Racheal Hebert has spent the last decade working in a world of “ugly truths,” what she calls the challenges of preventing sexual violence and advocating for the needs of its victims. The nonprofit she founded in 2012, Sexual Trauma Awareness and Response, or STAR, first began as the Rape Crisis Center, a small division of the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s Office that focused mainly on meeting rape survivors at local hospitals. Under Hebert’s leadership, that division has become a thriving agent of change with a 45-person staff across locations in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Alexandria.
Over its eight-year history, the organization has grown to provide comprehensive counseling, legal and advocacy services to adult and child survivors of sexual violence. It also provides public education on how to prevent it. An astounding number of people, Hebert says, don’t understand what “sexual violence” means.
“Many people I talk to misunderstand and think what we do is to address domestic violence,” she says. “Awareness has improved, but we still have a lot of work to do.”
While at the Rape Crisis Center, Hebert staunchly believed the program could accomplish more as a private nonprofit that could fundraise, partner with other organizations and advocate for sexual assault survivors. By the end of the first year, she had doubled funding and staff size. STAR maintained its role as the DA office’s victims’ advocate, but dove deeper into criminal justice advocacy, public education and survivor support. Each area unearthed a thorny set of new challenges, Hebert says.
“Every time we would roll out a new program, we’d see more problems in the system,” she says. “We would start asking, ‘How can we operationalize this and do things better so that we can be more available to survivors?’”
STAR quickly made a name for itself in its commitment to survivors’ rights and in providing counseling to support a range of traumatic experiences. Many victims of sexual assault are women, but some are men. Many are also children––or were children when they were sexually abused. And because of the wake of emotional damage caused by sexual violence, many victims also grapple with secondary issues.
While the last six years have delivered explosive growth for STAR, especially in crisis services, Hebert is now focused on expanding fee-based training services for a wide variety of audiences, including workplace professionals. Training topics could be sold as online packages and would include how to prevent sexual harassment lawsuits.
“There is such a great need for this kind of training,” Hebert says. “We are definitely looking at this as our next growth opportunity.”
Read the full feature from the latest edition of Business Report.
