Callisto – Networks in Sexual Assault Reporting
Project Callisto is a tool for victims and survivors of sexual assault to join a network of mental health and legal support. The underlying technology that Callisto is hinged on is basic principles of networks: the principle of structural balance and the principle of triadic closure. On Callisto, when a person experiences sexual assault, they can immediately report the assault, the details, and the assailant to Callisto through a confidential reporting system. Here they will get resources and options, but the networks association will not kick in unless there is a match at the point they report or at the point when another student reports in the future. If and only if another student reports sexual assault, the two students will be connected to be aware that another student experienced assault by the same perpetrator. College campuses struggle with empowering victims/survivors of sexual assault to report, but if students are aware that another student has experienced a similar event by the same person, they are statistically much more likely to report. Callisto’s network oriented solution reports that survivors who visit their school’s Callisto Campus site are 6 times more likely to report their assault. We can credit this in part to structural balance and triadic closure. Structural balance proposes that a network of three nodes must have either 1 or 3 positive edges in order to be balanced and stable. In the network, we see described by two survivors and an accused assailant. This relationship is pictured below.
The triadic closure principle in this context creates a connection between resources, legal advisors in Callisto’s case, and the two survivors. The triadic closure principle states that for every connection of 3 nodes where two nodes are strongly connected, the third connection must be at least a weak connection.