Helena worked as an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA). ISVAs support survivors of sexual violence to access the support they need, help them communicate with the police and guide them through the criminal justice system. (You can find out more about the sort of support ISVAs provide by clicking here). Much of Helena’s work as an ISVA involved her acting as a buffer, protecting the people she supported from the full force of the uncertainty that can come from navigating the criminal justice system. Holding this kind of prolonged uncertainty with her clients has made Helena experienced at identifying and managing risk with great sensitivity. Helena now works in research. Since moving on from her ISVA roles, she has understood how the accumulative effect of holding multiple uncertainties as an ISVA changed her own perception of risk.
Helena describes herself as someone whose journey through life hasn’t been clearly planned. She has ended up somewhere quite different from where she thought she would be 10 years ago but is lucky to have found jobs that made a meaningful change to people’s lives and that she has enjoyed.
You’re fighting a system that is
very difficult to work within
‘An ISVA is a role that was set up in around 2005 after a government review realised that the people reporting sexual violence to the police were often being completely failed. Very often they were not believed. Reports were not taken forward or people were being re-traumatised by the experience of reporting to the police. The recommendation from that report was to provide support from advocates or advisors to people who report sexual violence to the police, who are not employed by the police – who were independent. So that’s where ISVAs came from. Now they are all over the country. They are run by independent organisations mostly. Where I worked was a charity and we worked very closely with the police. A big part of what we did was supporting people who wanted to report to the police.’
‘Being an ISVA involved a lot of things really. A big part of it is talking to survivors and providing advice and support around what decisions they want to make after some form of sexual violence – which could have happened at any point, recently or a long time ago. You meet with the person and talk to them about their options. We talk about approaching the police and about seeking support and counselling. We also talk about support for them at work if they are needing time off and support around how to talk to family members and friends if they feel they need to. For a lot of people, you discuss these things in the beginning, and if they do want to report to the police then you support them through that process as well. I think the longest person I supported was about 5 and a half years to go through that process. So, you get to know people really well in that time, supporting them through something that is really difficult. Numerous people described going through the criminal justice system as something they feel will be harder to get over than the assault itself. The system is still just completely set up to not give survivors any control or really help them to feel believed. As hard as you work as an ISVA, you’re fighting a system that is very difficult to work within and very archaic. If the person you’re supporting reports to the police, a lot of an ISVA’s role will be about advocacy, supporting people to understand the police process, going with them to interviews or to court and supporting them after sentencing hearings.’
There’s always a possibility
that you can’t prepare
somebody for
‘At the beginning, you have a conversation with the person about what they want to get out of the process and why they might report to the police. A lot of people say they think it’s just the right thing to do and they don’t care about how it ends up. But a lot of people say it’s because they want justice and that they want to take the person who assaulted them to court. Something like, I can’t remember exactly, but it’s about 5% of cases that end up in court. So, their case is most likely going to get closed before it reaches court. It’s part of an ISVA’s role to prepare people for that.’
‘Seeking justice through the criminal justice system is a really long process. You have no control over how long it will take or what the outcome will be. At each stage the police can’t give you any information really about which way it’s going to go next. You’re not really able to prepare yourself for the next stage, you’re just waiting to hear an update and that update could be something you hadn’t even considered could happen. It’s very, very unpredictable. As an ISVA, you try to prepare people for all the different outcomes you can think of, but there’s always something you haven’t thought of. One example is: in court, usually a jury would say, “Guilty,” or, “Not guilty.” A very rare outcome is a jury says that they can’t make a unanimous decision so there has to be a re-trial. So, you prepare people for that outcome. Then there’s also the possibility that on the last day of the trial a jury member goes off sick or something and can’t come back and the trial has to start again and they have to give evidence again. There are so many things that could happen. There’s always a possibility that you can’t prepare somebody for.’
Sometimes you feel like a bit of a
buffer between the risk and uncertainty
of navigating the criminal justice system
and the person you are supporting
‘As an ISVA sometimes you feel like a bit of a buffer between the risk and uncertainty that comes with navigating the criminal justice system and the person you are supporting. It’s a hard position to be in sometimes because you are an independent advocate for that person. Your sole purpose is to ensure that they have the information and support that they need. Sometimes in order to do that, you find yourself in this sort of situation where you’re getting information from the police that the person you’re supporting isn’t. The police may say to you, “Can you please not pass that on to the person you’re supporting yet.” But they’ve told you because they know you need to know that information in order to manage the risk. I struggled with that sometimes - that grey area of having to withhold information and making sure I wasn’t colluding with a system over the person I was meant to be an advocate for. This comes up a lot around safeguarding issues. I had a particularly difficult case once. It was a child abuse case. The police had suspicions around the mother’s involvement in the case. Information was being shared with me and the social worker and it was really hard because I was supporting the mother and the child. It was very difficult because I didn’t know what information the police had to make them think that the mother was involved. It changes the way you think of somebody. It changes the way that you are with them too. That middle ground position can be really hard. But a lot of the time, an ISVA being that risk and uncertainty buffer really helps because you know where the case might be going, and you can help to plan for that.’
People are searching for something
with an uncertainty about what they
are actually searching for
‘I also try to explore the term “Justice” with people. Sometimes I think people are looking for something when they don’t really know what it is. Someone might want justice, but when they get to court and get a conviction, it’s absolutely devastating for them. Sometimes they feel all this guilt, or the sentence was a lot higher than they thought it would be. There’s some sort of closure that people want, but actually, the ability of the criminal justice system to deliver that is really questionable. Sometimes, people are searching for something with an uncertainty about what they are actually searching for. It’s got a lot of parallels with the dynamics of consent, and with power and control – all of those things that are big parts of what the trauma survivors have experienced in the first place.’
‘I think we need different options in terms of justice. There’s some research about what people’s view on justice is after they have experienced these kinds of things. For some people, it’s trying to turn it into something positive and living their lives to the fullest. To some that feels like the best outcome, so there needs to be more support for people to do that. It’s not always about criminal prosecutions. At the moment we don’t have fair access nationally to the kinds of services where people can explore those kinds of thoughts and feelings together with other people and work out what they want. Restorative justice has been explored as an option and a lot of people who have reported an offence by a friend or someone they have known closely have said that’s an option that they would like to consider. (Restorative justice brings survivors and those responsible for the crime into communication, enabling everyone involved to play a part in finding a positive way to move forward and heal). But that’s not something that is made very accessible to many people. There should be more options for people other than prosecution which would just end up in nothing or a 10-year prosecution. There’s no middle ground. If the prosecution fails then people can be like, ”I’ve tried to get justice and justice has failed me,” and that can be really debilitating.’
The criminal justice system was
not built with survivors in mind
‘The criminal justice system was not built with survivors in mind. It was built with convicting people who have committed crimes in mind. I think over the last 15 years the needs of survivors have been acknowledged and improved upon. There are loads of things in place now that make it better than it was, but you’re still tweaking and changing a system that ultimately has the potential to retraumatise people. The system itself is set up in such an old-fashioned way. Power dynamics and hierarchy is all really ingrained in the police system and the court system. With the burden of proof being that the prosecution has to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that something happened, means that in sexual offence cases, the survivor’s evidence is always the main part of the evidence. The burden of proof is all on them. It’s all on how they come across and what they say in court. In the way the system is set up currently, the way that the defence barristers question people is really important to the outcome of the trial. So, they do certain things, and question in certain ways because they know how the jury’s minds work. All of that is driven by, “What is going to get my defendant off.” They also have to do what they see as giving both sides fair representation – they have to grill the prosecution witnesses as hard as the defence witnesses. For good reason within the system we have, but ultimately that system is not set up for survivors.’
I think we need to turn the criminal
justice system upside down in terms
of sexual violence cases
‘There have been a lot of improvements and that needs to be recognised and acknowledged. There’s still a hell of a long way to go. I think we need to turn the criminal justice system upside down in terms of sexual violence cases. I personally don’t think it’s possible to have a judge and jury system and put survivors’ needs at the centre of things. The jury system is quite flawed when dealing with this type of crime, because it’s a type of crime where there’s a lot of stigma and a lot of preconceptions about what people’s reactions are going to be like. So, you either challenge that with more expert witnesses, like experts in trauma, and people that can explain why someone didn’t run away, or punch someone in the face. It never happens the way people think it “should” happen. How people think someone “should” react in that situation is just not how people react. People do stuff to survive. People stay in abusive relationships because they can’t see any safe way out. There’s lots of different things that are used against different people’s accounts in court. The barristers know that society doesn’t understand it as a crime, so jury members are easily persuadable. A lot of different things could help even out this power imbalance. Maybe having a panel of expert prosecutors that make decisions around a case based on the evidence, rather than juries. Survivors not having to physically go to court as well.’
Holding risk and uncertainty with
the people you’re supporting
impacts on your personal life
‘As an ISVA, holding risk and uncertainty with the people you’re supporting impacts on your personal life. A big part of working in that field is trying to be the person that can cope rather than the person that can’t cope. It changes your whole perception of the world. I started to feel risk personally. I didn’t feel so in control of my own mind anymore. I felt like I’d lost some sort of control around my emotional wellbeing and I didn’t know how to get that back, because I didn’t feel there was the right support system in place to help me do that. During that time in my life, I’d do a lot of things that I don’t do anymore, like being quite paranoid. Maybe paranoid is a harsh way to look at it because I think it’s almost sensible really. For example, if I was taking my friend’s kids to a play area I would be constantly looking round. I was hypervigilant. A while ago I remember going for a run. I saw a man behind a tree. He was having a wee! But, to myself, I was like, “It’s a flasher! It’s a flasher!” My first reaction was that he was some sort of sexual offender. Whereas for other people, that thought might cross your mind but it’s not so much of a red-light response that you feel like a sudden alert system in your body is being triggered off. It’s sad because I’ve talked to friends from the ISVA team I used to work in, and we’ve all had similar experiences. We’ve only shared that with each other since we’ve come out of the job. When you’ve got clinical group supervision (a type of therapeutic group support service where professionals are able to debrief with other experienced professionals in the same field) as an ISVA, you’re so busy telling yourself that you are ok that you don’t really see that you might be struggling. It’s hard to recognise that when everyone you’re working with is going through something similar and is a little bit paranoid because of it. The type of clinical supervision we had as ISVAs was really unhelpful because it almost normalised all of our reactions, which wasn’t healthy.’
You’re constantly weighing up
how society understands risk in
relation to different types of abuse
‘Risk and uncertainty are two things that are definitely prominently in your mind when you are working as an ISVA. You’re constantly weighing up how society understands risk in relation to different types of abuse: How it’s presented by society and in the news, and how that really doesn’t click right with people’s experiences of abuse and the uncertainty that people can feel afterwards. I wouldn’t be able to describe in a nutshell about what doesn’t click, but there’s a lot of aspects to that that we don’t understand. We put responsibility in the wrong place. We don’t know enough about why people do what they do and about what we could do, as a society to change people’s behaviours.’
We need to talk about
how we value each other
‘I think there needs to be a shift in responsibility, so that instead of asking people to protect themselves from risk, we ask people to respect each other. I feel like things are definitely moving in the right direction, but everyone needs to be onboard and understand it. It’s just so ingrained into the way women are seen. I know that it’s not just women that are affected by sexual violence, but a big part of why this all happens is gendered. It’s about gender and it’s about power and control generally. I think that a lot of the people that I have supported wouldn’t identify with the kind of political movements like #MeToo and Reclaim the Night and a lot of the public discourse surrounding this. Some women that I supported shocked me sometimes by saying stuff that was really victim blaming about other people. People made comments like, “I need you to know that I am not one of those women who make all this up all the time. It did actually happen to me.” It’s quite challenging to find a response to that comment, but as an example, that’s how ingrained it is. Even when someone has experienced something like this themselves, you can still hold those views. Some people still hold those views and blame women and think that the survivor holds the responsibility for it not happening in the first place. So, it’s good these conversations are happening, but I’m just quite pessimistic from the work I have done about how much needs to change. It’s beyond talking about abuse even. We need to talk about how we value each other.’
We have to do more to support
people who do these things to
recognise what they are doing
‘We have to do more to support people who do these things to recognise what they are doing. We need to get their friends and family members to point out what they are doing and to challenge them and support them to change – rather than seeing people who do this kind of thing as an alien, non-human in a dark alley. Without taking away from the severity of the survivor’s experience, we need to reduce the stigma around perpetrators, so men can acknowledge and change their behaviour. I know I am talking in very gendered terms here, but this issue spans all genders. There’s even less research and less awareness surrounding trans people and sexual violence, and they face even more stigma and risk of violence.’
Vulnerable to what?
‘Vulnerable is a word that seems to be being used more and more. A lot of people who use it to label people, don’t really share the same definition. I remember numerous times when I was supporting people with learning disabilities or mental health difficulties, they would say things like, “Because I’m a vulnerable person.” Someone had told them they were a vulnerable person without much explanation about what that means. It’s quite a label, I think. Vulnerable to what? It’s used in lots of different contexts as well, by different professionals in different ways. For an adult, it’s a legal, safeguarding term. But a lot of other professionals use it just as a general, “Oh, they’re quite vulnerable.” It’s quite minimising for people to use that word about somebody. Vulnerable to abuse is the way that people would use it in my kind of work. But there’s lots of other ways you can be vulnerable – vulnerable to exploitation or vulnerable to different health conditions. I don’t like the term. It’s not particularly helpful.’
‘I think labelling people as “vulnerable” has a massive impact on how much agency other people see them as having. I think it can be used as a term to explain why you are making decisions for somebody or legitimise why somebody should be treated differently. Very often that’s done in quite a minimising way. Very often people can make decisions for themselves, they might just need the information explained to them in a different way or a little more time to go through that information with them.’
Links to Support Services
The Survivors Trust
The Survivors Trust is an ’umbrella agency’ for rape, sexual violence and childhood sexual abuse support services throughout the UK and Ireland. This means they provide a detailed directory of different support services for the impact of rape, sexual violence and childhood sexual abuse, including national helplines.
Click here for their website
Phone - 0808 801 0818
Email - info@thesurvivorstrust.org
Rape Crisis England & Wales
(For people who identify as women or girls).
Rape Crisis England & Wales is a feminist organisation which promotes the needs rights of women and girls who have experienced sexual violence. They provide a directory of Rape Crisis services for women and girls which are run by women. They also provide information specifically for people who have experienced sexual harassment.
Click here for their website
Phone - 0808 802 9999 (between 12 noon - 2.30pm and 7 - 9.30pm every day)
Email - rcewinfo@rapecrisis.org.uk
Galop
The LGBT+ anti-violence charity, it supports LGBTQ people who have experienced sexual violence, hate crimes or domestic abuse. They can support you if you have problems with the police or criminal justice system and you can anonymously report hate incidents.
Click here for their website
Phone number – 0800 999 5428
Email – help@galop.org.uk
Mind
A national mental health charity which provides information and support.
Click here for their website
Phone number - 0300 123 3393
Text - 86463
Email - info@mind.org.uk
Samaritans
Samaritans run a free, 24-hour helpline to those struggling with their mental health.
Click here for their website
Phone number - 116 123
