Rape Crisis, as part of its Making Change programme, intends to hold government accountable for the promise of specialised sexual offences courts. We believe these courts are key to increasing reporting rates and conviction rates for rape, while decreasing the secondary victimisation of rape survivors. We recently introduced some of our volunteers and community members from […]
If you are a woman in Cape Town you must feel very vulnerable. The recent spate of rapes and rape homicides that have struck at the heart of several quite diverse communities shows that there is no place safer for women than any other. You could be running in the Tokai forest, or close to […]
I live less than a five minute drive away from where Franziska Blöchliger was raped and murdered. I drove past Tokai forest on the day that it happened. I saw security personnel gathered around the entrance near to where her body was found. By the following day it was in the news. As I watched the […]
Whether you are a crisis counsellor working with survivors full time, a friend of someone who has been traumatised, or are simply overwhelmed by the mass of terrible realities that filter through your newsfeed every day, you are vulnerable to vicarious traumatisation (VT). What is Vicarious Traumatisation? VT is a stress reaction experienced by those […]
Last week #RapeatUCT, a mass meeting hosted by UCT Survivors, brought students and staff members together to unpack the university’s systemic rape culture. The meeting was in response to the four incidents of rape that occurred around the Rhodes Memorial area from December 2015 to February 2016. On the 6th of February UCT management sent […]
February is an infamous month with respect to the perpetration of violence against women in South Africa. This February marks three years since Anene Booysen, a 17 year old girl from a rural town in the Western Cape, was raped, disemboweled and left for dead. This February also marks three years since the death of […]
At the end of last year, we went door to door in Khayelitsha to find out what the community thinks about rape, how they are being affected by it, and what they think we can do to address it. We spoke to a total of 492 residents from Endlovini (89), Harare (102), Ilitha Park (123), Nkanini […]
There was one fourteenth of February that I went out to see a musical by myself, I had totally forgotten that it was Valentines Day. At that stage I was not in a romantic relationship. I must also add that even when I am in a romantic relationship I don’t care to celebrate it because I […]
My story begins when I was just four years of age – yes I remember a lot of things since that young age. I was not yet in crèche and the family friend took care of me. A man sexually abused me daily by laying me on the small bed and flipping through a porn […]