On a Sunday evening in April 1989 Constance McCullagh picked up the phone and rang her local Rape Crisis centre.
The day before, she had been on the way to see friends when, without warning, her mind was “swamped”, as she puts it, with memories of abuse she’d suffered as a child. “My blue ruffled swimming costume, father’s trunks, the sand dunes, pain . . . I felt like I was cracking up. Many women do.” She dialled Rape Crisis for help.
“I had always assumed that Rape Crisis was there for the immediate aftermath of rape, not to provide help years later,” she says. “In fact, a significant proportion of calls are made by women like me who were abused when they were children, often by men in their families.” She found a service that listened, understood, and gave her the help she so desperately needed. “It would be impossible to overstate how much of a difference Rape Crisis made to me and my recovery.”
According to the British Crime Survey 2001, it is estimated that 300,000 women are raped or subjected to a serious sexual assault every year; one in four women have experienced rape or attempted rape; and nearly a third of children, mostly girls, experience some form of sexual abuse. Sexual violence devastates whole families. Yet conviction rates have plummeted from 33 per cent in the 1970s to roughly 5 per cent now.
Because women know conviction rates are so poor, and often fear that they will find themselves, in effect, in the dock, they often decide not to seek justice through the courts.
Many, like Constance, bury their experiences, only to find them re-emerging weeks, months, even years later. They can suffer depression and flashbacks, as well as being prone to self-harm and sub stance abuse. In short, rape can have a long-term impact on mental health.
If women seek help at this very low point, the chances are they will call Rape Crisis. Sadly, if they live in England and Wales, it is more than likely that they will find themselves talking to an answering machine. If they have the energy to persist, they may have to wait three months, or longer in some areas, for an appointment.
The number of Rape Crisis centres in England and Wales has nearly halved in number, from 68 to 38 since 1984, and they now have a combined waiting list of 5.3 years. On 18 March, The Crisis in Rape Crisis: A Survey of Rape Crisis (England and Wales) Centres was launched which detailed just how dire the situation is.
“Services for women and girls experiencing sexual violence are being decimated under Labour,” says the campaigner and journalist Beatrix Campbell. “Ministers acknowledge that violence against women is both a cause and consequence of women’s inequality, and yet the women’s sector is being taken apart, piece by piece. The gap between what they know and what they do could not be more eloquent. It is an expression of the discrimination that tolerates sexual violence against women in the first place.”
The story is rather different north of the border. In Scotland, Rape Crisis centres have historically been very poorly resourced. But in 2004, the Labour MSP Margaret Curran, then communities minister, listened to Rape Crisis Scotland and went ahead with a package of funding for a Rape Crisis Specific Fund, plus resources for a Scotland-wide Rape Crisis helpline.
Proper, secure funding for Rape Crisis in England and Wales would cost the government just £6m. With this money, closures could be reversed and Rape Crisis centres could start opening again. At newstatesman.com, over the past two weeks, we have been running a campaign to press for this funding. We have built a coalition that includes politicians from across the political divide, groups such as the Fawcett Society, End Violence Against Women and, of course, Rape Crisis. There is an early-day motion in the House of Commons tabled by Lynne Featherstone MP, and if you go to the Downing Street website (https://petitions.pm.gov.uk/RapeCrisis/) there is an e-petition to sign.
We have been running articles from politicians including Barbara Follett, Theresa May and Margaret Curran, as well as Beatrix Campbell, Professor Liz Kelly, Professor Joanna Bourke, Dr Nicole Westmarland and, of course, Constance McCullagh, telling her extraordinary story of survival.
As a society, we do precious little for victims of sexual violence. So please write to your MP urging them to sign the EDM, and add your name to our e-petition. Help us to persuade the government that these services are not only vital but, properly funded, they would make a fantastic legacy for Labour.
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