CASS is committed to ensuring that its responses, support, and campaigns are survivor-centered and trauma-informed. CASS values the right of every survivor to choose the path that they feel will lead them to healing. CASS also acknowledges that the criminal legal system perpetuates and inflicts structural and interpersonal violence against women and LGBTSTGNC* individuals, especially those who hold multiple marginalized identities. For this reason, CASS does not believe that further criminalization of harm is an effective strategy for ending interpersonal violence. CASS believes strongly that survivor and community-led solutions to address the entrenched structural aspects of this violence will have the most lasting impact.
*LGBTTSGNC+ refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two spirit, and gender-nonconforming people.