Trigger warning: Discussions of rape, sexual violence and sexual abuse. In this episode, Rachel and Fraser, helpline co-ordinators, talk about their roles on the The Survivors Trust's national helpline, and what you can expect if you are thinking of making a call. For more information about our helpline, please visit The Survivors Trust website. If you are affected by sexual violence or abuse, or any of the topics raised in this episode, you can contact The Survivors Trust national helpline for free, confidential advice on: 08088 010818.
Trigger warning: Discussions of rape, sexual violence and sexual abuse. In this episode, Rachel and Fraser, helpline co-ordinators, talk about their roles on the The Survivors Trust's national helpline, and what you can expect if you are thinking of making a call. For more information about our helpline, please visit The Survivors Trust website. If you are affected by sexual violence or abuse, or any of the topics raised in this episode, you can contact The Survivors Trust national helpline for free, confidential advice on: 08088 010818.
[00:00]
Intro music.
[00:10]
Claudia: Hello and welcome to Survivor Sounds, The Survivors Trust podcast.
This podcast discusses topics related to rape, sexual violence, and sexual abuse. If you find this topic triggering, please stop listening now. You can always revisit the podcast another time.
The Survivors Trust helpline is available for anyone affected by rape, sexual violence, or sexual abuse, including victims and survivors, their friends and family, and the professionals who support them.
In this episode we meet Rachel and Fraser, our helpline co-ordinators, who explain more about the helpline and what to expect if you make a call.
If you are affected by anything we’re discussing today, we would really recommend getting in touch with someone who can give you specialist advice. You can call The Survivors Trust helpline on 0808 801 0818 or find details about other organisations and helplines at thesurvivorstrust.org.
Over to the helpline team.
[01:11]
Rachel: Hi, so I’m Rachel, I’m the helpline co-ordinator. Day-to-day that means looking after the helpline, the callers, the call handlers, day-to-day management of the helpline.
[01:21]
Fraser: And my name is Fraser, I work as the out-of-hours helpline co-ordinator, so I work alongside Rachel, organising the helpline, working on the helpline, and coming up with strategies to help callers and give the best service that we possibly can.
[01:36]
Rachel: What we do is provide emotional support, information, and advice to anyone who calls us. It’s a free, confidential service. It’s really important to clarify that emotional support isn’t counselling. So, while we are here for you and we are that confidential listening space for you to explore how you are feeling, it isn’t counselling, and you will speak to whoever answers the phone rather than one specific person each time you call. So, it is different, but we believe it is still hugely beneficial, and many survivors that we speak to really feel the difference after speaking to one of our call handlers. Even just for 15, 20 minutes, it can make such a difference.
We support any survivor of sexual abuse, but also their supportive family, friends, partners, and professionals who are working with them. We understand that trying to support someone who has been through a traumatic experience such as sexual violence and sexual abuse can be really difficult. It can be hard to know what to say and how to help them, so we are here for you as well to provide emotional support and also information.
[02:46]
Fraser: And just remembering that as friends, families, partners, and even professionals working with survivors of sexual abuse, that everyone experiences sexual abuse differently. It’s such a specific thing to that person, to their way of surviving, to their way of responding to trauma.
[03:03]
Rachel: A lot of survivors that we do speak to on the phone, as well as friends, family and professionals, they do often say that it really helps to speak to someone. Because that person that they’ve spoken to is completely detached from their lives and their situation, so they can just have a very honest and frank conversation with the call handler, and it really helps people to emotionally offload. A lot of callers also say that it helps them realise that they’re not alone in the way that they feel.
Any survivor that has experienced sexual abuse at any point in their life can find it to be a very isolating experience, and it can feel incredibly lonely to go through day-to-day living with that trauma present, and I think our call handlers will be able to reassure you that we speak to a lot of people that are very similar to you and have very similar experiences in terms of perhaps having flashbacks or being unable to attend work, or perhaps being unable to go out and meet friends. And all of these things are very normal, and I think it is actually very reassuring sometimes to know that it is not just you that feels that way, so I think that can be really reassuring to speak that through with someone and just have them reassure you and remind you that you are not alone going through whatever it is that is happening at that point in time.
[04:20]
Fraser: I think it was you, actually, that said to me, Rachel, that you’re having a very normal reaction to something very abnormal that has happened to you. I think that is so important to get across to people, and that is something that has always stuck with me, and that is something that I always try to get across to callers. Because it’s just such a great piece of advice. Sexual violence should never happen, but they way you are reacting to it is perfectly normal.
[04:43]
Rachel: I completely agree, and I think it’s really important to remember that whether someone has experienced abuse recently, or whether it’s non-recent, and that can be, you know, 10, 20, 30 years ago, the impact on their day-to-day life can still be huge, and that can really affect, you know, work, if they’re in education it can affect education, it can also affect relationships, and their general stability, and so it is really important that we’re here for everyone who has experienced sexual abuse, no matter when it was, no matter what it was, any experience can be incredibly traumatic and difficult. There is no better or worse case with sexual abuse, so we are here for everyone, no matter when it happened.
[05:27]
Fraser: Our job is to, really, remind people of their humanity within the situation. You can feel like everything has been taken from you and you lose your sense of trust, your sense of confidence, and that’s really where we come in, and our member agencies come in, to provide support for you, and to really encourage you, and to, sort of, try to regain that confidence and trust in the world, because there is good out there, and that is important to remember.
[05:58]
Rachel: We really want to encourage people to reach out if they are having a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad month. We are here, and we really want to support you and empower you to move forward in the way that you wish.
[06:11]
Fraser: I think especially with the past year and the pandemic situation, it’s brought up a lot more challenges for survivors, and these are survivors who have really benefitted from our helpline, I believe, because their normal support services, their normal groups that they might go and see for support, they might have certain activities that they do every week, you know, it’s all been screeched to a halt. So, it’s really helpful for our service to make sure that we can be there for people. We have callers who… this may be their only human interaction during the day because of the isolation that Covid-19 has brought about.
[06:53]
Rachel: We are a free, confidential service, and we are, of course, non-judgemental, so we’re here to listen to you, whatever is going on. We do have safeguarding policies, however, so there are a couple of reasons why we might have to breach confidentiality. We would always inform you if we are doing that. If we believe that anyone is a risk to themselves or others, and that risk is immediate, then we would try and help you by contacting, perhaps, friends, family, GP, or the emergency services. Of course, we would tell you if we were doing that, and we would try and ask you the best way we can help you in that moment, but that is the only time that we would breach confidentiality.
[07:35]
Fraser: So, when you call our helpline, you will be greeted by a pre-recorded message that will say: “You’re being connected to one of our helpline advisors.” It will come through, then, to one of our helpline team, and you will be greeted, saying: “Hello, welcome to The Survivors Trust,” or however the call handler chooses to welcome you. At that moment you can absolutely take your time. There is no rush to speak, we are here to work on your terms. If you don’t feel like you can say anything for five minutes, that is okay, and we are here, and we will support you when you are able to speak. If you do call and it becomes very emotional and you begin to feel like you’re not in control of the situation, you’re perfectly welcome to hang up and call back when you are feeling in a place that you can speak about it more.
You know, baby steps really do make a difference in this process. For you to call, test the waters, even just to hear what it sounds like for someone to say: “Hi, welcome to The Survivors Trust, how can I help you?”, that is a start, and again something to be proud of, because we’re not going to be upset if you hang up at the point. We just want to make sure you are as comfortable as possible, and you can get the most out of this service that we’re offering you.
[08:56]
Rachel: It’s really important just to make sure you know, as well, that you never have to tell us what happened to you, so you never have to tell us anything that you don’t want to, and you don’t feel comfortable with. You are absolutely welcome to ring us and just tell us that you’re having a bad day, and we can talk that through, and talk about how you’re feeling. There’s never a need for you to explain what happened, and we know that that can be very triggering for a lot of people.
It’s also just really important that anyone calling knows that they don’t need to give their name or any details about themselves, or anyone else involved in their situation, whether that’s friends, family, perpetrator… there’s no need at all to give any names. So, you can remain completely anonymous when you call us. If that is how you prefer to speak with us then we completely respect that and understand that, so please never feel like you have to give any information at all about who you are or where you are calling from.
[09:46]
Fraser: Absolutely, and if there is a certain way that you want to be addressed, or if you want to give a pseudonym, please feel free, that is absolutely your choice, like Rachel said. We just want you to be comfortable and make sure that you are happy using the service.
[10:05]
Rachel: So, another way that we can help when you do phone us is, we can obviously provide emotional support over the phone, and you are welcome to call us whenever you want to, but we can also have a look for local support for you, because a lot of people find it really beneficial to attend counselling or access some face-to-face support. There are, for some services, quite long waiting lists at the moment, so while you’re waiting you are more than welcome to call us, but we can look at things like counselling, group work, and also if you’re looking to, perhaps, contact the police in terms of what had happened to you, then it can be really beneficial to contact and ISVA, which is an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor, and we’d be more than happy to look into finding someone local who can provide that service to you. We have member agencies throughout the UK, so we just need to know whereabouts you are, and we can look up that information and get you in touch with them.
[11:00]
Fraser: Another service that we can provide on the helpline is signposting you to a SARC. A SARC is a Sexual Assault Referral Centre. That is usually for a more immediate need following a sexual assault. They can help you through the forensic DNA retrieval. If you do choose to report, that can be very good evidence for you to use as well.
[11:24]
Rachel: If it’s something that we feel that we aren’t best placed to support with, we’ll help you in finding an agency that perhaps might be better placed to provide you with support at that time, so it might be that you’ve experienced domestic violence, in which case we would think that there might be better agencies that are best placed to offer you the support that you need, because that isn’t an area that we specialise in. We can help signpost you and find information of local services that can help you in whichever way you need.
[11:53]
Fraser: So, any details within the call are kept absolutely confidential between The Survivors Trust helpline team. As soon as that information is no longer of use following your call, that is erased and cannot be accessed. We make sure to run a very tight ship about policy and procedure to make sure that your information is your information, and no one else is entitled to it.
We have different call handlers from all around the UK, all different walks of lives, all different ages, genders, sexualities… We’re a very diverse team in terms of experience. We feel that puts us in a really strong position to make sure that we can support you with whatever you are calling about.
If you do manage to call our service and the line is busy, or if it is not within our opening hours, you will be directed to our voicemail service where you are more than welcome to leave a message and a number on which we can call you, and we will call you back as soon as possible.
[12:56]
Rachel: We understand that it can be really hard to call and speak to someone over the phone, especially someone that you’ve never met, and you don’t know. We try our best to encourage everyone to just take their time, and as we’ve said before, tell us as much or as little as you like about yourself and how you’re feeling, and also what happened to you.
If, perhaps, speaking over the phone isn’t easy for you, we do also offer emotional support and information over our email service, which is answered by the same helpline team. The email address for that is helpline@thesurvivorstrust.org. And that inbox is monitored seven days a week, but it can take us, sometimes, a few days to reply. So it won’t be an instant response, but we will still give you the same level of emotional support and as much information as we can when we do respond to you.
[13:49]
Fraser: What’s quite unique about our service is that we don’t have a limit on how many times you can call and the length of calls that you can have. We will work with you until the call comes naturally to a conclusion. Like we keep saying, you know, we want to make sure that you are in control, you feel supported, and that you get benefit from calling our helpline, because that is what our helpline is there for.
I just think it is so important as well that anyone thinking about calling the helpline, or not knowing whether they should call the helpline, is that even having the thought and knowing that the helpline is there is something to be really proud of. As a survivor of any kind of sexual assault, you have done just that, you have survived, and you have survived something that no one should ever go through. So, to look for support, to call, to speak about it, to not speak about it, and to live through it in any way you choose is incredibly strong, and is something to be proud of, because you have survived.
[14:51]
Rachel: Thank you so much for listening to us. I really hope that if you are thinking of getting in touch and reaching out that you feel more comfortable doing so. We are here for you, and we believe you.
[15:03]
Fraser: Thank you, everyone, for listening. It has been great having you along with us today. We hope that this has been really informative for you and that yourself, or someone else who may benefit from calling our helpline, that you can pass this on. Because there is a place for everyone to be listened to, and we really want to support you.
[15:22]
Claudia: We hope you found this episode useful. If you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to us on social media or by email. You can direct emails to: info@thesurvivorstrust.org.
Thanks again for listening, and we look forward to talking to you soon.
[15:40]
Outro music.