Information for Survivors of Sexual Violence

Stories > Information for Victims/Survivors > Information for Survivors of Sexual Violence

Here you will find information on support services local to you and national helplines. There is information on support for both recent and historical sexual violence. You can find out how to report sexual violence. Finally, there is information on what happens during a criminal trial.

Cuan – The National DSGBV Agency also run the Always Here campaign to raise awareness of support services to victims of DSGBV. Go to Alwayshere.ie to learn more about that campaign.

There are many Rape Crisis Centres around Ireland that can help you. The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre runs a national 24-Hour Helpline which can be contacted on 1800 77 8888. Telephone counsellors are available to listen 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year and offer a free, confidential listening and support service for women and men who have been raped, sexually assaulted, sexually harassed or sexually abused at any time in their lives.

Here is a link to an interactive map where you can find your local service.

One in Four provides professional support to men and women who have experienced childhood sexual abuse. They can be contacted by telephone on 01 6624070 or by email at info@oneinfour.ie

If you are a member of the LGBT community and are a victim of interpersonal or sexual violence, then you can call the National LGBT Helpline on 1800 929 539 for help and support. You can also visit the following page for information on the helpline and other services.

Sexual violence can be defined as a range of non-consensual experiences, from non-contact experiences to non-consensual sexual intercourse. The word “violence” as a term is sometimes associated with the use of force, but it can also mean “having a marked or powerful effect” on someone, which includes actions or words that are intended to hurt people.

Sexual violence is any sexual act which takes place without freely given consent or where someone forces or manipulates someone else into unwanted sexual activity. These experiences may range from a teenager making their friend watch a pornographic video on their phone, to someone being persuaded to undress or pose in a sexually suggestive way for photographs as a child, to a young woman being made to touch another person’s genitals without her consent or a man being threatened to have sex.

Some types of sexual abuse include:

• rape / attempted rape
• assault by penetration
• child sexual abuse
• unwanted sexual touching
• sexual harassment
• forced watching
• indecent exposure

Sexual violence can be perpetrated by a complete stranger but is more often carried out by someone known and even trusted, such as a friend, colleague, family member, partner or ex-partner. Sexual violence can happen to anyone. No-one ever deserves or asks for it to happen.

There is no excuse for sexual violence – it can never be justified, it can never be explained away and there is no context in which it is valid, understandable or acceptable. Responsibility for any act of sexual violence always lies with its perpetrator.

If you have been raped or experienced any other kind of sexual violence, no matter where you were, what you were doing, what you were wearing, what you were saying, if you were drunk or under the influence of drugs, it was not your fault, and you did not deserve this.

Often people wonder if something that happened to them was sexual violence. Anything of a sexual nature that makes someone uncomfortable and happened without their consent is sexual violence. If you are unsure that something that happened to you was sexual violence, speak to someone about it. Ring the national helpline or a local rape crisis centre. They will not think you are wasting their time; they just want to help.

If you have been the victim of a rape or sexual assault in the last 7 days, you may attend a Sexual Assault Treatment Unit (SATU) with or without Garda accompaniment. SATUs are a safe place that you can go to receive medical care when you have or think you may have been raped or sexually assaulted. They look after all genders and gender identities, aged 14 years and over. If you’re under 14, you can get help at Child and Adolescent Forensic Medical Assessment Services.

Each member of staff in the unit has received specialised training to provide care and treatment to you in a respectful, person-centred, non-judgmental environment.

There are currently six SATUs in Ireland. They are in Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Mullingar and Waterford. The contact details for each unit are detailed here.

If you have been raped or sexually assaulted, you need to consider attending a SATU as soon as possible. You should consider doing this regardless of whether or not you wish to report the assault to An Garda Síochána. The idea of a physical examination may be distressing but seeking medical help is important. Injuries can be treated, you can be tested and treated for possible sexually transmitted infections (STIs), you can be offered emergency contraception and be advised of the availability of counselling.

When you are seeking medical help, you can call your nearest Rape Crisis Centre who can organise someone to attend a SATU with you to provide emotional support.

There are three options in a Sexual Assault Treatment Unit:

• receive medical care and attention only,
• receive medical care and attention and have forensic evidence gathered in the process and preserved, in case you wish to report to An Garda Síochána up to a year later, or
• receive medical care and attention, report to An Garda Síochána, and have forensic evidence taken.

The following information may be difficult to process if you have been recently assaulted, but it is important information to know in case you do wish to report what has happened to you.

• Washing yourself or the clothes you were wearing at the time of the assault could possibly destroy valuable forensic evidence.
• If you can avoid drinking anything after an assault that involved oral penetration, a swab can be taken. Forensic evidence can strengthen the possibility of successfully prosecuting the offender. It is understandable if a victim cannot follow this advice.

All incidents of sexual violence should be reported to An Garda Síochána. However, it is up to any person who has or is being assaulted to decide if they want to report the incident(s) of sexual violence or assault to An Garda Síochána.

Without committing yourself to anything, you can ring your nearest Rape Crisis Centre and you will be offered non-judgmental support, a listening ear and information. Rape Crisis Centres have trained volunteers to accompany you to the Sexual Assault Treatment Unit, the Garda Station and or to court, if you wish. The centre is a useful port of call at any stage, whatever you decide to do. Their services are for women and men.

You can call your local Rape Crisis Centre or the Rape Crisis Helpline (1800 77 88 88) for advice.

It is important to realise that the trauma of an attack will have both short-term and long-term effects on your life. Expert support in examining and dealing with these effects is your right.

Contact with others who acknowledge and understand your experience and how it has affected you will break the isolation you may feel.

What you can expect from counselling

Counselling gives you time and space to explore your feelings. The aim in counselling is to help you to reach your full potential, so that your experience of sexual violence no longer controls or overwhelms your life, behaviour and choices.

The counsellor is a professional, so you do not need to protect her or him from the intensity of your feelings or the details of your trauma, as you might feel you need to do with family members or friends you confide in.

You can see a counsellor in a Rape Crisis Centre even if you do not report to the police or go for a medical examination. It does not matter how long ago the assault happened.

How long will counselling last?

The pace of healing is different for each individual. It is affected by such things as the duration and intensity of the sexual violence, your relationship to the person who assaulted you, previous traumatic experiences and the degree of support you have outside of the counselling setting.

You may be with a Rape Crisis Centre for 6 sessions or 60. People often begin with weekly sessions and then spread out the time between sessions as they become better able to manage on their own.

Will you see the same counsellor all the time?

Yes. The first time you go to a Rape Crisis Centre, a counsellor will explain how they work. After that introductory session, the counsellor assigned to you will contact you and normally work with you for as long as you need.

Will counselling help you forget?

What counselling hopes to achieve is that the event becomes something which no longer takes over or controls your day-to-day life. Forgetting sexual violence is not a realistic or even desirable goal of counselling.

You may find that, in the course of counselling, you begin to develop positive aspects of yourself that have lain hidden or under-developed. Counselling will help you to understand that what you are experiencing is a normal reaction to an abnormal event. This does not in any way minimise the range and intensity of your feelings but reaffirms your normality in the context of what has happened to you.

The information in this section has been adapted, with thanks, from material by Rape Crisis Ireland.

If you are a victim of, or witness to a sexual crime or child abuse we would urge you to report this to An Garda Síochána. You can do this by the following methods:

• Call 112/999 For An Garda Síochána in the case of an emergency. Examples of emergencies are a danger to life; risk of serious injury; crime in progress or about to happen; offender still at scene or has just left.
• Child Sexual Abuse Freephone Complaints of child abuse can be made over the phone and in a confidential manner to An Garda Síochána 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to 1800 555 222.
• Call your local Garda Station or report in person You can also contact your local Garda station in person or by telephone. Details of all Garda stations are available here. You may call to the Garda station accompanied by a friend or a support worker from one of the many victim support groups.

An Garda Síochána recognise the emotional and physical pain that victims of sexual crime and child abuse may be suffering. This suffering can often be to such an extent that victims feel that they cannot report the crime to An Garda Síochána. The Gardaí acknowledge this difficulty for victims, but encourage all victims of sexual crime and child abuse to make a complaint to An Garda Síochána to ensure that, where possible, the perpetrator is made accountable.

If you report, you will be assured that:

• it is the duty of An Garda Síochána to investigate fully all reports of sexual crime and child abuse, without exception. Your report will be treated seriously;
• Gardaí are trained to investigate your report in a compassionate, sensitive and professional manner. Every effort will be made to have a Garda of the gender of your choice allocated to the investigation. Every division of An Garda Síochána now has a specialised trained unit for the investigation of sexual violence, human trafficking, child abuse and domestic abuse. These are called Divisional Protective Support Units and the officers working in them have received specialist training on, among other this, engaging with victims of these crimes;
• complaints of sexual crime and child abuse are recorded on the Garda Síochána PULSE computer system but access is restricted to personnel involved in the investigation and supervisors;
• you will be given the contact details of the investigating Garda and kept updated on the progress of the Garda investigation on a regular basis. You will be provided with the PULSE Incident Number relating to your complaint;
• you will be provided with details of available support services relevant to the crime that you report;
• you may be accompanied by a solicitor and or another person of your choice when engaging with An Garda Síochána. You may also be provided with other special protective measures such as specially trained interviewers and or an interpreter, depending on your circumstances;
• An Garda Síochána will communicate and work with Tusla The Child and Family Agency where any child protection concerns arise;
• when the investigation is complete, an investigation file must be forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions;
• the rights of all parties involved in the investigation will be vindicated.

More information on reporting sexual crime can be found here.

If a decision is made to prosecute the person who committed a crime against you, you may be asked to be a witness in the Court Case against the perpetrator. Click here for information on what to expect from the Courts Process.

Rape Crisis staff can accompany you at any stage of the trial process- before, during and after court hearings. You can contact your local Rape Crisis Centre and trained staff or volunteers will organise to attend at court hearings with you. Whatever the outcome of your case supports services will remain available to you for as long as needed and in any future developments such a parole hearing or release of a perpetrator.

The Rape Crisis Network of Ireland have produced a detailed guide to the legal process for survivors of sexual violence.

The Victims Charter is an important resource to help victims of crime understand the rights that are offered to them under Irish Law. The Charter also describes the Criminal Justice System so that you can understand what to expect. It has a whole section dedicated to victims of sexual violence which you can find at https://www.victimscharter.ie/support-reporting/sexual-violence-victim-information/.