Connections takes stand, provides community support

At Connections: A Safe Place, women form a community of support for one another as they work toward restoration. 

“Our belief is that if you clean off the lies, the misbeliefs, the things that you have told yourself as a result of experiencing sex abuse—you can clean all that off and shift them, and you can really reconnect to who you’re capable of being,” says Connections’ co-founder Rebecca Born.

One in four women and one in six boys, according to Born, “will be touched by sex abuse before the age of 18,”—a statistic that she says most people think is impossible because they don’t know anyone who has been victimized in the past. 

“The reason you don’t know anybody is because our culture’s in a place where we don’t want to know, we don’t want to speak about it,” she says. “So victims of sex abuse remain silent—they remain isolated.” 

So Born works to give victims a voice and an outlet for the shame, anger or pain they might be feeling by providing things like therapy and weekly art sessions where women can paint or make pottery in the studio.

“So often victims live in their heads and don’t really have a full sense of their bodies, and when you’re learning how to do art and make a pot, it requires your full attention—it requires body use and it really helps them to focus,” Born says. “And then the painting and drawing are a wonderful outlet for expressing some of the pain and some of the things you don’t often know how to say, but you can through art.” 

Connections isn’t about just meeting once or twice a week for therapy, though—it’s about forming a genuine community for women, with the understanding that the ability to overcome abuse is a long-term effort that requires support. 

“So we provide sleepovers, family cookouts; we go bowling, we just do all kinds of things,” Born says. 

The mission at Connections isn’t just to support victims, however. It’s also to challenge community members to take a stand against sex abuse and move beyond prevention to a zero-tolerance policy; and on April 14, as part of The Innocence Revolution: A Global Day to End Sex Abuse, the nonprofit will partner with A Voice for the Innocent to host Stand Up Ohio!.

“It’s a family fun festival," Born says. "There’s going to be nothing threatening about it. Nobody’s going to have to worry that they’re going to be taught about sex abuse. Our goal is this: we’re going to celebrate children, and with our presence, make a statement.” 

Born says that if people don’t take a stand, the issue is going to continue; and nothing is accomplished as a result of denial. 

“Until we begin to speak about it and begin to create an atmosphere so children and adults can say this happened to me, it’s going to be a silent predator in our communities.” 

Do Good: 

• Donate to support the work of Connections. 

• Attend Stand Up Ohio! at Sharon Woods April 14 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

• Like and share Connections' Facebook page, and contact the organization if you are a woman seeking support.

By Brittany York

Brittany York is a professor of English composition at the University of Cincinnati and a teacher at the Regional Institute of Torah and Secular Studies. She also edits the For Good section of SoapboxMedia.