Kristen Zaleski, a renowned sexual assault victim advocate and clinical associate professor at USC, shares the catalyst for her famous work on sexual assault in the military and her wisdom on online harassment.

Kristen Zaleski, clinical associate professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, is a published author, researcher and psychotherapist. Her book — Understanding and Treating Military Sexual Trauma, published in 2015 — is among the first social work texts to directly tackle this issue.

For Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Zaleski joined us to discuss the origins of this research and her recent findings on online sexual harassment.

USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work: You recently published a book on sexual assault in the military. How did that project come about?

Kristen Zaleski: In my work, I’ve approached the issue not from the macro view of sexual trauma in the military, but how we look at each individual survivor of sexual violence in our clinical relationship -- the unique features of what happened to them, who (and how) they were before and after the event, and the impact of their culture on the recovery process.

In 2008, when I began working at the Department of Veterans Affairs, I realized that there was something different about military trauma even though it was still sexual assault. Being in the military came with a whole different set of issues that affected how I treated someone in the therapy room. I looked to a reference that could give me insight into the unique features of this trauma, and I couldn’t find anything. So when I finished my PhD and started working at USC, I approached a publisher with my idea to create that reference. My goal: to communicate the way that I look at this issue as a therapist, and to provide better methods of treatment for those who have survived sexual victimization during military service.

USC: You recently had an article published on the Huffington Post about online sexual harassment. How did you end up interested in that subject?

KZ: The phenomenon of rape culture, in which survivors are blamed for being victimized, is well-known. Because I’m a treating therapist, one of the things I look to when treating somebody who has survived this type of violence is how they see themselves in the wake of it. Are the people around them supporting them, and how does that shape their narrative?

In today’s age, people are looking on the internet in order to understand what happened to them. They might simply be asking “was I raped?” or “where do I go, what do I do now?” We were curious if rape culture was present in online forums meant to provide support. We started looking at the comments section of newspaper articles where they were reporting a woman or man had been sexually victimized.

We did it around the time of the accusations against Bill Cosby, when the documentary “India’s Daughter” came out, and when Rolling Stone had broken the story of the UVA scandal that was later retracted. We were able to see that if you seek understanding in these comments sections, you’re being blamed by the mass audience as well. Victim blaming was a predominant feature, and so was perpetrator support, especially if the perpetrator was well-known.

I’m interested in this phenomenon because I see it reflected in my therapy room — people blame themselves because others do. When we talk about rape prevention, we are telling women how not to be raped, and those messages are part of rape culture because they imply that women are somehow responsible for this. Instead, the conversation should be about how we as bystanders should keep everybody safe and take measures to control aggression. So that’s where the study of online comment sections, which I undertook with four USC students in the master’s program, originated.

USC: Did the commenters have names attached?

KZ: Some did, but we de-identified everybody. Some of the screen names are so ambiguous that it’s hard to determine race, gender and other demographic factors anyways.

USC: Anonymity tends to change the nature of comments. What do you see as being the most effective way to address this on an institutional level?

KZ: Well, it’s a hard question that I don’t have an answer for. I will say that there are important differences between military sexual trauma and college sexual assault, but the ages are the same: most victims are in the range of 18-26 years old. We must examine how we’re educating our young adults; how sexual boundaries are being taught and expressed; how our cultural socialization interacts with our sexual boundaries. I think it’s a bigger issue that extends beyond isolated incidents of sexual assault.

USC: Would you advise people who are exposed to online harassment to respond or engage in any way, or just to ignore the comments?

KZ: Well, that’s the question: does online discourse matter in changing people's attitudes? Or have people already made up their minds? We’ve all been in that Facebook fight with someone you disagree with, and you don’t listen to each other. It’s not interactive. I think that’s a question for all of us — how can we best engage in that social discourse? I do know that survivors of sexual assault are not seeing great messages about themselves online; often, they’re seeing people with similar experiences being blamed. But then there are those silver linings, which might come in the form of hashtag movements celebrating survivors, or celebrities wanting to support victims. Those probably have a positive effect. The jury’s out on whether social media can protect somebody from post-assault stress. I do think it has protective value, but I’m not sure how much.