Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program - SAVI

The Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention (SAVI) Program provides intervention, education and support services to survivors of sexual and intimate partner violence and their families, friends, and communities.

Through our survivor-centered, trauma-informed advocacy and counseling programs, we seek to restore hope, foster resiliency, and help survivors rebuild safe, healthy lives. Our youth, community and professional education programs build skills and raise awareness, challenging the social norms and kinds of oppression that allow violence to thrive.

Through our innovative programming, SAVI works for a world where survivors receive comprehensive support for their healing, where the incidence of sexual and intimate partner violence is reduced, and where families and communities are equipped to respond with compassion.

SAVI Mission Statement

The mission of the Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention (SAVI) Program is: (1) to meet the needs of rape, sexual assault and domestic violence survivors by offering immediate crisis intervention in hospital emergency departments, (2) to provide counseling both for past and present survivors and their families and friends, and (3) to educate the public and professional communities regarding services and issues surrounding rape, sexual assault and domestic violence.

All services and outreach activities are provided in both Manhattan and Queens.

SAVI’s services are confidential, free of charge and available to all survivors without regard to gender, race, age, economic status or religious or ethnic group.

SAVI History

Founded in 1984, SAVI has grown both geographically (by expanding its services into Queens and additional sites in Manhattan ) and programmatically (by establishing a variety of outreach, emergency advocacy and counseling services to address the needs of past and present survivors of domestic violence as well as rape, sexual assault and childhood sexual abuse).

SAVI provides Volunteer Advocates:
to the Emergency Departments of four hospitals in Manhattan:
o Harlem, Lenox Hill, Metropolitan, and Mount Sinai Medical Center;
to the Emergency Departments of 3 hospitals in Queens:
o Mount Sinai of Queens, Elmhurst Hospital Center, and Queens Hospital Center

SAVI offers free and confidential counseling services on-site at
Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai of Queens, Elmhurst Hospital Center and at the Queens DA’s Office

Today, SAVI Provides:

CRISIS INTERVENTION: Emergency Department crisis intervention by approximately 250 trained volunteer Advocates. SAVI has trained more than 1,700 volunteer advocates since our first Training. Advocates are available to provide crisis intervention and advocacy for survivors during medical treatment and evidence collection. To date, SAVI Advocates have assisted more than 6,000 individuals at the ten hospitals served by the program.

COUNSELING: Short term and long term counseling, both individual and group, for survivors and their families.

EDUCATION/OUTREACH/SENSITIVITY TRAINING: SAVI offers outreach, education, and sensitivity training to social service, medical school, law enforcement, and criminal justice personnel, as well as the public, by trained volunteer members of SAVI’s Speakers Bureau or SAVI staff.

SAVI TAKANOT: Is a Program in which specially trained Orthodox Jewish counselors provide free, confidential, religiously-sensitive counseling and support services for Orthodox Jewish survivors of rape, sexual assault, childhood sexual abuse, and domestic violence. As the name implies, the purpose of the SAVI Takanot project, which was established in 1998, is “L'takain” or to make better -- to heal that which has been harmed within the survivor's spirit as a result of his or her experiences of sexual assault or domestic abuse.

SAVI Program Against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth: SAVI provides comprehensive support services to young victims of sexual exploitation. SAVI provides 24/7 crisis intervention, counseling, safety planning, referrals, emergency shelter and re-location services, advocacy with child welfare and other agencies, and advocacy with and accompaniment to courts.

SAVI Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) Program at The Mount Sinai Hospital: SAVI coordinates a cadre of specially-trained medical professionals who provide state of the art medical treatment and forensic intervention to survivors of sexual assault. SAFEs are uniquely suited to provide expert care due to their training, their ability to focus on only the survivor during his or her entire stay in the Emergency Department, and their expert testimony should a case continue through the criminal justice process.

SAVI Advocate Training - October 12th - October 30th, 2010
SAVI Fundraiser Beneft - November 9th, 2010