SARSVL believes that all major cities should have Rape Crisis provision, services which whilst being unique and significant can also complement and work in partnership with existing services. Although the Yorkshire & Humber region currently has six centres affiliated to Rape Crisis (England & Wales), there has been no Rape Crisis service in Leeds for over seven years.

In November 2007, the End Violence Against Women campaign and the Equality & Human Rights Commission published their Map of Gaps,  a study of existing specialist services for women who have experienced violence and the geographical spread of those services across the UK. The report confirmed what those working within this specialist sector have known for some time – that such provision is patchy and that many women who have experienced violence are re-victimised by their subjection to a ‘postcode lottery’ when it comes to accessing appropriate support.

The research took into account a range of different provision including refuges, counselling services and self-help support groups, but perhaps some of the Map of Gaps’ most illuminating findings related to women’s specialist sexual violence services. The report found that just over one in five of Local Authority areas had a specialised voluntary or third sector sexual violence service and that less than one in four had any sexual violence service at all. Perhaps most shockingly, only five Local Authority areas in total could claim to have a diversity of sexual violence service provision (defined as three or more services). The report noted that:

“Unlike domestic violence, sexual violence support services have not been afforded strategic positioning in national and local policy until very recently… As a consequence, they are noticeably less widespread than for domestic violence and are even more fragile.”

Nowhere is this more evident than within the Rape Crisis sector, whose particular situation was highlighted not only by the Map of Gaps but also by the Women’s Resource Centre’s Crisis in Rape Crisis report, published in March 2008. Both studies make reference to the decline of this unique form of specialist women’s service provision.

In 1984, there were 64 Rape Crisis centres across England and Wales. By 2008, membership of the national umbrella body Rape Crisis (England & Wales) had dropped to 38 organisations.  2008 was the first year in a decade with no Rape Crisis centre closures.

Despite the bleak overall picture painted by the Map of Gaps, however, its authors commended nine areas that were found to have the most extensive service provision for women who have experienced violence. One of these areas was Sheffield, 30 miles from Leeds, and another was Bradford, right next door, which is currently leading the field in terms of well-resourced specialist women’s sexual violence provision.

As well as a helpline and face-to-face counselling service, Bradford Rape Crisis delivers a specialist project for black and Asian women (the Jyoti project); an outreach counselling service for refugee and asylum seeker women; a drop-in service for women involved in prostitution; and support work with inmates of Newhall Women’s Prison. They also offer advocacy and specialist training and have recently recruited to two new posts, an African-Caribbean Development Worker and an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor. They also chair Bradford’s multi-agency Violence Against Women forum. Crucial to BRC’s strength and success is the matrix of local mainstream funding that it receives.

With a population of over 760,000, Leeds is roughly 50% larger than Bradford. It is the second largest district in England, one of its largest centres for financial and legal services, and the largest settlement in West Yorkshire. Leeds is also one of the Yorkshire and Humber region’s major cultural centres. While Bradford should be commended for its levels of, and commitment to, specialist women’s sexual violence services, this is not to say that Leeds lacks services for women who’ve experienced violence – Leeds Women’s Aid, Sahara Black Women’s Refuge,  Jewish Women’s Aid, the Behind Closed Doors Project for women experiencing domestic violence in Otley and HALT Domestic Violence are all well-regarded local services. As well as this, Leeds Community Safety at Leeds City Council houses Leeds Inter-Agency Project or LIAP, who have been instrumental in the development and implementation of a multi-agency domestic violence strategy and whose specialist training in Working with Women Experiencing Violence from Men they Know is nationally recognised. Leeds’ Women’s Counselling and Therapy Service also offers individual and group therapeutic support to women on a range of topics including, according to its website, childhood sexual abuse.

Since the publication of Map of Gaps, the development of three new Sexual Assault Referral Centres (or SARCs) is underway across West Yorkshire, and, in light of this, it might reasonably be presumed that the local need for specialist sexual violence services has now been met. While SARCs are a potentially invaluable resource to some people who have experienced sexual violence, they cannot and are not designed to, meet the needs of all survivors. Where the SARC model works, it provides a safe, comfortable and unintimidating environment in which victims of sexual crimes can give police statements, undergo forensic medical examination, and have their immediate health needs met – a stark contrast to the unwelcoming police stations, long waits for medical attention and inadequate levels of care that those reporting sexual crimes have traditionally, and for far too long, been subjected to. It is also best practice to ensure that SARCs are accessible through self-referral and that those who use their facilities will not be pressurised into reporting their case to the police.

But, in practice, the geographical spread of SARCs often makes it difficult or unfeasible for victims to access them without the assistance of police transport, particularly at night. And perhaps more significantly, their close association with statutory authorities such as police and hospital trusts often make them unappealing to those who don’t want to report. As well as this, and importantly, SARCs are of little or no use or appeal to those who experienced sexual violence some time in the past, including the large numbers of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse who need and want support. Similarly, while best practice guidance dictates that SARCs should employ on-call Crisis Workers to meet the immediate emotional needs of victims, few Centres offer ongoing or long-term support or therapeutic services. Feedback suggests that survivors prefer not to return to the place where they received their forensic medical examination or gave their police statement, that is, a place they associate with trauma, for their counselling.

By contrast, research repeatedly shows that women put their trust in Rape Crisis when they are reluctant to rely on other services. For instance, a 2006 survey of Rape Crisis centres found that only between 5 and 10% of their service users had reported to the police. Through Home Office studies we know that 91% of women who are sexually assaulted tell no-one at the time, and that women are least likely to report sexual violence to the police when their attacker is known to them, as is the case for nearly 87% of such women.

In other words, though SARCs will hopefully provide gold standard services to those victims who access them, they are only able to minister to the minority, while Rape Crisis serves a huge number of women whose needs are not met anywhere else.

And one strong argument for how Rape Crisis is able to engage these women is its unique ethos. The Map of Gaps report describes it like this:

“Rape Crisis centres developed from grassroots activism to challenge the culture of disbelief and woman blame that suffused traditional responses to sexual crime. For over three decades, they have provided vital support not only for women recently assaulted but also for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse.”

And that grassroots activism that the Map refers to was, is, specifically feminist activism.

It is widely understood that when a woman approaches a Rape Crisis centre, often over the phone at first, she can expect, first and foremost, to be believed, to have her experiences and emotions validated and to be supported in her journey to regain the control over her own life and body that she feels was stolen from her by her abuser or attacker. She also knows that the services offered to her will be free, accessible and independent, and that she won’t be pressurised into taking particular decisions or courses of action.

But the other key thing, of course, which Rape Crisis services offer to women, and which we know through feedback and research is extremely highly valued by our service users, are women-centred services within a women-only safe space. It is now recognised on both a national and international level by, for example, the United Nations’ Committee for the Elimination of all Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),  and by the Government’s own Gender Equality Duty that gender-neutral services continually fail to meet the needs of women. Sexual violence, which is inextricable from violence against women, is both a cause and a consequence of persistent gender inequality and it is increasingly understood that we cannot hope to achieve substantive equality for women until we address these issues in a gender-specific way.

SARSVL believes it is now the best of times for establishing or re-establishing women’s specialist sexual violence services. If we look at Scotland, we see an integrated Violence Against Women strategy and £50,000 of mainstream core funding for each individual Rape Crisis centre per year, as well as Government funding for a national awareness-raising campaign and to support the ongoing development and maintenance of the Scottish Rape Crisis network.

Rape Crisis (England & Wales) are using CEDAW’s recommendations and the gender equality duty amongst other tools to push for no less for their network. Through this process, they also hope to encourage and support the development of new Rape Crisis centres so they can fill the map’s gaps and put an end to the postcode lottery. The latter can’t be achieved without the grassroots activism and energy that the Map of Gaps refers to, nor can it be sustained without the recognition and support, financial and otherwise, of health and other local statutory agencies, or that of partner agencies within the field of women’s services, but we believe that, in Leeds, for so long the heart of the UK feminist activist movement, these goals are realistic and attainable.

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