By Stephanie Roper
SYDNEY — The NSW health system is failing to meet the needs of a large group of women. One in three to four women will have been sexually assaulted by the time that they turn 18. Yet there is only one specialised service for adult women survivors of child sexual assault in the state.
That service, located at Dympna House, is itself grossly underfunded and cannot meet the demand on it. Staff at Dympna House say it is reaching crisis point.
The women's services sector has asked the NSW Labor government, and previous governments, to extend the services available to adult survivors, but to date it has been ignored.
Women who have survived child sexual assault can have numerous physical and mental health problems, including depression, self-harm and suicidal tendencies, and gastrointestinal problems. They make up the largest group of women presenting at women's health centres, and community and mental health services.
Workers in the field estimate that 70% of women seeking treatment for drug and alcohol problems (and up to 91% of young women) experienced sexual assault as children. It is also estimated that 70% of women who attend the emergency wards at major psychiatric hospitals were sexually assaulted as children. It has been documented many times that women in corrective services have experienced sexual abuse.
In a survey completed in 1998 by NSW Health, many workers in these services said they felt ill-equipped to deal with sexual abuse issues. The survey also found that the demand for skilled and relevant counselling was so huge that when it was available at all, only a small number of sessions could be offered to adult survivors.
In the last year, hospital-based sexual assault services in NSW have been forced to refuse services to adult survivors, or to inform the women that they may have to wait for one to two years for counselling because the large number of recent sexual assault cases absorb all the available services.
Adult survivors find that they are referred from one service to another in a vain effort to find appropriate and affordable care. Helen Young from Dympna House says, "It is a societal crime that these women have to crawl around looking for help".
The lack of services also means that survivors are unable to receive appropriate information and professional care. This has had disastrous consequences for some women who, having spoken about their abuse, have not been believed by the health worker, or have been told that they are "attention seeking", or have themselves to blame for the abuse. Having had their feelings of guilt and shame reinforced, these women have few options for professional support.
Some adult survivors have been told by health services staff that they must not talk about their abuse because the staff are untrained to deal with such issues, or because that service deals only with a particular medical problem, such as addiction. Many adult survivors have simply been medicated to numb the feelings associated with their abuse.
The women's services sector has been forced to present economic rationalist arguments for more adult survivors' services. Meanwhile, the human cost of denying services to survivors of sexual assault is ignored by a state government which persistently ignores both women's needs and the prevalence of child sexual assault in this society.
[Stephanie Roper works with survivors of sexual assault. She is an active feminist and the Democratic Socialists' candidate for the NSW seat of Strathfield in the March 27 state election.]