CONTACT OF HUNTINGTON INC
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Mission Statement
CONTACT of Huntington envisions a community free of sexual violence. To bring that vision into reality, CONTACT of Huntington provides advocacy and support for victims of sexual assault and stalking, while providing prevention education services to people living in Cabell, Wayne, Lincoln, and Mason counties in West Virginia. We recognize that victims who become survivors of sexual assault must do so with courage, strength, and integrity, and we honor their transformation by holding those as our organizational values.
About This Cause
CONTACT of Huntington serves six counties in southwestern West Virginia. We provide free advocacy and support to survivors of sexual violence, stalking, and sex trafficking. We also provide free violence prevention education to children and youth leaders. In West Virginia, about 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men experience sexual violence in their lifetime. We also have some of the highest poverty and depression rates in the country. Our organization is made up of the people who live in these communities, many of whom have experienced sexual violence and subsequent mental health problems. We offer crisis counseling and intervention during one of the most traumatic events someone can experience. We regularly meet survivors at the hospital when they arrive after a rape. We sit with children while they tell their stories to forensic interviewers. We help our clients get into long-term counseling or apply for protective orders against their assailants. One mother called us after her child disclosed abuse by the mother’s husband. Within 48 hours, we had gotten the child into the child advocacy center, helped the mother file an order against her spouse, and located food and clothing for the family. We have also started a violence prevention program where we go into the schools and community organizations and teach topics like body safety and healthy relationships to children. We don’t charge for any of our services, and we guarantee privacy to the fullest we can under the law. We follow evidence-based best practices for rape crisis centers and sexual violence prevention educators as established by national groups such as the National Sexual Assault Coalition (NSAC). Through the rape crisis center coalition of West Virginia, our advocates spend their first two years working on becoming certified Victim Advocates. Their training includes WV laws on sexual violence, DEI for working with clients, the effects of trauma, and victim-centered interventions. Our employees are constantly engaging in further learning both virtually and in-person. We work with other organizations to ensure that especially vulnerable people, like those with disabilities, receive the best care possible that is centered around what they want, not what someone else thinks they should have. Our prevention educators use curricula that conform to the CDC’s definition of primary prevention. They receive training on how to use the curriculum and the curriculum itself is backed by decades of research. Occasionally clients send us messages that let us know the impact we’ve made on them. We have served thousands of survivors over the years, and our connections in the community are so stable that we regularly receive phone calls from the police, hospitals, and prosecutors.