Catherine Wright, News Editor
@CWrightCourant
On Tuesday, January 12 a sexual assault and domestic violence prevention course will take place at Grace Farms in New Canaan in partnership with the New Canaan Police Department. The free five week course is open to women of high school age and up, and will take place every Tuesday and Thursday with a 6-7:30pm class and a 7:45-9:15pm class.
Patrol Officer David Rivera came up with the idea for the program when he noticed that crimes involving domestic violence and sexual assault were the only ones the police department wasn’t taking a proactive role in combating. “This was the only crime that I found that we were very reactionary towards, it was always after-the-fact, there was no community outreach that I’d really seen coming from any police department in the state of Connecticut,” Officer Rivera said.
The course’s classes are divided into two main components: education and self defense. According to Officer Rivera, it was very important to NCPD that the program went beyond self defense and had a significant education component taught by professionals familiar with sexual assault and domestic violence. “We’ve teamed up with the Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education in Stamford, and they’re actually going to come in and teach a few classes,” Officer Rivera said. “We’re also attempting to team up with DVCC, the Domestic Violence Crisis Center, and they’re going to be hopefully teaching a few classes as well. We have a few officers that are going to be teaching. So there’s that first educational portion, and then there’s the self defense portion, and that’s going to cover basic self defense.”
Officer Rivera emphasized how much high school students have to gain from participating in the course. “For high school students, it’s going to be really interactive, there’s going to be so much information that they would never get, I mean essentially there is no class in high school that teaches this,” he said. “This is that taboo subject that no one wants to talk about but it’s so important to talk about because that’s one of the only ways we can prevent these traumatic incidences.”
By discussing a complicated and taboo topic openly, Officer Rivera also hopes to point out that sexual assault and domestic violence, although rarely heard about, are without a doubt problems in our community. “I would say that it’s very prevalent in New Canaan and Fairfield County,” he said.“I don’t have the annual number, but I can tell you we’ve had a few this year. And you would never know. You would never know unless you came in and actually requested those stats. You don’t hear about it, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not happening, because it is. Because we do get reports here.”
Officer Rivera also added that he hopes this new course will increase the number of reports of crimes related to sexual assault and domestic violence. “We have about 5 to 6 officers who are going to be participating in the course, so that’s huge for students to have a relationship with officers, to feel comfortable in coming to us to report these kinds of crimes, because it’s a very personal, invasive situation, and they are so under-reported,” he said. “With this course we are probably going to see a spike in these kinds of crimes [being reported], but we’re okay with that, because we know that with the more people reporting it, we’re going to be able to do our job and arrest these people who are committing these crimes, and thus end the cycle of crime.”
Although the 50 available spaces for the course have been filled, Officer Rivera added that the police department is definitely planning to schedule more for the future.
