It might be rape. Or non-consensual sex. Or inappropriate touching. Or a boundary of personal space breached more broadly.
While the definition of sexual assault may be ambiguous depending on the context, who is involved and any number of contributing factors, what’s not dispute is that these incidents constitute a real and present danger throughout Charleston … and have for decades.
“This is happening in our community everywhere, everyday, to everyone,” said Deborah Freel, executive director of TriCounty S.P.E.A.K.S. (TCS), a sexual assault prevention, advocacy and support organization once known as People Against Rape celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. “And, more importantly, it is underreported, underfunded and underrecognized.”
Past as prologue
“The most direct definition of ‘sexual assault’? Any unwanted touching of a sexual nature,” Freel said. “It’s important to understand, though, that what determines the nature of the touching is often up to the person on the receiving end of the laying on of hands.
“For us, it’s less about retroactive work [i.e., excavating the past] than it is about ensuring that people understand and respect proactive communication. That means affirmative and enthusiastic consent and clarity so that questionable situations never arise. Every single time.”
Nationally, sexual assault remains a clear threat and mirrors what is happening locally here in Charleston, Freel said. Over the course of a person’s lifetime, according to data gathered by the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network, someone in America is sexually assaulted every 68 seconds. One in six American women will experience an unwanted advance or attack in their lifetime; one in 33 American men will have endured the same.
In South Carolina, according to statistics reported by rape crisis centers statewide, there were 3,536 new primary survivors of sexual assault who sought services from a rape crisis center in the past year — 2,037 adults and 1,499 children under 18. The vast majority of survivors (92%) reportedly knew their offender, but only 12% of primary victims reported the incident to law enforcement.
In 2023 in Charleston, TCS answered 1,428 calls through its 24/7 crisis prevention hotline, which provides counseling, assistance, resources and law enforcement support for callers in need.
Sexual assault numbers are underreported in Charleston, like everywhere else, observers say. The map on this page highlights a cross-section of sexual assault crimes — nearly 30 incidents — investigated just on the peninsula over the past year. But Freel and others say they know there were many more.
Additionally here and across the nation, crime reports and active investigations do not reflect actual occurrences of sexual assault by anyone’s measure. But that disparity also represents an opportunity, according to both Freel and Charleston Police Department spokesman Chris Stinson.
“When we launched our recent transparency initiative, our goal was both to provide the public with greater access to information AND to create more accessible means for survivors to come forward and share their experiences,” Stinson said. “The goal is that by making the data available more frequently, making it visually mappable through location- and crime-specific filters, we’ll be a better partner and resource for people in the community.”
The ripple effect
For Freel, the idea that sexual assault is more than just an individual issue is crucial.
“Sexual assault as an issue is woven into the fabric of who we are as a society,” she said, “and the impact isn’t limited to survivors. Trauma affects us all, and the stranger danger fear-mongering no longer works because survivors almost always know their assailant. In other words, we are ‘the stranger’ when we fail to recognize how intertwined a community is with its members, in good times and bad.”
From its inception, TCS, which was known as People Against Rape prior to 2021, has been instrumental in setting the standard of initial care and support for individuals in crisis. And importantly, it has continuously helped to develop and evolve legislation to codify methods of trauma response in cases of sexual assault.
And though the organization has adopted a new name — “TriCounty” to encompass Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties, its primary sphere of service and influence, and “S.P.E.A.K.S.” to reflect its primary areas of focus (Sexual Violence, Prevention, Education, Advocacy, Knowledge and Services) — its driving mission remains largely the same: to provide free and essential support to survivors of sexual assault.
Education is prevention
Still, much has changed since the organization’s earliest days, Freel said, when prevention seemed paramount to recognition of root causes and mitigation of broader fallout were ever taken into account.
Survivors agree.
“Early intervention had the most positive effects for me on my long-term outcome,” said Katie, a survivor and newly minted TCS volunteer who asked for her last name to be withheld. “When you experience help and support on such a deep and human level, it’s impossible to watch anyone else suffer.”
Freel was also quick to point out that while the group is absolutely dedicated to its current course — because the data demands it: Sexual Assault cases happen here at a rate on par with national statistics, and those numbers show no sign of going down anytime soon — she and her cohorts — the survivors, collaborators, volunteers and affected community members — are also adamant that TCS is unique in its mandate of constantly pursuing change. And that that very specific directive is crucial to its continuing to be a model for how organizations can both illuminate an overlooked problem and create an integrated response with real and lasting impact.
“Communities are not vacuums,” Freel said. “Their problems are dispersed. Their needs are shared. Their members and individual cohorts are symbiotic. Without recognition of the way one person’s trauma affects everyone else, at the cellular level, there’s a certain blindness that benefits no one and inhibits everyone.”
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