Rape Centre workers face another crisis — lack of money

Press, 24 July 1986, Page 25

Rape Centre workers face another crisis — lack of money

When full-page advertisements appeared in Christchurch newspapers some months ago asking the community to support action to deal with the violence in its midst, $20,000 was raised within days.

When Rape Crisis held its street appeal at the end of May, the public gave less than $3OOO. The money beckoned in by the pointing finger of the newspaper advertisements is helping to build a police kiosk in the Square. In attempting to help and support the victims of sexual violence Rape Crisis is stretched to its limits, in danger of coming apart. “We’re dealing with victims of violence every day, all day,” says Vicki Munro, a full-time worker with Rape Crisis. “Longer prison sentences and more punishment won’t stop that, but maybe if more money was spent on education of the whole community and on the rehabilitation of those who abuse, people might begin to look at their behaviour.

"We are dealing with violence in the community and supporting our work should be a community responsibility.” Rape Crisis comprises a group of 20 women, aged mostly between 20 and the mid-30s, working within a collective framework.

“People think Rape Crisis is full of radical feminists who are trying to change their lives, but that’s not so,” says Victoria Broome, another worker with the group. “We represent a whole spectrum of people and we support women in what they, as individuals, choose to do.” Some women in the collective are, themselves, survivors of rape and incest, others have never been abused.

' 1 During its eight years in Christchurch, Rape Crisis has worked as a pressure group to raise publuc awareness of the incidence of sexual violence within the community. Although the initial idea remains constant, the focus of its work changes as it responds to the growing need for its services. That the need exists seems unquestionable. The ability of the group to continue to respond effectively, however, is less certain. Cramped conditions of work and lack of funds are putting stress on women already working long hours with little outside support. “Part of me thinks we’ll survive anyway, but our quality of service will be seriously affected if we don’t find new premises and more money,” says Vicki Munro.

Situated for the last three years in the Peterborough Centre, Rape Crisis works from a

small and cluttered office. There is a tiny kitchen with a toilet and, down the corridor, a counselling room — but no reception area, no waiting room, and no place for children. While the postered walls, old furniture, and big cushions give the office a welcoming, lived-in look, the workers are far from comfortable there. The noise from traffic is constant.

"It can be really stressful juggling people around, worrying about where to put them and how to fit them in, trying to counsel people and answer the telephone at the same time. It’s getting messy and frustrating,” says Vicki Munro. Twenty women a week, on average, go to the centre for counselling and support. Some may go only once, others return many times. Because the collec-

By

JILL McCracken

tive cannot afford to pay more workers to be at the centre fulltime, some women seeking help have to wait days for an appointment and some will slip away without being seen at all.

“In terms of numbers of women who have been and are being abused, those coming to us are in a minority,” says Vicki Munro.

Rape Crisis has four paid workers, two of whom work fulltime. The rest are volunteers and their services are free. Between them they provide a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week telephone counselling service, and at the centre during working hours they see women for face-to-face counselling.

They go to the homes of women in crisis if asked to do so. They provide education and information about rape and incest through their talks to schools, community groups, polytechnic students, and Government departments, and they are a resource centre for health professionals. They also prepare and distribute pamphlets and handouts about sexual abuse.

Although she has more work than she can handle, Vicki Munro is equally distressed about the work Rape Crisis is not doing, the women it is not seeing, the things that have to be left. “I think of the education days we could have, of renting a room somewhere in the suburbs so we

could be available for women who can’t get into the city,” she says. “It would be good to put all our knowledge together in a book, to see women in prison, to talk to more kids.”

The ideas are limitless, the time and resources available are not. Government funding for the two full-time workers ends next January. As yet, no alternative source of money has been found. The women have energy and will, they are trained well for their job, but the kind and the amount of work they do bums them out. Most stay, as workers, for only a year. The name, Rape Crisis, implies that the collective focuses on women in a crisis situation who have recently been raped. In fact, these cases are few. Eighty per cent of the work involves victims, or survivors, of incest.

“It’s only in the last few years that incest has been acknowledged as a reality in our society,” says Vicki Munro. “It’s as if it never happened before. Statistics confirm that one in every four girls is abused before she is 16. People find that difficult to believe.”

The term “survivor” is an important one for the collective. It believes that “victim” does not fairly describe the woman who has been abused. “While she has been ‘victimised’ this is not her total identity,” says the group’s latest annual report. “Victim” implies passive, a stereotypical view of women Rape Crisis wants to change. ' Despite that, Victoria Broome, herself ain incest survivor, believes that sexually abused women can remain victims for long periods after the abuse. Learning to attain some semblance of normality in one’s life, being able to survive, can mean a desperate struggle. The collective is active in setting up Incest Survivor groups for women who wish to share their experience with each other, to receive and give support, and to confront issues that are similar. Talking with someone who knows what it’s all about can make a great deal of difference to a woman’s ability to confront her own situation. One woman travelled 50 miles to the Rape Crisis Centre after having seen a number of professionals in the health field, none of whom talked about sexual abuse. "She knew that we would listen to her,” says Victoria Broome. “She said it was the first time she had been allowed to speak openly about her experience and how it affected her life without feeling bad or dirty or abnormal. She ; was able to cry from a sense of relief and not out of desperation.” “We are working hard to change the attitude of society towards rape and incest and the right of women to say ‘no’ to sex,” says Vicki Munro, “but so often it seems like we are getting nowhere. The trauma involved with sexual violence is still underrated by almost everyone.” It would be. easy for the group to feel bitter and hopeless. Instead it looks at the successes it does have, the talks it gives, and the positive response it does get. “We don’t have to deal with these kinds of things. We’d prefer it if there was no sexual violence. But it does exist and therefore we must exist,” says Vicki Munro.

“We’ve a feeling that society won’t actually realise how much it values what we do until we’re not there.” .