Stamford Advocate
12.27.16 | Nelson Oliveira
STAMFORD — A young woman wakes up on her college campus Sunday morning feeling confused about what happened the night before, when she started out with friends and then things got fuzzy.
It’s a story that Charlotte Poth, of the Stamford-based Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education, hears all too frequently. But she hopes the calls will become less frequent with a new program that started this month at Stamford High School.
“What would you do if a friend called you and said, ‘Man, I woke up this morning and I don’t know what happened last night,’” Poth asked a group of teens at SHS earlier this month. “‘I woke up on this random couch. The last memory I have is talking to a group of people and I feel like something bad may have happened.’”
Unfortunately, Poth said, few people know how to help a potential victim of sexual violence.
Aware of the challenge, several students at Stamford High School decided to be proactive and learn how to help such victims — while students there, in college or elsewhere.
The result is a new student-led partnership between the Mayor’s Youth Leadership Council and the sexual assault crisis center that kicked off this month at SHS.
