To honor the end of April, Sexual Assault Awareness Month, a local Salina coffee house and book store is this week hosting an opportunity for survivors and community members to speak out against sexual assault.
Joining with Domestic Violence Association of Central Kansas, Ad Astra Books and Coffee House, is hosting the free event, Speak Night: Speak Out Against Sexual Violence at 7 p.m. Friday at 141 N. Santa Fe Ave.
The event will feature people in the community reading poetry, sharing a story or performing music in honor of the month.
Ad Astra also has a drink for a cause each month, with April s being a blackberry cinnamon cream soda. The coffee house donates $1 of each of these drinks for a cause to a local organization, with this month s donations going to DVACK.
Saline County commissioners approve expenditures and contracts
Sexual Assault Awareness Month
Sheila Beeson, a sexual assault advocate with DVACK, requested the board to approve a proclamation to recognize April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Beeson presented sexual violence as a widespread public health problem and defined it as any sexual act that is perpetrated against someone’s will, in which the victim does not give or is unable to give consent.
She added that one incident of rape is reported to Kansas law enforcement every seven hours and that 80 percent of cases involve familiarity between the victim and the perpetrator.