A metro Denver nonprofit that supports survivors of sexual assault is partnering with local bars and restaurants to train their staffs on how to recognize sex crimes when they occur in their establishments, and how to intervene and even prevent them.
“We know there’s a correlation between alcohol and sexual violence,” said Kaity Gray, director of community education at The Blue Bench. “Alcohol doesn’t cause sexual violence, but it is a tool the perpetrator uses. With sexual violence, it is everybody’s responsibility to look out for each other and not have these victim-blaming ideas.”
In Colorado, one in two women, one in three men and one in two gender-nonconforming people will experience some form of sexual violence in their lifetime, according to The Blue Bench. Since January 2023, 1,900 sexual assaults were reported to the Denver Police Department, agency spokesman Jay Casillas said.
Studies show that between 50% and 77% of sexual assaults involve alcohol consumption by the victim, perpetrator or both.
To help educate people in the hospitality industry about their role in preventing sexual violence, The Blue Bench created the Safe Bars bystander training program.
The ongoing, 2.5-hour in-person or virtual trainings yield a certification that can be updated each year. The training is $500 per bar with an option to reduce the cost to $250 if they agree to raise the other half of money through a fundraiser.
Blue Bench staffers train bar employees to look for signs or precursors to possible sexual assault that include patrons using slurs, leering, touching someone non-consensually, making repetitive and unwanted sexual comments, cornering someone, or seeming as though they are trying to get someone inebriated.
Then, trainers provide roleplaying scenarios so people can practice intervening in a way that feels comfortable for them.
“You can directly intervene or distract or delegate to someone,” Gray said. “All the bar or restaurant people come up with actual strategies they can use in their environment.”
Ty Sondag is the CEO of Denver Pub Crawl, which offers international-style, guided pub crawls for individuals and groups around the city. He and his employees are not a brick-and-mortar operation, but they lead people in and out of Denver bars regularly.
“It was important to us from the start to make sure our staff were trained to deal with any instances that could occur,” Sondag said. “We do alcohol-safety training and wanted to find training that included aspects of sexual assault and sexual harassment, because, as statistics show, we were going to be dealing with it on a very regular basis. It was a big surprise to us that a lot of bars did not have formal training like this.”
Establishments that currently hold Safe Bar certifications from The Blue Bench include: Levitt Pavilion, Denver Pub Crawl, Fiction Brewing, Broomfield’s 4 Noses Brewing Company, Fort Greene Bar and Cohesion Brewing Company.
The interactive roleplay scenarios give employees ideas and practice getting comfortable intervening when they sense something is off, Sondag said.
In a situation in which Sondag senses someone is pushing alcohol on someone else, the training showed him how to step in and redirect by starting a game or asking to talk to one of pub crawlers, he said.
“Safe Bars is designed in a way to help people see things from different angles and proactively anticipate potential harm or issues from a perpetrator before it even happens, and also offer some good, proactive measures to mitigate and help potential victims,” he said.
Michelle Metz, the forensic nurse program manager at Denver Health, said a program like Blue Bench’s Safe Bars is a good first step in combatting sexual violence.
As a metric to show how often alcohol is involved in sexual assaults, Metz said that in January of last year, her department performed 37 forensic exams for people who suspected they were victims of sexual assault. Of those, 14 tests were given to people who were intoxicated at the time and might have a lapse in memory.
Predators will watch for the most intoxicated person at a bar, Metz said, or push alcohol on their victims.
“If you can get bars on board to actually train their staff about what overserving is and what it looks like when someone is deliberately getting somebody intoxicated… I think it helps keep people a little bit safer,” Metz said.
Eleanor Cheetham, owner of Denver’s Fort Greene Bar, was looking forward to the bar’s first Safe Bars certification training in December. She said the staff had been searching for something like it for a long time.
“We’re a safe space, but no space is inherently a safe space,” Cheetham said. “It’s not born that way. It’s something you have to work on and continually be proactive about. The more informed everyone is about how to recognize and respond to concerning behavior, the safer our collective environment becomes.”
Cheetham said it’s important to her that Fort Greene be a place that fosters a culture of consent, communication and respect. She appreciated that The Blue Bench stresses alcohol is not the perpetrator of sexual violence and that the responsibility always lies with the person choosing to cause harm.
“We believe every establishment — especially anything with nightlife or alcohol or hospitality — should be doing training like this,” Denver Pub Crawl’s Sondag said. “The reality is a lot of these situations can be prevented. There is something that could be done, but people don’t know what to do. It’s not going to be an end-all-be-all, but it will absolutely help.”
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