First Light Brings Hope to Victims of Sexual Assault

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

The hardest part of a conversation can sometimes be persuading someone to begin it.

At community events in Anderson, Nick Stewart sometimes watches people hesitate when they notice the words identifying First Light’s work. They may be willing to discuss a fundraiser or an upcoming holiday celebration.

Sexual assault is another matter.

“They see our table, it says First Light Sexual Assault, and they’re not comfortable,” said Stewart, the organization’s director of development. “It’s an uncomfortable conversation.”

For First Light, making that conversation possible is part of the work. The organization, led by Executive Director Amanda Cooper, operates a Sexual Trauma Center and a Child Advocacy Center, providing free services to survivors of sexual assault and child abuse. During the first nine months of 2026, it served nearly 1,600 people, including approximately 700 children.

The figures describe the reach of an organization whose work is largely confidential. They do not describe what happens when someone first asks for help with the uncertainty about whom to trust, what to say or what will happen after saying it.

First Light works with hospitals, law enforcement and the South Carolina Department of Social Services to help survivors navigate those questions. An advocate can accompany someone through the aftermath of an assault, including an emergency department visit that may bring medical care, unfamiliar procedures and difficult decisions into the same room.

The goal, Stewart said, is “trying to bring that first light ... into that moment of darkness for people who are in the emergency room.”

The organization’s name is an aspiration, but not a promise that recovery will arrive quickly. What it can offer is someone present at the beginning.

For children, the work includes forensic interviews designed to let them describe their experiences without being directed toward an answer.

Stewart explained the distinction. Interviewers seek to establish what a child remembers and knows, rather than supplying a sequence of events for the child to confirm.

“Instead of asking, hey, did X, Y, and Z happen,” he said, the approach is “rather, so tell me what you remember.”

The difference between those questions is small on the page and substantial in practice. One introduces an account. The other leaves room for the child’s own.

First Light’s services are free, removing cost as a condition of receiving help. Its 24-hour crisis hotline, 855-810-4882, is available to people seeking support after an assault, a referral or simply someone with whom to talk.

The organization also provides advocacy and case management. Its work connects a crisis to what follows with appointments, referrals and the continuing need for support after the immediate emergency has passed.

Sustaining that work requires money as well as willingness. First Light describes donations in terms of the services they support: $25 covers a crisis hotline call; $50 supports advocacy and a therapy referral; $100 funds a child’s forensic interview; and $250 provides a month of case management for a young survivor.

Those amounts make a broad appeal concrete.

Stewart, who moved to Anderson from Connecticut, has found the community’s sociability useful in his work, describing it as a place where people are inclined to acknowledge one another rather than pass without speaking.

“It’s been hard to find someone who doesn’t want to have a conversation,” he said.

That welcome does not eliminate the reluctance he encounters around sexual violence. It gives him somewhere to start.

“I think one of our biggest challenges is people willing to have the conversation that this is happening,” Stewart said.

First Light’s prevention education and community outreach are attempts to make the subject less avoidable without making survivors’ private experiences public. The organization can explain what it does, how to seek help and how to support the work. It can invite people closer to the table.

This fall, some of those invitations will take familiar forms. First Light plans a family-friendly Trunk or Treat on Oct. 25 at the local farmers market and will participate in the Anderson Lights of Hope on Dec. 5. Its fourth annual New Year’s Eve ball drop at the Bleckley Inn will also raise money for its services.