Male or female, if you have been the target of a rapist, paedophile or other type of sexual predator you will know the pain and often-constant shadow of inner fear that walks with you. People who are close to you may try to help – they have not walked your path or experienced your pain, how can they be expected to fully understand. It is not their fault. Neither is it yours.

It is so essential for you to know that you can heal; you really are worth more than you might think you are right now and you can live a fulfilling and healthy life. No-one can change or take away what has happened, however with the right kind of help you can change how you react – levelling out the power balance between you and the perpetrator/s.

If you are not able to travel to our service, or choose not to engage with us, we can put you in touch with a specific organisation or professional individual who can. We can source books and information material on your behalf or point you in the right direction of where you can get what you are looking for.

There is no need to deal with this on your own, unless you want to, there really is help out there but you have to ask for it – ask us – we may be able to assist - some is free and some is not, some organisations are run completely voluntarily whilst others are independent and private.

Whichever path you decide to take now can shape your outlook and scale of happiness, you are the main ingredient to your future, what some people might see as being selfish in seeking assistance for yourself is actually more about ‘keeping yourself safe’ and getting the control back that has been taken away.

Maybe, when the time is right for you, just take your time, go ahead and do what feels right for you – make your own decisions about your healing and recovery. Trained professionals will never make you feel worthless, they will never judge you or tell you what to do. Remember that every single one of us is unique!

Survival from a therapy perspective

There are several ways of working with a person who has been the target of the trauma of rape and/or sexual violence. Recognition that each client, service user or patient is unique and will respond differently is key in the initial stages of assistance. Therefore it is crucial to be able to identify which intervention will suit which individual.

For many years now, collectively, the professional staff that represent a diverse set of backgrounds and experience at Jigsaw have personally worked with hundreds of victims of rape and or sexual violence; our metaphoric tool bags have started with general, post trauma counselling skills and visual relaxation techniques.

In the early days we realised that there had to be a more effective way to work with the consequences of rape that would allow individuals to reclaim the power that they had taken away from them and to rebuild their lives in the best way for them. Today each of our ‘tool bags’ is quite full and we continue to top them up in the form of compulsory CPD (Continued Professional Development).

Bearing in mind that each of us is unique, work is always carefully adapted to match the client’s specific need. The interventions that have been shown to be effective for working with survivors of rape and/or sexual violence are as follows:

• Critical Incident Debriefing (CID)
• Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR)
• Post Trauma Counselling
• VK Association or Rewind Technique
• Relaxation and/or Visualisation
• Hypnotherapy
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Trauma of Rape

Rape can be a painful and threatening event in a person’s life, the unexpectedness of which cannot be readily incorporated emotionally. The physiological effect of the trauma of rape is sometimes called psycho trauma.

Written by Sue J Daniels
© Sue J Daniels 2009