Mediating “Freeze” Responses in People Sexually Exploited by Providing Voice and Telemetry to Detect Sharks Earlier

• In Event: Gender and Human Rights: Social Movements, Feminism, and Global Transformations

Abstract

Recent disclosures from the Epstein files have horrified many in the United States and around the world, bringing renewed attention to the issue of sexual violence and how widespread and horrifying it is. Epstein and Maxwell managed to perpetrate their criminal enterprise across several continents, and while there are more outlets being made for survivors to tell their stories of sexual abuse since #MeToo emerged, which is critical to both addressing this issue and to their own healing, stories alone can only go so far. This paper asserts the absolute need the Epstein/Maxwell case makes for building out a global platform that allows stories to be shared and mapped so that we can garner both a hyperlocal and a global picture of this phenomenon and find the next multi-national predators much earlier. We explore what our data tells us about how the freeze response transcends culture and the post-traumatic impact of that response on one’s identity and even one’s ambitions—demanding a recentering of internalized blame from the victim to a global mandate on all societies to address this human crisis. We then briefly detail how our platform works and some key ethical rationales for its design, how it has helped cities and police redesign spaces and patrols to ensure safer cities for All, and both the successes and challenges we have had with building this platform—and why we are more driven than ever to find a way to scale it up. We hope that the audience will have some insights to that end as well.

Authors

• Suzanne R. Goodney Lea, University of the District of Columbia

• Elsa Marie D'Silva, Red Dot Foundation Global