ANDERSON, Ind. — It’s a scene that can happen too often: a woman is having a good time at a tavern but is clearly intoxicated. Her male companion is watching closely and then the bartender hears him make a comment that one more drink should do it. The bartender sees the man leading her outside.

Although the scenario is a hypothetical situation recently used in a training exercise, it could easily become reality at any establishment that serves alcohol.

“During last call you see guys looking for their easy marks,” said Kathryn “Cakes” Sturm, a server at The Curve, a bar and restaurant in Alexandria, Ind. “It’s last call (and they think), ‘Oh, we better hurry up and find our significant other for the night.’”

To recognize the difference between harmless courting and a potentially dangerous situation, Alternatives Inc., a social service organization based in Anderson, Indiana, held an event for bartenders and other restaurant staffers to discuss and raise awareness of interactions among patrons that could lead to domestic or sexual violence.

The bystander intervention program, called Raise the Bar, also gives businesses that go through the training cards to place in their restrooms. Guests can use the cards to learn more about sexual assault.

The training, says Rachel Smith, gives servers the tools to potentially prevent a customer from becoming a perpetrator or a victim.

“Alcohol is the No. 1 date rape drug,” said Smith, a prevention specialist at Alternatives, while speaking to the group. “You, as bartenders, as servers, as wait staff, you’re the No. 1 dealers of that drug.”

During her presentation, Smith taught The Curve staff the importance of keeping an eye on a customer’s alcohol intake and behavior, as well as the presence of other date rape drugs. She also provided guidelines on how to intervene if it appears they may become a threat to others or are at risk of becoming a victim. Her tips included tactics for delaying their departure, distracting them and, if the situation escalates, bringing management in quickly.

She also challenged staff members to look at their establishment’s environment differently. One takeaway for The Curve staff was a decision to keep lights on in a darkened patio area of the bar during warm weather.

“It points out vital things as to how to handle situations that can come up daily” in a bar, said John Bachman, the night manager at The Curve.

Opening a dialogue

Conservative estimates suggest that 25 percent of American women have experienced sexual assault, including rape, at some point in their lives, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism,. Approximately half of those cases involved alcohol by the perpetrator, victim or both.

Smith told the Anderson (Indiana) Herald Bulletin that Raise the Bar aims to open a dialogue about sexual assault, risk factors and squashing myths — including the perception that only males perpetuate an attack. Or that only women are victims.

She also encourages trainees to get rid of the mindset that it’s not their place to intervene or that abuse only happens behind closed doors.

“Quite frankly, that assumption is wrong,” she said. “We need to be intervening. We need to be bringing these issues to the forefront (and) talking about the fact that in our society rape culture is perfectly acceptable, which is a problem.”

Raise the Bar training covers terminology, laws, scenarios, national and local statistics, risk factors and tips on how to intervene if it looks like someone might become a perpetrator or a victim.

The program is based on Raise the Bar Chapel Hill, an outreach program that primarily trains bars frequented by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students.

Alternatives CEO Mary Jo Lee hopes that the Raise the Bar training eventually grows into a statewide initiative.

Lee said victims have come to Alternatives, a shelter for women, who have experienced sexual assault after drinking. Many of them never go to law enforcement after their assaults, and those who do sometimes regret it.

“And they feel responsible because they feel, ‘Well, I was in a bar,’” Lee said. “And (some have) gone into a courtroom and they’re re-victimized there as well: ‘Well, you were drinking, what did you think was going to happen?’”

Alternatives Resource Development Manager Ashley Waterbury-Carpenter said another focus of the Raise the Bar training is to help turn people from bystanders to “up-standers.” If employees at establishments that serve alcohol can identify high-risk situations, she says, it makes the entire community safer.

“We’re trying to start to change the conversation in our community around sexual assault and kind of change the message from ‘don’t be a victim’ to ‘don’t be a perpetrator,’” she said. “For a long time (society) was teaching young women how to not be a victim.”

Tiffany Cleagg, who owns both The Curve restaurant in Alexandria and another bar in nearby Anderson, said it’s a conversation that was important for her staff to have. She said the training gave her staff the knowledge and tools to possibly prevent something from happening in the future.

“We’ve definitely picked up on things (in the past) that thankfully didn’t end up in any sort of tragedy, that we’re aware of, but just knowing how next time to handle them with more ease, opposed to the question, ‘What should I do?’” she said. “This is what we should do.”

Dickey writes for the Anderson (Indiana) Herald Bulletin.