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Tag Archive for: Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust
In these moments it is okay to feel hopeless, helpless, vulnerable and angry. The past week has highlighted horrific incidents of violence against women. People have expressed their rage, helplessness and hopelessness at the situation and rightly so. Many of us are experiencing moral fatigue on social issues in South Africa and globally.
In many ways it is easy for me to think that I am in charge of my own health. It is my body after all. If I want to be healthy then I can learn what it means to eat healthy foods and make an effort to eat those healthy foods. I can learn why […]
The Rape Survivors Justice Campaign (RSJC) and its coalition partners intend to hold government accountable for the promised roll out of specialised sexual offences courts. These courts are specialised in offering the right kind of support to rape survivors when they need it most, and it is this factor that we believe is key to […]
On the 28 of March a group of would be writers gathered at the Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education to attend the second in a series of workshops hosted by Rape Crisis in order to learn about writing on the topic of rape. The workshop was facilitated by Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust Director Kathleen […]
People exposed to sexual violence often feel that their lives have changed forever and that they will never come to terms with the trauma they have suffered. They believe they will never again be free to trust other people, especially those who resemble the person who violated them. The many myths surrounding sexual violence only […]
It is estimated that 40% of South African women will be raped in their lifetime and only 8.6% of rape perpetrators are convicted. Unfortunately, most people believe these rapes only occur in dark alleyways by hooded strangers. Rape Crisis’ new campaign reveals that the truth is a lot closer to home. 68% of rape survivors […]
By Robyn Raymond
On paper, it’s relatively easy to counsel. Rape Crisis and other counselling courses teach that the main components of effective counselling include active listening, observational skills, body language, counsellor self-awareness and empathy. All of these skills allow for the opening up of a field of healing – a space where the client is the central focus and as a counsellor, you become a facilitator of healing in this safe space.
The difficult part of counselling comes in the form of having to manage your responses to the pain people offer you to hold for them. The number one question I am asked is ‘that must be so heavy. How do you deal with that?’ well, Rape Crisis had us trudge through our own hurts, our histories, our responses and our triggers, to essentially build a protective barrier. This boundary acts and looks like a stronger version of ourselves so that we are solid when the bricks of another’s identity try to intercept our foundational truth. Those bricks are heavy, and they tend to fly in from nowhere, unannounced.
As I walked into the Rape Crisis office on my first day, I felt out of place, unqualified, and unsure of how I had come to be here, thousands of miles away from home. I had stumbled upon this internship through my university’s website and jumped at the chance for such an experience. I had few to no expectations as to how everything would actually work out. But as I met staff who welcomed me and introduced themselves, those anxious feelings started to dissipate.
Having finished my first year at university as a media studies major, I was hoping to see how the words in my textbook could be applied. Within my major, I focus on advocacy and change which explores how media can be most effectively utilized to create social development and growth. While I have spent ample time reading about topics such as the importance of appealing to a certain audience or the ethics of communication, I was curious to see how these topics would be implemented in a real setting.