International Day of Education

24.01.26 | Blog

To celebrate International Day of Education, we thought to highlight one of this past year’ great steps in the right direction for male survivors and knowledge generation.

Mid-way through last year we ratified our Male Survivor-Led Research Policy, which places the lived experiences of victims/survivors at the centre of research project We Are Survivors partakes in. It acts as a principles-based toolkit in communicating best practice for centring research around survivors of sexual abuse, exploitation, or rape. It also sets out a formal operational procedure for We Are Survivors’ and the Expert-Reference-Group’s engagement, liaison, and impact creation with external researchers.

Our engagement in research explicitly relates to our second organisational charitable object, providing training and education in, and awareness raising campaigns of, the prevention and impact of sexual harm on males, sharing knowledge and information to support a greater societal understanding of sexual harms

Yet any researcher must consider that survivor participation in research involves the disclosure of sexual abuse itself. To paraphrase the Mission of We Are Survivors, our purpose is to ‘support’ men and boys in ‘breaking their silence’ and to ‘engage in positive healing free from the impact of abuse’.

In other words, if survivors are breaking their silence in the research interview or focus group, then we are equally concerned with our first charitable object. As is the role of our professional staff, we must, support and advise them (survivors) to cope and recover and move beyond these harmful experiences.

The MSLRP pays credit to Survivors Voices’ The Charter for Engaging Survivors in expanding on ascertaining whether research proposals will have tangible impact for survivors. The Charter advocates that survivor participants, researchers, and researchers that are survivors themselves are safe and empowered by research.

All work with all people affected by abuse and trauma needs to look unlike and be the opposite of abuse – otherwise it can inadvertently replicate the dynamics of abuse and cause harm

In practice, We Are Survivors implement the MSLRP at semi-regular Research Roundtables, led by our very own Expert-Reference-Group (ERG), as our board of volunteers with lived-experience. At these roundtables, members of the ERG ethically assess research proposals based on MSLRP principles, such as whether survivors will be protected and empowered, that researchers are safe and possess understanding of male victimhood/survivorship, and only then that real impact and educative potential can be achieved.

Since it has been ratified, it has been cited by university researchers in their own project design and has been requested by other organisations seeking to involve those with lived experience in the ethical assessment of research projects.

The goal of the policy is to convene a healthy culture of knowledge sharing in survivor research, that contributes to the wider societal education on men and boys sexual harm. We are immensely proud of every individual in our survivor community that has participated in research activity, and in those researchers that have dedicated their knowledge and skill to helping others break their silence.

Visit our Research webpage to find out more about the MSLRP, as well as how we handle research towards ensuring educative impact.