It’s a recognition around that issue of repeat perpetrators and also around this motivation of survivors to report to protect their communities and empowering them to do that.”

‘We want to be at every campus’

“We want to be at the fingertips of every college survivor of sexual assault who may need us. And we recognize that college sexual assault is not an issue of one or two campuses – sometimes there are schools that might be more heavily profiled in the media, but we know that sexual assault happens everywhere. We also want to make sure that we are creating opportunities to work with other types of universities and colleges that may not be able to otherwise bring in a system like ours.”

“At the end of the day, the goal is for college students to come out of their college experience with a positive experience that is setting them up for success, and sexual assault is a huge impediment to that. If we can shift that control and agency into the hands of survivors, and also into institutions, it leads to better outcomes for everyone.”


For more information on Callisto and how you can get involved, visit their website or email [email protected]. Interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

@sampeggywolf