Sexual Assault Needs to Stop. Like Now.

Here’s What You Can Do to Join the Growing Movement of Survivors.

No woman carries around a checklist of what to do if she finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time – like, in the vicinity of a sexual predator. It’s the last thing you’d ever expect. Predators often don’t look threatening, especially if they behave rather charmingly upon first encounter. (They can be good at this.) Maybe you ask them for directions in the middle of the day on a fairly busy street. I did.

With roughly every minute that passes, an American, usually female, is sexually harmed. RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) reported on July 5, 2024, that it’s every 68 seconds. But less than 5% of survivors today come forward to report what happened to them. That means more than 95% of survivors STILL are agonizing in silence.

What Is Sexual Assault?

If you think you were assaulted, you probably were. A storm-cloud feeling creeps into the pit of your stomach: it’s the weird way your coach touched you to help you “limber up” or the way your masseuse “accidentally” let his fingers knead too close to your genitals or the way your doctor breathed while he examined you (was he even wearing gloves?).

And since so many women are minors when they first encounter any form of sexual assault, they might be gaslit into accepting that the behavior is somehow normal. It never is!

No matter the circumstances, sexual assault is not your fault. It doesn’t matter how you were dressed, where you were, or when. Please remember that hundreds of thousands of women are assaulted each year in the US. You are not alone.

How Do We Stop Sexual Assault?

It’s a complex problem, deeply rooted in our patriarchal culture. But all survivors have a big role to play in preventing future assault. The most important thing you can do is not stay silent. Toss that shame and put it where it belongs – on the abusers.

Just imagine what it took for French woman Gisele Pelicot, 71, to come forward with her head held high. In France, where the open mass rape trial has ignited a feminist movement with more than a dozen marches from Paris to Marseilles, her ex-husband Dominique Pelicot is being tried for drugging his former wife with heavy sedatives and sleeping pills and raping her when they were married.

Mr. Pelicot also admits to having invited dozens of other men, strangers he recruited online, to rape his wife when she was unconscious in her own bed. Most of the alleged rapes are videotaped.

Ms. Pelicot told the court when she took the stand: “it’s not for us to have shame – it’s for them.”

The French patriarchy has been stiff-necked for centuries, stubbornly resistant to the progression of women’s rights.

“I want all women who have been raped to say: ‘Madame Pelicot did it, I can too.’ I don’t want them to be ashamed any longer,” she said, referring to her request for an open trial and for the videos to be shown.

What Is a Sexual Assault Civil Lawsuit?

It is a legal action that can result in financial compensation to survivors to help pay for medical and psychological treatment, lost wages, and punitive damages (double penalty to the responsible party) after an individual has been assaulted.

While many survivors have to work through the criminal justice system, there is great power in civil litigation. Successful civil lawsuits go after the institutions that facilitated and/or enabled a whole slew of predators, rather than going after one assailant at a time. Actually, it’s not unusual to go after predators with both civil and criminal arms of the law, only the scope and punishment are different:

Criminal law aims to convict & imprison the individual predator.

Civil law seeks onerous financial amends for plaintiffs from institutions that harbored predators, say, a church organization that permitted thousands of offending clerics to go from one community to another without being stopped.

Also, we’ve been noticing an extraordinary chain of events: When just one woman finds the courage to come forward, more women follow her – often in droves. It leads us to think that what hidden assault survivors might need most is for someone to go first.

Could you go first in your case?

We can help with that.

A civil lawsuit seeks to punish a corporation or institution that turned a blind eye to sexual assault within its ranks – or even enabled the behavior through a culture of abuse and silence. Slapping painful financial punishments on offending institutions is unanimously considered the best way to punish greedy powers where it hurts most: their bottom line.

“In civil law, unlike criminal law, the defendant is usually not the actual assailant but a larger entity whose neglect allowed the assault to occur.”

How Do I File a Sexual Assault Lawsuit?

Please contact us and tell us what happened to you.

We urge assault survivors everywhere, of any age, to pursue justice in a civil court of law. We will help you understand your legal options and find a sexual assault attorney who works on a contingency fee basis. This means that either you achieve a positive result in your case or you owe your lawyer nothing.

Why Should I File a Sexual Assault Lawsuit?

The main reason is to hold responsible those who allowed you to be harmed, so they’ll seriously reconsider ever allowing it again. This can directly enforce regulations and leverage new legislation to help prevent other women from being hurt.

Moreover, by setting an example with each successful case and punishing those responsible in the wallet, winning results of civil assault lawsuits can bring about systemic, meaningful change in how a company operates & how it handles assault allegations in the future.

Plus, survivors (like you) get some of the resources the entity should have invested all along into prioritizing your safety.

Taking action to reclaim your power (with our gentle guidance), being proactive with the potential to receive financial amends – these are the best ways to heal, according to years of research by international psychiatric experts specializing in sexual trauma.

By taking such a powerful action, you take control of your future, as the saying goes, rather than letting your future control you.

We can help you with that, too.

Said another way, doing this for yourself is a powerful expression of self-care that goes a long way toward bringing you back to yourself. We want to help.

What Qualifies for a Sexual Assault Lawsuit?

If a corporation or institution, church, hospital, doctor’s office, summer camp, or university (the list is endless) allows sexual assault to occur under its watch, the entity must be held responsible.

Here are some of the case areas we’ve brought to light. For every one of them, a larger corporation has been brought to heel or is currently embroiled in a civil lawsuit:

A Case for Women is Here For You.

How can we empower frightened assault survivors to come forward? By educating you about the civil legal system, by encouraging you to explore your legal options, and by expanding a national community of women who look out for each other. There is power and protection in every voice, starting with yours.

Be the one.

“I’ve been told I’m brave,” Madame Pelicot said. “This isn’t being brave, it’s having the will and determination to change society.”

When ACFW was founded in 2016, we had no idea of the monstrous need for stopping sexual assault in every nook and cranny of society. Now, we are working tirelessly across the country to help put an end to systemic assault. When you contact us, we know how to hear between your words.

So we are here when you are ready to tell us what happened, at no charge (ever). If you’ve been assaulted, or think you have been, by someone associated with a larger entity who hired creepy employees working near enough to strike, we want to help, 24/7/365.

P.S. When you’re awake in the middle of the night, so are we.