Leeds charity on hand to help rape and sexual violence survivors

It has grown from a helpline manned a few nights a week to a team offering support by phone, text and email along with counselling and advocacy for female survivors.

But with 168 women still on the waiting list for counselling in December and many more seeking referrals, the team was forced to take the difficult decision to close the list.

The charity offers one of only two such counselling services in Leeds and says the other suffers similar challenges with meeting the constant demand.

Catriona Palin, SARSVL’s communications co-ordinator, said: “We know there’s a dearth of provision for counselling. There’s nothing like the capacity that there needs to be really.”

The charity began in 2009 as a grassroots organisation when founders Katie Russell and Sandra McNeil met at an event hosted during the international 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign.

“They were thinking that it was a bit remarkable that a city the size of Leeds didn’t have its own rape crisis centre,” Catriona said. “They called for an open meeting in Leeds Town Hall for any women who were interested in getting involved.”

Volunteers who came forward helped to run a helpline on three evenings a week, and the first two staff were recruited in 2011 thanks to funding from the Ministry of Justice.

The helpline, now open daily, took calls from 119 women and girls in the year up to March, while a further 214 emailed and 71 made contact via text.

An advocacy service for women followed in 2013 to give practical support for women thinking about making a report to police or going through the criminal justice system.

And in 2016, the charity was able to launch its counselling service for women who have experienced rape or sexual violence at any time in their lives.

The biggest service users are generally adult survivors of child sexual abuse, but the charity is seeing a lot of women in the 18-25 group making self-referrals about recent incidents.

“You could look at that and say, hopefully, women of that generation are not as accepting of things happening to them as women have been in the past,” Catriona said.

“It’s something you can seek help for. It’s not something you have to shrug off.

“Rape doesn’t have to be a stranger on a dark night. It’s doesn’t have to be that to be rape and sexual violence.”

Catriona is well used to stereotypes leading some to believe there cannot be much demand for the charity’s services, but far more damaging for survivors can be the misconceptions about how people should respond to a rape or assault.

“One thing you get a lot of as a survivor is ‘Why didn’t you just throw them off?’ But actually most people’s response is to freeze,” she said.

“The impact isn’t necessarily directly correlated with how violent the incident is. The biggest effect can be how the first person you disclose to responded, if you were believed.”

It is vital then that when survivors seek support, there is someone on hand to listen.

“A big thing for us is being led by the women and the girls who access our support,” Catriona said. “We won’t say you need to do this, you need to do that. We would provide them with information about our support and there’s a variety of what they might want to access.

“I think what’s really good about having the helpline is it’s something you can come back to.

“Rape and sexual violence is not something you ‘get better from’. It can affect you differently at different times.”

Visit the SARSVL website for more information on its services: http://supportafterrapeleeds.org.uk/