Hunting Ground Video Diary - Claire Wootton and Josh Shawver

In order to alleviate some of the pain left by sexual assault we need to remove the stigma from this tragedy. First to do this we must remove the victim shaming and shunning that goes on, enough of “She is only doing this for attention” or other awful things of that nature. Make this problem of attacks more transparent and remove the taboo-ness of the topic, we must be honest with our communities and understand that this is an issue that happens [statistically speaking] often. If we can remove the barriers of honesty that victims need to go through I think that will allow everyday people who have not been affected by this type of attack to be more open to dealing with it. At the end of the day a large issue with this problem is due to the fact that we live in a patriarchal society and the idea of a man committing such a heinous crime is often passed off as overly dramatic or not true. We need to remove the emphasis on what the man in society wants and transition to what all humans need!

The organization SurvJustice was founded in 2014 by Laura with the mission of increasing the prospect of legal justice for survivors of sexual assault. She saw, as we did in the movie, that often times even though survivor's wish for legal action to be taken, nothing is done by the authorities or charges are dropped on the account of there not being enough evidence. Denn herself was a survivor of sexual assault and understood just how hard it can be to know that her assaulters never had even the slightest repercussions for what they had done. SurvJustice, by policy, receives no government funding through grants (as most other organizations do) in order to remain disconnected from politics and government interests. Instead, they are funded entirely through private donors and fundraising/volunteers. For the organization, and sort of news is good news as their primary focus is bringing awareness to the issue and fighting the issue.