How to Support Survivors

     

If someone you´re close to has been sexually assaulted you may feel:

• Helpless
• Angry
• Sad
• Why them?                                 

You most probably will want to do ‘the right thing´.  These are some ideas that can help you to support the survivor in your life to deal with the crisis of sexual assault.  You will also have your own feelings to cope with and it may help you to work through these emotions.  Your reactions are important.  The attitudes and, actions of those closest to the survivor whom has been sexually assaulted will influence how they will deal with it.

Many survivors who have been raped do not react to the sexual aspects of the crime, but instead they react to the terror and fear involved.  Often an immediate reaction of the survivor is "I could have been killed".  Probably the best way to understand their feelings is to try to remember or imagine a situation where you felt powerless and afraid.  You may remember feeling very alone, fearful, and needing comfort.

Above all a person who has been sexually assaulted needs:

• To be listened to
• To decide for themself how to deal with the assault 
• To be believed

Imagine that you are jogging in a park when suddenly five men jump you, beat you and force you to participate in oral sex with some of them while the rest violate you anally.  They leave you battered and semiconscious.  Somehow you manage to drag yourself to a friend´s house nearby.  You are in shock.  You cannot believe the attack took place.  You cannot quite believe you survived it. 

Do you need your friend to lecture you on the foolishness of jogging alone in the park? Hardly.  You will probably spend a good long time kicking yourself for not escaping the attack.  Do you need your friend to accuse you of having invited the assault?  Certainly not. If anything, you might wonder how anyone who knew you well could even ask such a question.  Do you need your friend to berate themselves for not being along to protect you?  No, you probably want them to attend to you and not get side tracked by their own imagined shortcomings.  Do you need them to load his shotgun and bound out the door swearing vengeance.  No, you have just finished dealing with a ´gang´ of violence-crazed men - who needs another one?  Did you need them to grab you and rush you off to the police station and demand that the police take pictures of your anus?  Clearly not.