500 signatures reached
To: Rt Hon Mike Penning MP & Rt Hon Theresa May MP
Support for victims of sexual abuse
Dear Mike Penning and Theresa May,
Please ensure victims of sexual abuse have access to specialist support by permanently funding more independent sexual violence advisers (ISVA's).
The role of an ISVA is to make sure that victims of sexual abuse have the best advice they need; from sourcing counselling and support services available to them, guidance on the process involved in reporting the crime to the police and taking their case through the criminal justice process if they choose to do so.
Why is this important?
Based on data from the ‘Crime Survey for England and Wales’ around 473,000 adults were victims of sexual offences (around 404,000 females and 72,000 males) on average per year from 2009-2012 (Sexual Offending in England and Wales, 2013).
90% of victims of the most serious sexual offences reported they knew the perpetrator, yet only 15 per cent of victims of such offences said that they had reported it to the police. Stating that it was ‘embarrassing’, they ‘didn’t think the police could do much to help’, that the incident was ‘too trivial or not worth reporting’, or that they saw it as a ‘private/family matter and not police business’.
We must learn from the tragic case of Frances Andrade, who tragically died at her home in Guildford, Surrey in January 2013, just a week after giving evidence in court about historical sexual abuse by her former choirmaster.
Her husband, Levine Andrade, 59, found his wife, known as Fran, dead at 8am on 24 January last year. He said, "Apart from the trial bringing it all back up she felt the defence barrister seemed to be attacking her personally.
"It got her completely down and she felt completely defenceless. I think she felt she was not prepared enough for the trial. She was not expecting to be attacked personally and have to answer so many direct questions in public.
Much more needs to be done to provide and promote professional high-quality support services to help victims move on with their lives. Only when victims have sufficient support can they make the choice to go through the criminal justice system. More importantly victims must have sufficient professional support to endure the often lengthy and protracted court process.
In the policy 'Ending violence against women and girls in the UK' it stated that the government would part-fund 87 independent sexual violence advisers and pledging £1.2 million for 3 years from 2012 to improve services. The problem is this funding will end in 2015 and 87 part-funded ISVA's are far from adequate for the number of victims we have in the UK.
We need to put this on the public and government agenda before the next elections.
