Media Release for immediate release

13 August 2012

Wellington Rape Crisis forced to cut services

Wellington Rape Crisis (WRC) is extremely disappointed to announce that, due to lack of funding, it is cutting services by 20 percent by closing its doors one day week.

Wellington Rape Crisis Agency Manager, Natalie Gousmett says “We have been providing free services to survivors of rape and sexual abuse and their support people for 35 years. Demand has doubled over the last year so we know how important it is that these services are available and accessible for every person affected by rape and sexual abuse”

“Wellington Rape Crisis costs around $300,000 a year to run and we only need to raise another $55,000 before April 2013 to break even. We provide extremely effective and efficient services that benefit the whole community. It would be a tragedy if that service were no longer available to people in the Wellington region”.

Neil[1], a father of a survivor and current client of Wellington Rape Crisis says “I was concerned about my daughter and felt I had nowhere else to go. Without the support and practical, appropriate guidance I received at Rape Crisis I would have been struggling personally”.

Wellington Rape Crisis is hoping the community will recognise the importance of the work we do and make donations either individually or from organisations to our Fundy page. WRC will be closed on Fridays from Friday 17 August 2012.

Ends


Note to editors
An estimated 1 in 4 women and 1 in 20 men in New Zealand will be victims of a sexual assault at some point in their lives.[2]
Wellington Rape Crisis provides free information, Social Work Support and Counselling to survivors of rape and sexual abuse and their support people. We also provide community education and primary prevention programmes.
In 2010-2011 WRC had 543 client contacts and in 2011-2012 WRC had 995 client contacts. In the same periods ongoing clients increased from 140 to 179[3].

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