Beyond Fear
Welcome to the Beyond Fear Podcast. We are your hosts, Alexa Sardina and Alissa Ackerman. This podcast is a labor of love, created by two friends and criminologists who have spent their entire careers studying everything about sex crimes. The twist? We are also both survivors of sexual violence and as "survivor scholars" we approach our work with both hats on. Join us as we take you Beyond Fear. Check out our website at www.beyondfearpodcast.com and follow us on Twitter @fearcrimes and Instagram @beyondfearpodcast
Episodes
September 21, 2022 • 1 min
As we close out the season, we invite our listeners to submit any questions they may have for the season 2 finale! Send us any questions you may have at beyondfearpodcast@gmail.com
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September 7, 2022 • 105 mins
This episode of Beyond Fear is truly groundbreaking. We welcomed four esteemed guests - Nadiah Mohajir, MPH, Dr. Maryyum Mehmood, Dr. Guila Benchimol, and the Rev. Dr. Danielle Tumminio Hansen - to lead a discussion about sexual harm that occurs across different religions including Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. You may remember that we spoke to Dr. Karen Terry in Season 1 about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. That episode ...
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August 24, 2022 • 66 mins
Welcome to Episode 10 Beyond Fear listeners! We realized that it has been a while since we caught you up on the work that we have been doing outside of the podcast. In this episode, we interview each other about the projects that have been keeping us busy.
Alissa shares her journey of co-founding Ampersands Restorative Justice – an organization dedicated to restoring the world from sexual harm. Among other things, Ampersands facil...
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August 10, 2022 • 57 mins
Throughout this podcast, we have discussed the ways in which sexual harm impacts survivors psychologically, emotionally, and physically. A less talked about consequence stems from abuse that occurs within the context of institutional environments that are expected to be safe.
In this episode we speak to Dr. Caroline Heldman an expert on the consequences of sexual harm that takes place within institutional environments. Institution...
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July 13, 2022 • 70 mins
In our last episode, Who is the Ideal Victim? we spoke with Dr. Danielle Slakoff about media depictions of survivors of interpersonal and sexual harm. Specifically, we unpacked the way that race influences media narratives about who qualifies as a “real victim” worthy of help and sympathy. Black and Latina victims are frequently portrayed as somehow to blame for their victimization.
The sexual harm experienced by Black women and ...
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June 29, 2022 • 56 mins
Throughout season 1, we have discussed how society, often times through the media, blames survivors of sexual violence. Frequently, media portrayals impact trial outcomes, a survivor’s willingness to report, and more. In this episode, we speak to Dr. Danielle Slakoff, a professor and prominent researcher that studies the ways in which the media inaccurately portrays survivors of domestic violence and sexual harm.
During the episod...
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June 15, 2022 • 68 mins
Child sexual abuse material (CSAM), previously known as child pornography, can be a confronting and uncomfortable topic. CSAM can refer to the possession, viewing, sharing, and creation of images or videos that involve the visual depiction of children involved in a sex act. Although CSAM was almost completely eradicated in the 1980s, the dawn of the Internet ushered the proliferation of it. The anonymity of the Internet and the eas...
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June 1, 2022 • 81 mins
Episode 5 is the last part of our series of episodes dedicated to human trafficking. In this episode, you will hear Jess’s story of surviving trafficking. Our conversation exposes some of the many myths about the crime of human trafficking (which often includes sex trafficking), including who perpetrates it, who experiences it, and the context within which it occurs.
Traffickers do not usually target victims they do not know. In f...
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May 18, 2022 • 61 mins
Human trafficking is an incredibly complex issue that includes several different important topics we felt should be covered during our second season. Due to this complexity, we agreed to dedicate three episodes to cover it.
Welcome to Understanding Trafficking Part 2! During this episode, we speak with Dr. Casey Branchini Risko, an expert on international labor and sex trafficking. The interview with Dr. Branchini Risko gives furt...
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May 4, 2022 • 62 mins
Human trafficking has moved into the public consciousness as a serious offense both domestically and internationally. Over the course of the next three episodes of Beyond Fear, we will cover trafficking from the perspective of researchers and a survivor.
Human trafficking, including sex trafficking, is a multi-billion-dollar industry that impacts an estimated 24.9 million people globally. In the U.S., human trafficking is define...
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April 20, 2022 • 49 mins
The topic of sex work can illicit strong stereotypes, incorrect assumptions, and ill-advised suggestions on how this issue should or should not be addressed by the criminal legal system and society in general. Regardless of what comes to mind, people who engage in sex work frequently face dehumanizing treatment simply based on what they do for a living – who they ARE is rarely part of the equation.
Our goal this season was to human...
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April 6, 2022 • 51 mins
Welcome to Season 2 of Beyond Fear: The Sex Crimes Podcast. We are so excited to share this new
season with you. This time around, we will be diving deeper into critical issues related to sex crimes.
Many of the episodes feature people directly impacted by these topics. Guests include experts as well as
people that are directly impacted by them.
We are also excited to announce that we have joined the Article III podcasting network...
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December 2, 2020 • 55 mins
Throughout the first season of Beyond Fear: The Sex Crimes Podcast, we have received dozens of questions and comments from listeners. The conversations we have had one-on-one with each other and those we have had with some of you who have reached out have affirmed our belief that the work we do and the way we accomplish it are both incredibly important.
We’ve learned over the years that bringing our full selves to the table is crit...
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November 11, 2020 • 60 mins
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October 21, 2020 • 49 mins
In Episode 12 of Beyond Fear, we interview David Prescott, an internationally known expert on treatment for those who sexually offend.
A mental health practitioner of 36 years, David Prescott is the Editor of Safer Society Press. He is the author and editor of 20 books in the areas of understanding and improving services to at-risk clients. He is best known for his work in the areas of understanding, assessing, and treating sexual ...
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October 7, 2020 • 47 mins
The image that comes to mind when we think about a person who commits a sexual offense is more often than not, male. While it is true that the vast majority of sexual harm around the world is committed by men, women can – and do – commit sex crimes. In this episode of Beyond Fear, Alissa interviews Alexa about her expertise on female sexual offending. Alexa sheds light on this important, understudied and often misunderstood issue.
...
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September 23, 2020 • 56 mins
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September 9, 2020 • 48 mins
In Episode 9, “Why Should I Care?!”, Alexa interviews Dr. Alissa Ackerman about sex crimes policies in the U.S. Alissa is widely considered an expert on sex crimes policy and much of her research has examined the efficacy of the sex offense registry, residence restrictions, and community notification. Notably, her research, and that of most other researchers, have found that sex crimes policies have done nothing to make society saf...
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August 26, 2020 • 35 mins
Research shows that, like people who commit other crimes, those who sexually offend also desist from offending. This is both hard to hear and important to acknowledge. In Episode 8 of Beyond Fear, we made the deliberate decision to pivot from conversations about survivor experiences to a focus on the experience of individuals who have sexually offended.
When we first started studying sexual violence, we both wanted to study the eff...
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August 12, 2020 • 45 mins
The Beyond Fear Podcast is one continuous story, where episodes build from one to the next with the ability to reach back to previous episodes when necessary. Yet, when we started writing the story in episode 1, we didn’t fully recognize the impact that telling the story would have on us. Recording Episode 7 was one of those experiences that is hard to put into words.
In this Episode, we sit down with Alexa’s mom, Stacey Branchini,...
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