Safe Environment

VIRTUS works closely with a team of victim-survivors and victim assistance coordinators to evaluate and revise both the content and delivery of training. To be clear, any content that addresses child sexual abuse and other types of abuse can be disturbing and challenging to experience for anyone, but especially for victim-survivors of child sexual abuse. Victim-Survivors consistently communicate a wide range of reactions to the training. While VIRTUS has worked diligently in partnership with survivors to remove as many potential triggers as possible while retaining elements in the content necessary to inform and empower prevention and response efforts, a person who has experienced abuse may experience heightened reactions to the program’s content. 
 
We encourage victim-survivors to carefully consider whether the individual online training modules might be more or less triggering, and to reach out to the diocesan Victim Assistance Coordinator to confidentially discuss concerns and potentially explore other training options in advance. We are committed to collaborating with victim-survivors to provide alternative training options. While safe environment training is helpful and required, it should not be a source of additional harm to a victim-survivor.  Our goal is to create safer environments for everyone.  For more information, please visit https://virtusonline.org/virtus/what_to_expect.cfm.