The Flip The Script with EAAA™ Program

The Flip the Script with EAAA™ program is a 12-hour sexual assault resistance education program for university-aged women. It is delivered in small groups of about 15-20 and is run over the course of 4 weeknights, 2 days, or one weekend.

With the Flip the Script with EAAA™ program we take the position that it is never a woman’s fault if someone tries to assault her – responsibility falls entirely on the person who chose to be sexually coercive. In an ideal world, we would know who these sexually coercive people are and just be able to avoid them. Unfortunately, we often don’t know who they are, and more times than not, the people who try to coerce or attack us are people we wouldn’t have expected – for example, our boyfriend, cousin, co-worker, or friend.

We know that many women will be exposed to at least one sexually coercive person in their lives, and we believe that if someone tries to coerce or hurt them, that women have the right to resist and fight back. The Flip the Script with EAAA™ program helps develop our skill set for resisting sexual violence.

This program was designed for university-aged women. You are eligible to participate if you identify as a woman, are 26 or younger, and registered as a student at the University of Windsor.

Registration for the Flip the Script with EAAA™ program is hosted on mySuccess.

You will receive a Certificate of Completion for attending and are encouraged to list this training on your resume.

You will also receive handouts and resources relating to sexual violence, dating, consent, and more.

We provide lunch or dinner and snacks each session.

All of our programs are taught by staff at the Office of Sexual Violence Prevention, Resistance, and Support and peer facilitators who are current students or recent graduates.

We hire for the Flip the Script with EAAA™ program in the spring and train facilitators in the summer. If you are interested in becoming a facilitator, you can contact Anne at arudzins@uwindsor.ca

Growing up, girls are often taught to believe that they are responsible for preventing an assault. They are taught to fear stranger assault and to keep themselves safe by monitoring where they go, what they do, and what they wear. Girls are also taught that if they are assaulted, it’s probably their fault. At the same time, girls are also taught to believe they aren’t strong enough to fight back.

We know that all of this is wrong.

Girls and women are not to blame when someone else makes the decision to hurt and coerce them into sexual contact that they do not want. Further, it doesn’t matter where women go, what they do, or what they wear – this doesn’t protect them; it just restricts their freedom. And sadly, women are not taught that the men who are most likely to hurt them are men they know – this isn’t to say that every man they know wants to hurt them, just that the men who are most likely to aren’t strangers to them.

We know that women who fight back have a far greater chance of escaping an assault compared to women who don’t – and the more resistance strategies a woman uses, the more likely she is to escape.

We believe that the traditional stereotypes that girls and women are socialized to believe are harmful. We believe it is never your fault for being assaulted and that women have the right to resist. We also believe that women have the strength to resist. So we want to flip the script.

The Flip the Script with EAAA™ program is also known as EAAA - Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act. This program was created by Dr. Charlene Senn at the University of Windsor via the SARE Centre non-profit. 

If you would like to learn more about the research on the Flip the Script with EAAA™ program, or would like to offer this program on your campus, contact the SARE Centre.

The Flip the Script with EAAA™  program was evaluated with a randomized controlled trial (the SARE Trial) - this research was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The research showed that women who took the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) program experienced a 46% reduction in completed rape and a 63% reduction in attempted rape in the following year compared to those in the control group. Other forms of sexual violence such as non-consensual sexual contact were also significantly reduced.

Learn more about the research behind this program at the SARE Centre website. 

The Flip the Script with EAAA™ program is 12-hours, and is usually delivered over the course of 4 weeknights, 2 days, or one weekend.

The Flip the Script with EAAA™ program has four components: Assess, Acknowledge, Act, and Relationships & Sexuality.

Because the content is scaffolded (it builds on things you’ve learned in prior sessions) we don’t allow folks to join for just one part of the program.

If scheduling is tricky for you, and you’d like to explore your options, contact us at flipthescript@uwindsor.ca

This program was designed for university-aged women (trans & cisgender). You are eligible to participate if you identify as a woman, are under the age of 26, and registered as a student at the University of Windsor. 

Please see below for more questions about program eligibility.

Yes - The Flip the Script with EAAA™ program was developed with lesbian, asexual, bisexual, and other queer women in mind. We know that for all women, regardless of sexuality, the most likely perpetrator of a sexual assault is a man.

In this program, we look at scenarios about dating men, but we also offer scenarios about men who are our friends, relatives, friend’s boyfriends or partners, classmates, and more. 

The Flip the Script with EAAA™ program was designed with university-aged women in mind. This doesn’t mean that non-binary, gender-fluid, or other gender diverse folks can’t attend, but does mean that the content might not feel as meaningful.

This program looks at women’s experiences, and specifically, the social norms that young women face - the pressures around being nice, or not making a scene.

If you’d like to chat about this further, you can reach out to us at flipthescript@uwindsor.ca. The SARE Centre is currently working towards an adaptation of the Flip the Script with EAAA™ program for transgender and non-binary folks specifically. If you’re interested to learn more, you can contact the SARE Centre.

The context in which men experience sexual assault is quite different than the context in which women experience assault. With women on campus we know that most are assaulted by men they know - either intimate partners, friends, or acquaintances. We know that some men are assaulted in similar contexts, but the research suggests that most assaults are perpetrated by other men with different dynamics at play. 

The Flip the Script with EAAA™ programming is very context specific because we know from the literature that programs have to be context specific to be effective - so there's no easy way to adapt it for the experiences of men. Right now there isn’t a program that has been developed for men. There are currently some projects for adaptations of the Flip the Script with EAAA™ program for other populations. If you’re interested to learn more, you can contact the SARE Centre.

If you know of any men who have specific concerns around being harmed themselves, or have experienced harm and are in need of support, please let them know about the Office of Sexual Violence Prevention, Resistance, and Support. We do offer programming for men through Prevent Resist Support and the Bystander Initiative. 

The Flip the Script with EAAA™ program is focused on young women aged 16-26 because statistically speaking they are the group that is at the highest risk for experiencing sexual violence. Many of the scenarios and situations used throughout the program are common ones for women in the age 16-26 age group, such a residence parties and first year classes, and the structure of facilitation is also designed to work specifically with women in that age group. 

The program content is based on rigorous evaluation.  Without similar evaluation, we have no way of knowing that the program would work for older women, and it has been our experience that as women get older they don’t find the program as relevant or interesting. That being said, age alone does not always dictate what life experiences or stages women are going through, and we are open to making an exception to the rule if we feel like where a woman is at in her life would be a good fit for the program. 

If you or someone you know is close to the age cut-off, but feel like the program focus and content may still be applicable, please don’t hesitate to reach out and we can chat about it! 

If you should have any questions or concerns regarding sexual violence, please reach out to us at svsupport@uwindsor.ca.

We agree with you - it really shouldn't be on women to stop the widespread problem of sexual violence.

However, sometimes we have to be pragmatic. At this time there isn't strong, empirically supported programming that successfully challenges predatory behaviour. There are folks working on it, and hopefully we will see some real movement in this area in the coming years, but right now the programming that targets men's behaviour hasn't been shown to decrease incidents of sexual assault.

Programs that target community responsibility by way of bystander intervention are promising as they target social norms (like toxic masculinity) that reinforce or conceal predatory behaviour, but even they haven't been linked to direct decreases in sexual assault - partly because bystanders are only present in about 20% of assaults. The university's Bystander Initiative has been in place for the last 8 years and is designed to increase community responsibility generally and challenge problematic social norms, but we know that this will take time.

In the meantime though, women are still being assaulted. We don't think it is ever a woman's responsibility to "prevent" someone from trying to rape her - the people who can prevent it are the people who are causing harm in the first place. We do believe, however, that if someone tries to harm a woman she absolutely has the right to defend herself. This is where the "flipping the script" part comes in to play. The script, so to speak, is the belief that women can't or don't have the right to take up space and push back when their boundaries are being violated.

We try to be really clear about emphasizing that this is a resistance program not a prevention program. Prevention would be stopping it before it happens, which would be ideal. Resistance is the plan B - it's happening so what can we do to empower women to do whatever they need to do to keep themselves safe.

The programming that we use was rigorously evaluated with a randomized control trial involving 900 Canadian women and was found to decrease incidents of completed rape by 40%. On a moral and theoretical level we don't think this work should be put on women, but we have to concede its value in practical terms - it's significant for every woman who is able to successfully resist an assault. And even for women who have experienced an assault after taking the program, what the research has found is that they are much less likely to blame themselves for what happened.

So again, we honestly agree with you - there needs to be more focus on men's role in changing the culture and patterns of behaviour. And hopefully we will be able to do that in effective and meaningful ways in the coming years. For now, with finite resources, we are making a pragmatic choice. If you’d like to discuss this further, we’d be happy to chat! Please reach out to us at flipthescript@uwindsor.ca.