Below are my articles and media mentions on the Our Choices Decision Navigator and Solution Facilitator that I, Michele Beaulieux, am developing for people impacted by sexual violence. The Decision Navigator customizes the PrOACT decision-making framework for decisions that victim-survivors face. The acronym, PrOACT, stands for Problem, Objectives, Alternatives, Consequences, and Tradeoffs. Posts on this blog about the Decision Navigator and Solution Facilitator are available at Decision Blog.
“Navigating Decisions”
Podcast Episode, More to the Story, April 2021
In this episode, host Jamie Sivrais and I talk about making decisions after sexual violence. Jamie made a good analogy: Choosing a movie on Netflix can be so overwhelming that people just give up. Imagine how much more difficult decision-making for sexual assault victim-survivors can be! I share my story and explain how I came to create the My Choice Decision Navigator and Our Choices Solution Facilitator. I explain how the Decision Navigator uses decision science to help victim-survivors of sexual violence make sense of their options and come to identify what they want to do.
“Reporting Rape Is But One Choice”
Blog Post, Huffington Post, April 25, 2016
In this blog post, I introduce the Decision Navigator using my own decision-making process after a fellow student raped me in college. I explain how, on that weekend in January 1979, reporting the rape to the police, or even the school, hadn’t even registered on the periphery of my consciousness. At that point, sorting out what happened, rather than securing justice, was my top Objective. In the post, I discuss the various Alternatives I explored and how my Objectives changed over time. I share my journey to reporting to the police almost 40 years after the fact.
“Hastert Victim Shouldn’t Have Needed Courage To Speak,”
Blog Post, Huffington Post, May 3, 2016
In this blog post, I note that Scott Cross is being hailed for his exceptional bravery. In an ideal world, Cross wouldn’t need extraordinary courage to speak at the sentencing hearing of his high school wrestling coach and former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker, Dennis Hastert. The matrix, “After A Sexual Violation, Examples of What Student Survivors Do,” is a simplified representation of the myriad Alternatives that victim-survivors have. It can help others understand the dilemmas that Hastert’s and other victim-survivors face and how daunting their decision-making is.
“Nussbaum Ignores the Many Options Available for Survivors of Sexual Violence,”
Letter to the Editor, Chicago Maroon, May 20, 2016
In this letter to the editor, I use an Alternatives matrix to debunk Martha Nussbaum’s contention that others should follow her lead after being sexually assaulted by powerful men and “Forget the law.” Every victim survivor and assault is unique. We would do best to honor each victim-survivor’s unique path to healing and recognize that what’s right for one survivor is not necessarily going to work for all others.
Aimee Levitt, “Showing rape victims how to think beyond ‘report to the police’,” Bleader, Chicago Reader Blog, November 10, 2015
This article by Aimee Levitt shows how the Alternatives matrix can help in exploring alternatives to reporting to the police. Let me note here that I don’t think, as the title suggests, that victim-survivors are the ones who need help thinking beyond reporting to the police. Most victim-survivors don’t report: they are already very creative developing Alternatives to reporting. Rather other people could most benefit from better understanding the predicaments in which victim-survivors find themselves and why they typically opt not to report.
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© 2020-2023 Michele Beaulieux … Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). That means you are free to share and adapt as long as you attribute to Michele Beaulieux, don’t use for commercial purposes, and use this same license. And if you do share, I’d love to know! I continue to revise, so to avoid sharing an outdated version, I recommend linking to this page, where I provide the date of the current iteration. 4.25.2023
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