Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The only comprehensive resource for families dealing with campus sexual assault.

"Mom, there's something I need to tell you" is just the beginning. After Campus Sexual Assault: A Guide For Parents addresses how, when, and why students tell their parents about having been sexually assaulted. Giving and getting the news can be messy. Although parents often are stunned by the news, it's important to provide stability and safety at this vulnerable time.

Based on years of research and scores of quotes from students, mothers, fathers, and campus service providers, this book sheds light on campus culture today, the range of actions that comprise campus sexual assault, and the many impacts on victims and their families. Importantly, this book offers compassionate guidance for navigating the often-tumultuous time that follows an assault.

Although colleges and universities have developed resources for students who have been sexually assaulted, parents are largely left to fend for themselves. Whether through their own sense of stigma, wanting to protect their child's privacy, or other reasons, parents rarely turn to others for support. This experience can be stressful and isolating.

By understanding the impacts of campus sexual assault and learning from others who have been through the trauma and its aftermath, together, parents and children can develop strategies for healing and growth.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This volume represents a solid and informative resource for parents as well as college and university personnel. Sorenson (Univ. of Pennsylvania) expertly provides foundational, targeted, and thought-provoking information in ten chapters designed to be accessed in any order most useful to the reader. Information ranges from illuminating the current context of campus sexual assault to offering suggestions for responding to the infinitely varying circumstances that occur for female victims, their mothers, and fathers. The reader is guided in assessing their own actions and reactions, and in assessing and responding to those of their daughters. Parents are also provided with a range of internal and external tools to be used at every stage of the post-assault experience, from responding and supporting to problem solving and moving forward. Sprinkled throughout the text are quotes from parents and young victims of rape. It becomes clear to the reader that optimum healing requires an individualized approach. This nondirective guide is a long overdue and essential resource supporting individualized and positive coping for victims and their parents in the aftermath of a campus sexual assault. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. --Margaret M. Slusser, Stockton University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Susan B. Sorenson, PhD, public health researcher and clinical psychologist, is a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Her career - teaching, research, policy, and clinical work - has focused on violence and its prevention.