Prevention Is More Than Saying No: Building a World Where Sexualized Violence Is Less Likely to Happen

When conversations turn to preventing sexualized violence, consent is often where they begin. People talk about boundaries, healthy relationships, and recognizing harmful behaviour. These conversations matter, but they are only part of the picture. If the goal is to prevent sexualized violence, it is worth asking a bigger question:

What would it take to build relationships, communities, and systems where violence is less likely to happen in the first place?

Prevention is about more than teaching people what not to do. It also means challenging the attitudes and power structures that allow violence to continue, building healthier relationships, and creating conditions where people can live with safety, dignity, and autonomy.

At the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre (VSAC), the Prevention Department approaches this work in different ways. Through Education, Youth Empowerment, Outreach, and the kʷənéŋətəl iʔ iʔsaət Indigenous Response Network (IRN), the department works alongside young people, communities, and partners to support change that extends beyond any one conversation, classroom, or program.

Beyond individual responsibility

Much of the conversation about sexualized violence focuses on individual behaviour: recognizing red flags, setting boundaries, making safe choices, and looking out for one another.

These conversations are valuable, but they can leave an important question unanswered: Why does so much of the responsibility for preventing violence fall on the people who may experience it?

People deserve information about consent and healthy relationships. They also deserve to live in communities where boundaries are respected, harmful behaviour is taken seriously, and seeking support does not come at the cost of their dignity.

Preventing sexualized violence requires looking beyond individual choices. It means examining how power operates in relationships, how harmful attitudes become normalized, and how institutions and communities respond when harm occurs. Education is essential, but knowledge alone cannot resolve a problem shaped by relationships, social norms, and systems.

The conditions that allow violence to happen need attention, too.

Building healthier relationships and communities

Meaningful prevention creates opportunities to question assumptions, develop skills, and think about how individual actions affect others.

Consent, for example, is not just about knowing when to ask permission. It is about understanding that consent must be freely given, that boundaries can change, and that another person's autonomy matters even when their choices are not what someone wants.

Through Education and Youth Empowerment, VSAC supports conversations and learning that help people build healthier relationships and consider their roles in creating safer communities. Young people deserve opportunities to develop these skills, question the relationship norms around them, and contribute to change. That responsibility should not rest on young people alone; adults and institutions have their own work to do.

Prevention also happens outside the classroom. Outreach helps build connections between people, communities, and support. These relationships matter, particularly when people face barriers to accessing services or feel disconnected from the support available to them.

And not every community needs the same approach.

Through the kʷənéŋətəl iʔ iʔsaət Indigenous Response Network, VSAC works in relationship with Indigenous communities to support community-led approaches to gender-based violence prevention and healing. This work recognizes the importance of Indigenous leadership, culture, relationality, and self-determination. Prevention must make room for community knowledge and priorities rather than assuming a single approach will work for everyone.

Although each area of the Prevention Department has a distinct role, all contribute to creating conditions where people and communities can experience greater safety, autonomy, dignity, and connection.

Accountability is part of prevention

Preventing sexualized violence also means paying attention to what happens when harm occurs.

When someone discloses harm, are they listened to without being blamed? Are their concerns taken seriously? Is harmful behaviour challenged, or is avoiding discomfort prioritized?

Responses matter.

When boundaries are dismissed and harmful behaviour is excused, the message is that some people can cause harm without meaningful consequences. When people are met with care and harmful behaviour is taken seriously, different expectations begin to take hold.

Supporting people who have experienced sexualized violence is essential in its own right. It can also create opportunities to examine the attitudes, behaviours, and systems that allowed harm to occur.

Accountability cannot begin and end after something has happened. It involves setting expectations, challenging harmful behaviour, and taking responsibility for preventing further harm.

What can we do differently?

There is no single conversation, workshop, or program that will prevent all sexualized violence. Change takes time, relationships, resources, and sustained commitment. Raising awareness matters, but awareness alone does not guarantee change.

Everyone has a role to play, though those roles will look different. That might mean challenging harmful attitudes instead of letting them pass unremarked, respecting boundaries even when it is uncomfortable, listening when someone raises a concern, or examining assumptions about power and relationships. For organizations and institutions, it also means taking responsibility for the environments they create and supporting prevention work over the long term.

At VSAC, prevention is about working toward more than the absence of harm. It is about contributing to a world where people have greater freedom to make choices about their own lives, where relationships are grounded in respect, and where accountability is part of how people live together.

The question is not only how to teach people to say no to violence. It is how to build a world where respect, autonomy, and care are the expectation, not the exception.

That is the work of prevention. And it takes all of us.