Shatter the Silence

The mission of the Rape Recovery Team (RRT) is written above and that mission guides us like a beacon in the work that we do...for our clients and for our community.

The RRT is a team of advocates at the Women's Center of Jackonville based out of Jacksonville, Florida.  The RRT serves Duval, Nassua and Baker counties as THE certified Rape Crisis Center (RCC).  We are the first responders to the ones who have experienced sexual violation and violence, talking them through the acute crisis period, serving as a mobile support system and partnering with them in the name of healing.  Additionally, the RRT educates our community on preventing sexual violence - it is by recognizing those behaviors that ultimately contribute to power-based personal violence that we will ultimately dismantle and abolish them.

Over the last year, RRT has committed to greater community outreach - to channel our passion and inspire change within our community.  This means starting the dialogue, engaging and being willing to stand in that uncomfortable space that we might be met with initially.  RAPE is not easy to talk about, not a comfortable issue to address by any standard.  However, we know the reality because it is the field within which we move EVERYDAY in the name of service and honor to our clients, therefore we know we must.

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." ~ Lilla Watson

I was introduced to the above quote at a conference recently and I felt as if I had finally found words to effectively articulate what we aim to do when we do what we do for our clients.  The RRT stands with them, not because we believe that they cannot stand on their own because we have seen the fierceness with which our clients stand in the wake of what could have been their worst tragedy but because we know our own liberation is bound up with theirs.

Welcome - this blog will be an extension of our voice, what we feel our community deserves to know about actual and potential violence against our fellow community members, especially our women and girls. 

In Love and Hope,
Tina Vaughn, Director of the RRT