A small group program for males who have experienced sexual abuse will return to Penn State’s Center for Counseling and Psychological Services after first being introduced in 2012.

The group is designed to provide a “safe place” for male undergraduates and graduate students to talk and work forward, said Andrea Falzone , co-leader of the program and a CAPS staff psychologist.

“We want men to feel empowered to talk about what happened,” Falzone said. “We provide a safe place for men to feel heard, supported and validated.”

One in six men have experienced some sort of sexual abuse before the age of 18, Falzone said.

Dennis Heitzmann , senior director for CAPS, said small group therapy provides a different environment than individual sessions by allowing men to share their stories and have them understood by the group.

“It can be very uplifting to know you have partners in this process and recognize you are not alone,” Heitzmann said.

Mary Anne Knapp , clinical social worker and senior staff therapist at CAPS, said the group can help survivors work through difficult issues because, “it often shifts a student’s sense of identity from being a victim to being a survivor,” she said.

Heitzmann said in recent years, the need for a male support group has started to grow.

“One important outcome from Penn State’s experience over the past couple of years is bringing to the surface issues that were not often talked about,” he said. “In some ways, survivors have been given a stronger voice.”

Falzone said the male survivors group originally started in the fall of 2012 and ran successfully. She added that CAPS wanted to make a commitment to run the program every semester, and it now has enough group members to get it started once again.

Knapp said students who are interested in joining the program can meet with the co-leaders to discuss the group in more detail and decide if it is the right choice.

The group is likely to start next week and meetings will be held on Wednesdays. The group will allow up to eight men to join, Falzone said, to keep it small.