Growing up as a Black girl in Brooklyn, New York, school was one of the first places I learned that my body didn’t quite belong to me. Whether it was classmates in 4th grade making sexually inappropriate comments about my body and how it developed, boys peer pressuring me into playing “booty tag” in the school yard, a classmate luring me into a classroom to make sexual advances towards me, teachers making assumptions about my body based on a perceived “attitude,” being dress coded, or school security guards (SROs) flirting with my friends and me, it always felt like I was in a never ending battle to protect myself from the intentions others had for my body. Black girls are more likely to report incidents of sexual harassment and assault in school. Sixty-seven percent of Black girls in schools report being touched, pinched, and groped in a sexual way and fifty percent of Black girls report someone in school pulling on their clothes in a sexual way and commenting on their bodies sexually. (National Black Women’s Justice Institute, 2022.) School is where Black girls experience the most sexual violence as it functions as a microcosm of society. Which makes me wonder, if schools are one of the largest sites for young people to experience sexual violence, why is New York State still not mandating comprehensive sexual education?
Sexual assault reports are up by 14% in Brooklyn and 22% across the city with most incidents being committed by someone the reportee knows and those cases involving family, acquaintances, and domestic partners. NYPD data as recent as November 2025 shows rape cases are up by 150% in North Brooklyn (Bedstuy, Williamsburg, Bushwick) compared to November 2024. In 2024, The Alliance completed a multi-year mapping project titled Sexual Violence Free, yielding findings that show the highest rates of sexual violence occur in low income communities of color, particularly in the outer boroughs like Brooklyn, which faces consistent strain of resources and access. In the Fall of 2025, KAVI led a community needs assessment in varying neighborhoods and schools in Brooklyn in preparation to launch our first sexual violence prevention program. Students shared that some of their biggest concerns were on campus and included sexual harassment from SROs, catcalling in the areas surrounding the school, and the feeling of being preyed on before and after school. While female students were identifying catcalling and on-site sexual harassment as cultural phenomena they were navigating, the boys were also trying to conceptualize how catcalling and street harassment could be seen as sexual violence. This is a direct reflection and impact of a school system that has functioned without the benefits of comprehensive sexual education. The statistics continue to rise and boroughs like Brooklyn continue to be severely impacted.
With the current persistent constraints and regulations on comprehensive sexual education across New York State, organizations like KAVI, which specifically serves the borough of Brooklyn, and programs such as Project UNSILENCED are more important now than ever. KAVI (Kings Against Violence Initiative)’s Project UNSILENCED is dedicated to eliminating sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in Brooklyn. Recognizing that gender-based violence is one of the most common forms of interpersonal violence, KAVI launched Project UNSILENCED as a continuation of its public health approach to community violence prevention. The program combats SGBV through comprehensive relationship and sexual wellness education, connection to resources, and community engagement aimed at cultural narrative shifting, with longevity and network expansion among fellow anti-SGBV organizations built in to ensure the lasting reach of the program. Project UNSILENCED is inclusive to young people of all genders and orientations.
Currently, the only sex health instruction required by New York State in schools is HIV/AIDS education and while we recognize education on sexually transmitted diseases to be important, it is not all encompassing of what sex education is, can be, and should be. When we only teach young people about sex by way of diseases and infections, we limit their power in decision making, healthy relationship choices, and being able to identify power imbalances and when they’re being harmed. Comprehensive sexual education, much like the curriculum KAVI utilizes which is created for and by young people, is medically accurate, age appropriate, and covers everything from consent and boundaries to gender expression and sexuality as well as pregnancy prevention and reproductive choices.
For this Sexual Assault Awareness Month, join us in amplifying the importance of anti-sexual violence programs and organizations like KAVI and Project UNSILENCED and in our call to New York State to sign into law Comprehensive Sex Education, the Healthy and Safe Students Act, for all young people K-12th grade. Comprehensive sex education is a critical tool for combatting and dismantling rape culture in and outside of schools, learning about human and sexual anatomy, correcting medically inaccurate information, and ensuring young people have and understand bodily autonomy. This is how we bring awareness to sexual violence and this is how we prevent it.