MVP Evaluation Report Year 2 - Griffith University

2000 – 2 0 0 1 M V P E v a l u a t i o n R e p o r t
V .
F O C U S G R O U P R E S U L T S A N D D I S C U S S I O N
Secondary Trauma and the “Close Your Eyes” Exercise
The first key question was meant to assess girls‟ opinion of and reaction to “Close Your Eyes” (CYE), a
specific exercise that MVP encourages students to do at the beginning of Program training in order to
gain empathy for female victims and to underscore the importance of the role of the bystander. CYE is
a visualization exercise in which students are asked to close their eyes and to picture a girl or woman
they love– their mother, sister, girlfriend. Next, they are told to imagine that girl or woman being
abused, beaten, or sexually assaulted by a man. With eyes shut, they are also told to imagine that
there is a bystander present, and that that person could help but decides to do nothing. When
participants open their eyes, they are asked how they felt about visualizing the person they loved being
hurt. Then, they are asked to describe how they felt about the bystander who refused to assist their
loved one. Students have remarked that this is a very effective exercise for helping them to understand
the need for bystander intervention and to recognize their personal responsibility as bystanders.
However, it is also thought that this exercise might subject survivors to unnecessary secondary trauma.
In order to facilitate discussion around this subject, participants were handed a piece of paper with
three statements on it about the CYE exercise. The young women were asked to read the statements,
choose the one they agreed with most, and explain their choice. Students were asked to write down
their response before group discussion took place.
Ten of the 16 young women who wrote down their answers felt that the CYE exercise was helpful. In
general, those who answered this way believed that the exercise “personalizes the problem,” provides
a “common starting point for discussion,” and motivates participants to “want to do something” to
prevent gender violence.
A quarter of respondents said that they felt the exercise is both helpful and problematic. Their feeling
was that while CYE opens people‟s eyes, it also could be potentially harmful, because there was no
real system in place through MVP to address a young women‟s negative reaction, should it occur. One
respondent said that even though she did not actively participate in the exercise (but didn‟t leave the
room) the experience was painful for her. These respondents agreed that there was no real way to
safeguard against this possibility and that giving people the option to leave the room or to not
participate was neither realistic nor effective. As one participant put it,
“I know personally I chose not to do it, but I also chose not to leave.
Especially with a group of people who you don‟t really know and don‟t
really trust – especially the guys – leaving in the first day is weird. I
wouldn‟t have been able to do that. I think you need to find some
balance about how much the course is about addressing the past
trauma which is one of the reasons that a lot of women do things like
MVP, and how much of it is an education course, simply leadership.”
M e n t o r s i n V i o l e n c e P r e v e n t i o n
P a g e 19