Youth Advocate Ashley Staggers on Empowering Young Voices for Cultural Change

An Interview With the Co-Faciliator of Culture Reframed’s New Youth Advisory Council

In response to growing demand from young people for resources on the impact of hypersexualized culture on their well-being, Culture Reframed launched a Youth Advisory Council. Composed of 10 members between the ages of 16 and 24, the council offers a platform for youth to voice their concerns about pornography’s influence on their generation, and to take meaningful action.

To support and mentor the council, Culture Reframed invited youth advocate Ashley Staggers to co-facilitate. In this role, Ashley helps plan and lead monthly meetings while fostering a safe space and providing guidance and resources to help cultivate a youth-led movement. “She helps to create and maintain an inclusive space for our members to be heard, valued, and appreciated, and is a crucial bridge between them and the organization,” said Mandy Sanchez, Director of Programming at Culture Reframed.

Ashley brings a wealth of experience in youth leadership, gender-based violence prevention, and survivor advocacy through her work with Rights4Girls, the World Without Exploitation Youth Coalition, and Children’s Aid’s Fostering Youth Success Alliance. She also currently holds the title of Miss Manhattan 2026 and is conducting research on sexual violence illiteracy with the University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC).

“I love helping to create avenues for youth to get the answers they’re looking for, to have somewhere to address their confusion, and to have the confidence and power to make their voices heard,” she said. “I hope the Youth Advisory Council becomes a place where ripples and waves of knowledge are created in our society.”

In this interview, Ashley shares what drives her work, the research informing her approach, and her hopes for the Youth Advisory Council’s future.

Can you share a brief history of your career journey — from your early roles and board memberships to your current position at Children’s Aid?

Stemming from an array of personal experiences throughout my youth, I chose to pursue juvenile justice policy work, and eventually transitioned into Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV) policy. My career has led me to amazing organizations like the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute, the Center for Victims of Torture, Rights4Girls, and, currently, Children’s Aid. I serve as the director of their Fostering Youth Success Alliance and focus on issues affecting current and former foster youth.

I also sit on the World Without Exploitation Youth Coalition, a coalition addressing sex trafficking and exploitation in the United States, and the Day One New York Young Professionals Board, an organization that addresses dating violence and intimate partner violence (IPV).

Furthermore, I conduct research alongside the University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), on a term I am coining called “unacknowledged sexual victimization.” I’m thrilled to have recently added Youth Advisory Council Co-Facilitator for Culture Reframed to my list of credentials.

What inspired you to become involved in youth advocacy, particularly around gender-based violence and sexual violence education?

I was sexually abused from the ages of 12–14; however, I was unable to identify it as sexual abuse until I was 20, and I refused to label myself as a survivor until I was 22. In time, and through research, I began understanding that these delayed realizations were not the result of denial, but rather a lack of comprehensive sex education. As a society, we are profoundly uneducated about sexual violence, to the point where many of us are unable to identify our own experiences. We often mislabel our violence as “a weird experience” or “bad sex.”

Once I became aware of this issue, I began conducting my own research and was devastated to discover how widespread it truly is. Horrifyingly, this inability to label violence affects survivors of all types of violence, including domestic violence, IPV, and even sex trafficking. Even more concerning is that this lack of knowledge, combined with messages from media and modern culture, continues to normalize and perpetuate the violence we endure.

Without proper sex education — and an active effort to help all youth distinguish between violence and love — we set individuals up to both initiate and experience life-altering violence.

Through your research with the UMKC, what have you learned about the relationship between sexual violence illiteracy and unacknowledged victimization? How does this lack of understanding impact how survivors process their experiences and seek help?

I learned that, as a society, we have a fixed view of what rape and other forms of violence look like. We believe violence is committed by a stranger, that it always has to involve physical force that cannot be overpowered, and that we as victims must have put up the fight of our lives to be a victim. Unfortunately, if our experiences differ from our fixed perspective, we will remain unlabeled. And most do differ, in various ways.

In the plainest way possible: survivors often don’t know they are survivors because we don’t know what rape or sexual violence looks like, even when it’s actively happening to us. On the flip side, perpetrators of sexual violence don’t realize they are causing violence because they don’t understand what sexual violence looks like, even when they are actively committing it.

Perpetrators of violence are likely to recommit because they don’t think they did anything wrong. And unlabeled survivors are more likely to stay with the person hurting them, more likely to experience greater psychological distress, more likely to be re-victimized, and less likely to report to police or use mental health resources.

While the mind may not remember, the body will. This unlabeled trauma will affect their relationships with themselves and others until they can get the help they don’t even know they need.

What led you to take on the role of co-facilitator for the Culture Reframed Youth Advisory Council, and what do you hope to accomplish in this position?

I’ve always admired Culture Reframed’s response to cultural change. This is not a woman’s or a man’s issue; it’s a societal issue that has allowed everyone to be affected and misled about the truth. It’s a culture that glorifies all forms of violence until we are so desensitized that we cannot distinguish between right and wrong. Between safe and dangerous. Between consent and coercion. Between violence and love.

Culture Reframed understands that vision and, more importantly, that youth need to have a say in this work. The landscape we navigate in this generation is nothing like the landscapes faced by other generations. We are actively fighting and healing, too. We recognize something is wrong and don’t know where to go or how to change it. It’s our fight, too.

I love helping to create avenues for youth to get the answers they’re looking for, to have somewhere to address their confusion, and to have the confidence and power to make their voices heard. I hope that this becomes a place where ripples and waves of knowledge are created in our society. I hope everyone on the panel feels they can speak as an expert and bring change.

There is a rising concern among young people about hypersexualized media and pornography and its impact. Why do you think young people are increasingly seeking resources and support in this area?

Even though survivors cannot often label the violence they experience, they know the situation they experienced didn’t “feel right.” We have that same power as youth in our society and as individuals. We can recognize that something about hypersexualized media and pornography as an institution just doesn’t feel right. But we don’t know why.

Young people are looking for answers, and that’s what we’re trying to give them. If anything, we should be grateful there is concern; concern means it’s not completely normalized.

Can you share some insights about the Youth Advisory Council? What are some of the most powerful or surprising things you’ve heard from members?

I’m so excited to be working with the founding members of the Youth Advisory Council as we shape their future involvement in the conversation on cultural change! This year, we’re hoping to build a platform where we help bring education and awareness to cultural issues around sexual violence that we’ve normalized as a society. We hope to help others unravel the web of confusion that has long surrounded how we approach dismantling a culture of sexual violence.

Our youth members are powerful advocates in this space. Some have written research on femicide, others run social media campaigns, and others have their own publications. I’m excited to collaborate with innovative thinkers who are full of initiative. I know they will have an incredible impact on the work done in this space.

What long-term change do you hope to see from this youth council?

I hope we change the entire conversation. I hope that youth everywhere find the resources we will create and provide. I hope they finally get the answers to the questions they’ve been asking. I hope they feel empowered to demand change from every part of our society — from our education systems to our media to our legislation.

I hope we start a cultural revolution of thought and action and finally create a system designed to facilitate healing rather than harm.

Read more about the launch of Culture Reframed’s Youth Advisory Council.