Jessica Ladd Wants to Give Sexual Assault Survivors Choices

-So, you created this online platform,
a way for people to report a sexual assault.
This -- You were drawn to this professional path
from personal experience.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
-Yeah, absolutely. So, in college,
I was sexually assaulted by a friend of mine,
and over a year later, I decided to report my assault.
And I ended up finding the process of reporting
to actually be more traumatic than the assault itself.
And as I began to tell friends about this,
I realized that I won´t the only one,
that so many of my friends had experienced the same thing.
So, Callisto, for me,
is the way that I give that meaning and make it matter.
-And so, how does the reporting that you do via Callisto
different from what you had to go through when you reported it?
-So, going in in person can be so scary, so intimidating.
You´re going in -- You´re not sure
if that person´s going to believe you or not.
And, often, you´ve waited a while
before you decide to report, so that makes it even scarier.
And we´ve built out a system
that´s really designed to meet survivors where they´re at.
And we allow them to just say what happened to them,
time stamped, if they want,
or they can report electronically to their school
at the time and place that´s safest for them,
or they can decide to just save what happened to them right now,
but report electronically
if something else names the same assailant.
So, if they don´t want to come forward
unless it´s a repeat perpetrator,
we give them the information they need to make that decision.
-It seems like what we´ve heard so much in the last few months
with people coming forward
is there were people who were too afraid to report.
And there were also many cases of people who reported it,
and then it was not dealt with in a way that was satisfactory.
How do you build out that element of trust
that must be so important for people
when they make this choice
to actually say what happened to them?
-So, trust is essential to everything that we do.
So, we make sure that our system
is really by survivors for survivors.
We´ve put in a lot of research.
We´ve interviewed over 100 college survivors
about their experience and what they want.
And we make sure that everything we´re building out
is designed to allow them
to make the choice that´s right for them.
It´s not designed to say,
"You should report it. You should do this."
It´s designed to say,
"Let´s give you the information and options you need
to make the decision that´s right for you."
-You´re at 12 universities right now.
How do you choose the universities,
or is it a case of the universities choosing Callisto?
How does the -- How do those relationships start?
-It´s a combination,
and, often, it´s because of students or alumni
who are really advocating to bring it to their campus.
So, in the case of Stanford,
the student government passed resolutions
asking the schools to adopt,
and the administration was also excited about that partnership.
So we try to partner with administrations
that actually want to create change on their campus.
-And this is not just for women, correct?
This is also for any -- This is for men.
This is for transgender students, gay students.
-Yeah, absolutely.
So, 84% of our users are cisgender women,
but the rest are other genders.
And we know that it can be --
as hard as it is to come forward as a woman,
it can become even harder.
There´s so much more stigma if you´re another gender.
-There seems to be this moment happening right now
where you see the strength in numbers
of people coming forward. -Mm-hmm.
-And, sadly, it often seems like there needs to be multiple...
victims of the same perpetrator saying that this happened
for us to believe it.
Do you -- Is this --
Do you feel like you harness the power of numbers
with this, with Callisto?
And -- And do you think that´s key
to this whole process moving forward?
-I think it can be.
I think, with my own assault,
the reason why I wanted to come forward
was to protect my community,
and that was my primary motivation.
And for a lot of victims, it´s not worth it.
The math doesn´t check out.
It´s not worth the risk to come forward
unless you know that you´re not the only one
and unless you know that
somebody else wants to come with you,
because then you´re more likely to be believed
and it´s more likely that
your perpetrator is going to be held accountable.
So I think that the sea change that we´re seeing right now --
it´s not that -- just that survivors are speaking --
it´s that we´re listening.
-That´s wonderful
and, I feel like, key to the whole process.
Callisto -- how did you come up with the name?
´Cause I feel like there´s a nice story there.
-Yeah, so Callisto is a figure in Greek mythology.
She was a nymph in the garden of Diana.
And she had taken a vow of chastity.
Zeus raped her, and he was a serial offender.
-I can´t believe I set this up by saying,
"This is a nice story." [ Laughter ]
-Yeah, it´s a really nice story. It´s a happy story.
-Tell us the wonderful story about Callisto.
-Yeah, yeah, heartening.
And, oh, it gets -- it gets better.
[ Light laughter ] And...
And when Diana saw her bathing and pregnant,
she expelled her from the garden for her broken her vow.
So we´re really trying to solve two problems --
one, how can we hold these powerful offenders accountable
for their actions,
and, two, how do we ensure that
those who are supposed to support victims
in their hours of need
don´t expel them from the garden?
-At this moment right now, again,
it feels like every day,
we hear more awful things in the field in which you work.
Yet, there does seem to be a moment happening
that could one day be reflected back on
as a time where it all changed.
Do you feel optimism with what you´re doing right now?
Do you feel, within the last few months,
that this is a time that
we´re not missing the opportunity
to take advantage of?
-I do. I do feel a lot of optimism.
And I feel like we´re in a moment of change,
but we´re also in a moment of choice.
And we can choose to invest in avenues
that actually create a way for survivors to come forward
in a way that minimizes their risk,
or we can lose momentum and do what we´ve done before,
which is ask them to martyr themselves in a broken system.
-Well, I really appreciate all the work you do.
And thank you so much for coming and talking to us about this.
Give it up for Jessica Ladd, everybody.
[ Cheers and applause ] For more information
about Callisto and the important work they´re doing,
please visit www.projectcallisto.org.
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Jessica Ladd Wants to Give Sexual Assault Survivors Choices

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