A message about rape for New Jersey from a Florida highway

BY SUSIE WILSON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

SEX MATTERS

The limousine carrying my husband and me on I-95 from Vero Beach, Florida, where we had been vacationing, to the West Palm Beach airport passed a large billboard that read:

"Sex Without Consent Is Rape"

Since we're moving at 65 miles an hour, I can't see the pictures or other information on the billboard. I fumble for a scrap of paper and pen in my oversized bag, and write down the words. Later, I learn that the billboard's smaller print read: "Talk About It, Prevent It!"

As I stow the scrap of paper, I realize that I've never seen a billboard with an explicit message like this. I'm quite surprised to read such accurate words about sexual assault on a billboard along any highway, let alone one in a conservative, southern state like Florida.

The morning after our arrival home, I pick up my local newspaper, The Times, and read the headline: A seven-year-old girl has allegedly been gang-raped by as many as seven adult and teen men in a high-rise apartment on West State Street in the heart of Trenton. (So far, two adults and three minors have been charged.) The story was made all the more horrible by the fact that the alleged rape occurred because the little girl's 15-year-old stepsister, who was described by her grandmother as "mentally disturbed," "sold" her to the men for money.

"Sex Without Consent Is Rape." The words come roaring back. I cannot let them go. Each time I read another sequel to the Trenton rape story, which appear daily this past week, I am overwhelmed by the picture of this child – or any child – so violently assaulted; I am disgusted, ashamed, and full of pity for her, and I ponder what I can do to prevent such a horrific crime against other little girls in the future.

Then I remember the billboard on I-95 and think: We need a statewide billboard campaign in New Jersey, so we can sear the words "Sex Without Consent Is Rape" into everyone's minds until they become a household phrase.

I mull over how to get these billboards into our neighborhoods and on our highways. By chance, at a meeting the next afternoon, I meet a young woman who works as a program supervisor at the Millhill Child & Family Development Corporation in Trenton. During our conversation, I bring up the rape and tell her about the Florida billboard. I ask her if she knows of a billboard in Trenton where we could place such a message, and how the community would react to it.

"How great it would be if we can get a billboard at the corner of Prospect and Stuyvesant here in Trenton," she says. "The message definitely needs to get out that no means no."

She tells me that it costs $1,000 a month to put a billboard in this space, which is close to where the alleged rape occurred.

Now, I am not naïve enough to believe there are magic bullets like billboard messages that can change behavior. But I think they can be part of a long-term strategy to try and reduce rape and sexual assaults, especially against children, in New Jersey. A billboard campaign would be the first step that would include public service advertisements on TV, increased classroom lessons, marches through communities, and determination to keep focused on the issue for the long haul.

As an example, it took years and many different types of pressures to make people realize that cigarette smoking kills. I think reducing rape and sexual assault is worthy of a comparable effort, and we might start with a billboard campaign.

The campaign would be aimed at adults and teens, not necessarily at children. But if children see the ads, parents will need to explain to them how they can protect themselves when adults whom they know or strangers they don't know want to touch, fondle, and penetrate their bodies and ask them to keep the abuse secret.

If kids as young as seven see the billboards and ask questions about them, then parents could use the words of author Robie Harris in her book for elementary- and middle-school-age children, It's Perfectly Normal.

"Sexual abuse happens," Harris writes, "when someone mistreats a person in a sexual way." For a definition of rape for children between 10 and 14, Harris offers this possible definition: "Someone is raped if they are forced to have sex against [his or her] will."

To gather more information about the billboard campaign I saw, I discover that the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay, Florida, developed it and the Florida Department of Health spread its message to 16 cities and other sites. The Center developed the campaign following last fall's release from prison of Roman Polanski, the former Hollywood film director who pleaded guilty to statutory rape and was convicted and imprisoned.

I discovered that many Florida parents were "outraged" by the billboards. They claimed that the campaign's message was "unfit for children's eyes" and "forces them to explain what rape is to their kids, taking away their ability to decide when and how they want to convey this information." If we plan for a campaign in New Jersey, then we should learn from Florida and help parents communicate with their children about rape and sexual assault using resources like Harris' books.

I know some will challenge me that a billboard campaign would have no effect on the incidence of sexual assault, rape, and violence in our communities. I will be told that the ills of poverty and degradation in our cities, which sometimes lead to incidents such as the one that occurred in Trenton, cannot go away without large expenditures to improve the education, health, and living conditions of the residents.

I know a billboard campaign is no substitute for policies that address poverty, broken homes, disturbed adolescents, and harsh living conditions. But I think a billboard campaign here like the one I saw in Florida could serve as a catalyst for developing more substantive policies to reduce sexual abuse and violence in our state.

New Jersey is broke, I realize, but I'm going to do my best to talk with someone in the State Department of Health and Senior Services about this idea. If I am able to get the "Sex Without Consent Is Rape" campaign off the ground, I will dedicate it to the little girl in Trenton who was so horribly abused, whose name I shall never know, and my lovely, little granddaughter, who I pray will never know such trauma.

Susie Wilson, former executive coordinator of the Network for Family Life Education at Rutgers University's Center for Applied and Professional Psychology (now renamed Answer), is a national leader in the fight for effective sexuality and HIV/AIDS education and for prevention of adolescent pregnancy. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .