Acts of Interpersonal Violence
Violence and discrimination happens on college campuses throughout the world, including Winona State.
The Advocacy Center of Winona can provide support for WSU students who:
- Have been sexually assaulted, harassed, or violated in any way
- Are in an abusive relationship whether dating, in an exclusive romantic partnership or family relationship
- Are noticing some potential red flags in a relationship and want to discuss them with someone
- Know or fear they are being stalked
If you have been hurt by dating, relationship, or domestic violence, it is not your fault and you are not alone.
Dating and domestic violence include a pattern of coercive, controlling behavior that can include:
- physical abuse
- emotional or psychological abuse
- sexual abuse
- financial abuse (using money and financial tools to exert control)
Violence and fear are never ok in dating or relationships. Between 1989 and 2018, 523 women in Minnesota have been killed due to dating and domestic violence, according to reports by Violence Free Minnesota.
If you want to talk confidentially about your situation, please contact the advocate at 507.452.4440.
If you are not ready to speak to an advocate, please consider completing a safety plan (PDF).
Sexual assault is any sexual act –from fondling to rape—that is directed against another person without their consent.
Survivors often feel shame or a sense of responsibility for the assault. This is simply not true. You didn’t deserve it. You didn’t ask for it. It’s not your fault.
An advocate can listen and help you through this situation.
Stalking is a pattern of repeated and unwanted attention, harassment, contact, or any other course of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear.
This is harassing or threatening behavior that happens repeatedly. Such harassment can be either physical stalking or cyber stalking.
There are several indicators of stalking behavior:
- Persistent communication such as phone calls, text messages, or emails, despite being told not to contact the victim in any form
- Waiting at or outside the victim’s workplace, residence, or school
- Making threats against someone, or that person’s family or friends
- Repeated physical or visual closeness, like waiting for an someone to arrive at certain locations, following someone, or watching someone from a distance
- Manipulative behavior (for example: threatening to harm themselves in order to get a response to such an “emergency” in the form of contact)
- The persistent sending of gifts
- Defamation: The stalker often lies to others about the victim
- “Objectification”: The stalker derogates the victim reducing them to an object, which allows the stalker the ability to feel angry with the victim without experiencing empathy