Overview
Sexual violence is known to be one of the most horrific and severe of traumas a person can undergo. Its ever-growing prevalence is a disturbing reflection of our society. There is large incidence of under-reported cases. Driving greater reporting and legal justice for incidents of sexual violence at a systemic level will result in an increased criminalisation of sexual violence to drive fear in perpetrators, leading to greater deterrence in society. However even with driving reporting for survivors of sexual violence, the process of seeking and going through legal proceedings towards justice can come with an intensive psychological, financial and even physical drain on her and her family. While Government and well-meaning NGOs have been at the forefront of helping the situation and have been working towards increasing access for survivors to legal system, the ordeal remains traumatic. There is a need to improve the experience of survivors during the process of legal justice, in order to help them manage better and facilitate recovery.
Jan Sahas, situated in Dewas has been working to promote the development and protect the rights of socially excluded communities with a guided focus on girls and women through legal advisory, counseling and prevention activities. They have a survivor focused lens. While they have built a system of access to legal, psychological counselling and rehabilitation activities, they are still challenged by fundamental behavior changes within the family towards her, and aim to evolve from a purely judicial sense of justice towards addressing her personal sense of justice too.
Her journey can be divided into three distinct states-Victimhood, Survivorship, and Normalcy. Each state is representative of her identity: she begins as a victim who is actively suffering, moves on to being a survivor who is driven to action and has gained some distance from the trauma, and finally reaches a new normal where her identity is no longer defined by the experience of sexual violence. While it is not possible to circumvent the process through the three states as they are all essential to her coping, the interventions aimed to strengthen and hasten her journey to her new normal.
- Journey mapping and behavioral intervention design: Conducted interviews with 18 cases across different segments (minors, adults, married/unmarried survivors), engaged with survivors, family members, and Jan Sahas frontline workers, and mapped the emotional, social, and practical journey from trauma through legal proceedings. The work reframed the survivor's experience as a three-state journey: Victimhood → Survivorship → New Normal, with tailored interventions at each stage.
- Five behavioral intervention tools: Developed scalable tools grounded in behavioral science principles-Gestures of Care (rituals and acts to signal support), Narratives for Coping (frameworks to reframe experience), Reframe for Purpose (activities to rebuild agency), Milestones for Progress (visual tools to mark progress), and Guide to Journey (roadmap to prepare survivors for the path ahead).
- Key learning: The journey is non-linear-recovery doesn't follow a straight path. Survivors move between states of victimhood, survivorship, and new normal, sometimes regressing before progressing. Small gestures compound, agency is restorative, and behavioral science fills the gap between legal/medical support and the ongoing psychological and social dimensions of recovery.
Source: Jan Sahas Resources
Project Report: Project Kriya
Contributors & Partnership
Client: Jan Sahas (supported by EdelGive Foundation)
Consulting Partner: Final Mile Consulting
Methodology: Behavioral science lens with human-centered immersion, journey mapping, and intervention design
Context: Applied behavioral research to understand and support the victim's journey from trauma to recovery, creating scalable implementation tools through training and artifacts for frontline workers.