Annual Conference

Monika Johnson-Hostler, Executive Director at NCCASA, will welcome folks to the 2025 Biennial Conference, Power of Community,as well as provide announcements for the day. Land acknowledgment to occur after the welcome.

Beyond Surviving: The Courage to Heal and Lead is a powerful keynote that blends personal testimony with transformative leadership insights. Drawing from her lived experiences as a survivor of incest, rape, and teen dating violence, Teresa M. Stafford-Wright shares her remarkable journey from trauma to triumph. She reflects on how her early life, shaped by pain and stigma—including being labeled a juvenile delinquent and becoming a teen mother—fueled her commitment to creating safe, healing spaces for others. Through resilience, advocacy, and radical self-acceptance, she rose to lead one of Ohio’s most impactful survivor-centered organizations. In this moving and motivational address, Teresa highlights the intersections of trauma, healing and leadership, offering a message of hope and empowerment for those still finding their way. “Beyond Surviving” is more than a story—it’s a call to action for individuals and institutions to embrace trauma-informed, culturally responsive approaches that not only support healing but also cultivate courageous leadership rooted in lived experience.

African American women survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault often face compounded layers of trauma, systemic inequities, and cultural expectations that make healing a unique challenge. This workshop, Radical Self-Care as Resistance: Empowering Boundaries and Self-Advocacy in Healing and Resilience, is designed as a safe, affirming space where participants can explore radical self-care as a tool for healing, resilience, and empowerment. Through culturally responsive practices, guided self-reflection, and interactive exercises, participants will learn how to prioritize their well-being, set boundaries, and advocate for their needs in personal and systemic contexts.

This mixed panel and lecture will provide an in-depth exploration of the vital role Sexual Assault Response Teams (SARTs) play in ensuring justice, healing, and community support for survivors of sexual assault.

Disabled survivors of sexual violence face unique barriers to healing, autonomy, and pleasure—yet their experiences are often overlooked in survivor advocacy spaces.

In this joint workshop presented by CrossRoads and The Caswell Chapter of The Health Collaborative, participants will learn how their own organizations could improve prevention and intervention services, as well as make a better, more efficient use of resources, by turning to community-led groups

The session will begin with an introduction to the current state of homelessness and housing insecurity in the United States, highlighting the inefficiencies of a fragmented housing system. We will delve into the pain points experienced by providers, such as inconsistent availability of shelter beds, and by individuals, such as complex application processes, intake requirements and transportation barriers. 

In this interactive workshop we will discuss the need for multi-iterative and tiered suicidality screening for sexual assault survivors. Individuals who have experienced sexual assault are more likely to have increased ideations, suicide attempts, and dying by suicide. Often many of these survivors do not report suicidal ideations or do not seek resources because they are not asked about suicide.
that are barriers to true inclusion of people with disabilities.

Isolation is one of the biggest challenges survivors of abuse and sexual violence face. The added difficulty of not knowing where to turn for support often deepens this isolation, leading to further trauma. The opportunity to connect with others who share similar experiences and can offer support is invaluable. Online communities provide survivors with a vital space to find resources, support, and solidarity.This workshop will focus on how to create and nurture survivor-informed, supportive online communities for both survivors and their supporters.

Modern consent education is an ever-evolving landscape of best practices (thank goodness!). We’ve moved from “no means no” to “only yes means yes,” to “FRIES,” but what do we do when we don’t actually know what we want?

The workshop’s primary focus is on the intersectionality of sexual assault and human trafficking in an effort to help service providers learn how to di-silo various types of interpersonal violence responses to create a more holistic approach to serving survivors.

This presentation explores the critical connection between child welfare and human trafficking, highlighting the vulnerabilities that place children at risk and the role of child welfare professionals in prevention, identification, and intervention.

Survivors of sexual violence, including secondary survivors, often navigate healing in systems that fail to honor their full humanity. Traditional justice mechanisms frequently exclude survivor voices, leaving them without meaningful pathways to healing and accountability.

Childhood sexual abuse leaves a lasting impact on survivors, and one of the most common, yet often hidden, experiences they carry into adulthood is shame. This shame is deeply ingrained, often tied to complex parts of their stories that feel too painful, embarrassing, or difficult to share. As a result, these aspects of their experience often remain unspoken, making it harder for survivors to heal.

Rosie Hidalgo brings a powerful message rooted in decades of advocacy, legal expertise, and policy leadership. In this compelling keynote, Hidalgo invites us to reimagine our collective response to sexual assault by centering community as both the source and solution.