A Jewish Living Delaware exclusive interview with SOAR Executive Director Dr. Maya Janney-Khalid
by Emma Driban, Editor
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In Judaism, the sanctity of life is one of the most significant values, known as pikuach nefesh. This principle is held above almost all others, empowering us to break Sabbath laws in the service of saving a life. When a life is put in peril, we are compelled, by any means necessary, to give aid. This mitzvah is also what guides us to support survivors of violence.
In Delaware, nearly 25% of women and 15% of men are reported as survivors of sexual abuse. And, the unfortunate truth is, many of these people will never come forward or seek the help they may need. Whether they do not feel supported, feel they won’t be believed, or can’t overcome the overwhelming stigma still surrounding abuse of this type, there is a significant need right here in our state to help those who have been victims of this violence.
Survivors of Abuse in Recovery, or SOAR, is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing professional mental health services to victims of sexual trauma and their families regardless of their ability to pay. A leader in the field, SOAR also provides education, advocacy, and professional development.
SOAR’s recovery services include individual, family, and group psychotherapy services designed to help victims of all ages recover from the sex crimes that have been committed against them. More than 2,000 adults, adolescents, children, and their families residing in Delaware and the surrounding counties in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland utilize SOAR’s services annually.
Dr. Maya Khalid-Janney, Executive Director of SOAR, sat down with us to share the organization’s goals.
For those unfamiliar with SOAR, how would you describe the organization’s core mission and the values that drive your work?
Our core mission is to support survivors of sexual abuse. When SOAR was created, there wasn’t a lot of awareness around sexual abuse or how frequently it happens. It was something hidden within homes and communities. SOAR came about way back in the 1990s. I know that doesn’t feel that long, but we’ve come a long way since then as a society. The #MeToo movement particularly inspired a lot more awareness around sexual abuse in the media with celebrities coming forward, and perspectives have shifted. But our focus has stayed the same: to work with survivors of sexual abuse and sexual trauma with specialized care. There are not many providers in our industry. Honestly, I don’t think there are enough providers in general when it comes to mental health, but this is especially true when it comes to those specializing in recovery from sexual abuse.
What brought you to the organization?
While I was completing my doctoral education, I had significant cases with sexual abuse survivors on my caseload. And, for me, the common denominator was that the trauma is linked to the mental health issues I was seeing. When I had a client come in with an eating disorder, for example, oftentimes there would be a root trauma which rippled into the eating disorder. Once you start thinking that way, that trauma is the root cause of a lot of the things that we’re seeing, you can’t change that line of thinking so easily. Those experiences made it my passion and goal to work with trauma and start working on healing trauma. I became Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) trained, which is one of the two World Health Organizations evidence-based approaches to PTSD and trauma. Then, I started seeing the remarkable way the brain heals from things like this, and it got me really invested, specifically in all forms of trauma. My caseload was so heavy with instances of sexual abuse that the area became my niche. It came to me.
What unique challenges do survivors of sexual trauma face when seeking mental health support, and how does SOAR work to remove those barriers?
For many survivors, there aren’t therapists who are specifically trained to work with sexual abuse. We’re coming further in the field of trauma but, for many years, people were just afraid to hear about the trauma. They were not able to tolerate it themselves for whatever reason. Not every therapist is cut out to work with this specific population. It takes a toll on you. You have to have a calling for it, to be working with survivors. It’s gratifying, though. Survivors need therapists who are specifically trained to work with sexual abuse and aren’t going to be appalled by what they hear or shocked, because then it creates the space where the client isn’t able to be the center of the session. SOAR removes these barriers by ensuring that all of our clinicians are specifically trained to work with sexual abuse survivors. We create an environment where survivors are met with calm, competence, and compassion—not disbelief or discomfort. That safety is essential for healing.
Can you walk us through what the recovery process might look like for a survivor entering SOAR’s programs for the first time?
First and foremost, we don’t ever turn a survivor away. If they don’t have insurance, we have different forms of grants and subsidies that we can use to cover their treatment. We work with people to figure out how they can pay for the service if they can, and if they can’t, then we have additional services we provide to cover for that. Once they go through our intake process, we have an internal meeting where we figure out what the client needs. We explore what modality would best suit their needs. We find out their time and day preferences, their stage of life, their preferences for in person versus remote meeting. Then, we do an in-house matching. We look at all our clinicians—currently just under 40 providers—and see who has availability and who’s going to be the best fit. The client has every right to feel out the clinician for a session or two and say, “Hey, this isn’t working for us. I need a new clinician.” And we’ll match them up with someone else.
Ultimately, we want the client to have a good fit the first time around, because it’s already hard coming to a place with the expectation that you are going to work on your abuse. We want it to be as easy as possible.
Once we get into therapy, we use a triphasic model. All of our clinicians use this umbrella model. Even though people use different modalities, they all utilize a three-phase model which starts with stabilization of symptoms and psychoeducation. The client learns about what happens to their body and their mind when they’re sexually abused. They learn how they can stabilize some of the symptoms they are experiencing and how they might better regulate their emotions. Then, the second phase is the processing of the trauma using whichever modality their clinician practices and which the client feels is a good fit for them. And then, the third phase is reintegration, slowly tapering down and saying you’ve kind of gotten to a point where you’re able to move forward and reduce frequency of sessions.
SOAR supports individuals of all ages. How are services tailored to meet the different developmental and emotional needs of children, adolescents, and adults?
It’s a completely different ballgame and it takes specialization to work with children. We have play therapy and EMDR tailored to children. We have a lot of specialized people in Delaware who support us. Dr. Rebecca Zenker, for example, is a psychologist who works specifically with kids and who consults with us on a monthly basis. Our clinicians get monthly consultations if they’re working with kiddos and it’s called our “child and adolescent team meeting.” They meet with the specialized psychologist or doctor in that field to get additional support on those cases where they might need it. For adults, we work as a team, both internally and with our clients, to ensure we are meeting their needs, using modalities that work for them, finding the right providers for them. We also have groups, for adults and teens.
What are some common misconceptions about sexual trauma and recovery that you often seek to correct through your programs or outreach?
That people should “just get over it.” I think that’s the biggest thing. That you should just wake up one day and it shouldn’t matter anymore. From my perspective, when you have an injury, if you get in a car accident, you’re injured. You may recover. And, of course, you will eventually recover once you get treatment. But that wound, that scar, that feeling is always going to be there. It’s something that becomes part of you. It’s made you who you are. That’s the metaphor. As long as we’re fixing it, we’re giving the first aid that we need, and we’re recovering and healing from it.
In addition to clinical care, SOAR emphasizes education and advocacy. What does that work look like on the ground, and why is it essential?
Unfortunately, the legal system isn’t always the greatest when it comes to perpetrators. Only 1%–8% of perpetrators are actually convicted of sexual abuse related crimes. Sometimes, our clients have pardon hearings for their perpetrators and we have clinicians who support them through those occasions. Maybe that means they help them write their victim impact statement, or maybe they actually show up in the courtroom and support their client. That support can be given at different levels, depending on what the client’s comfortable with and the clinician’s able to commit to. But we do advocate for our clients through the system as well, whether that’s Division of Family Services or Children and Families First. We support going through Child Advocacy Center interviews. Sometimes, we have kids who have been removed from their biological parents’ homes and our clinicians have to make input decisions, fact based witness decisions. So again, our clinicians are not sitting there trying to evaluate custody-based decisions in any way, but they are the ones who hear from the children directly. They’re able to advocate the child’s voice in the legal system and in other ways. We go down to Dover and advocate more funding to support survivors. We advocated for the new victims’ rights bill that passed in 2024. We support the agencies that are down there talking to our legislators to create greater support for survivors.
SOAR serves more than 2,000 people annually. What does this scale of impact reveal about the need for these services in Delaware?
Those statistics are astonishing. One in four women have experienced some form of sexual assault or abuse or harassment, and then one in seven men have experienced sexual abuse of some sort. Now that it’s becoming safer for people to come forward amongst all genders, all populations, I think that we’re seeing more people coming forward to get help. We don’t have a wait list, thank God. But I think that there’s a significant need in the state of Delaware. I know, specifically, we’re starting a human trafficking program this year to support our sexual abuse survivors and human trafficking survivors in general through the state of Delaware. That’s a need that we’ve had in this state for quite some time. It’s devastating that there’s no outpatient services for people who have been trafficked.
Have you seen a significant shift in who comes forward during your time in the organization?
Definitely. In probably just the last 10 years of my career, I’ve seen a shift towards more boys and men coming forward. After Jerry Sandusky was exposed and convicted, there was a shift in our field towards recognizing that boys and men and people of all genders are also survivors. We offer all gender groups, where we are very sensitive to trans and LGBTQ rights, as well. And, while there’s been a shift, is it where I want it to be? No, absolutely not. Men still have a really significant taboo or resistance to getting treatment because they might feel like it’s emasculating or it’s not safe for them.
Looking ahead, what are SOAR’s biggest goals or priorities for the next few years, and what support from the community would help you achieve them?
A big financial goal of ours is to become less dependent on government funding in general. Currently, we are very dependent on providing services based on grants we receive. We’re trying to amp up our annual appeals and have our greater Delaware community provide greater support so we are not relying on government funding. We are also expanding our programs to support a human trafficking program expanding our clinician base. We do train clinicians and interns at SOAR, and we’ve made that program more robust in the last few years. We do psychological testing, which is something that we started four years ago, which can offer evaluations for ADHD or trauma or dissociative identity disorder. We’re definitely working on expanding those programs.
One big thing I want to highlight is that we offer a training program where we go out into the community to train other professionals. The reason this is important is that we want other people to be aware of what sexual abuse looks like, to know the signs of sexual abuse and how to help survivors without re-traumatizing them. We’re 30 to 40 people at SOAR who are trying to do this work, but if we can get people in all these different parts of Delaware to support the structure, to be more aware of sexual abuse or human trafficking and all these topics, I think we can find that there’s a gamut of survivor supporters out there.
To learn more about how you can support the work of SOAR, visit www.survivorsofabuse.org/
Thank you to Lesley Tryon, JFD’s Endowment and Finance Administrator and Board President of SOAR for her guidance on this piece.
