No rape and abuse charities anymore in the Highlands..Thanks Scottish Gov!!

[MerlinScot]

Hello everybody,

First, I hope I'm posting this in the right place. If that's not the case, I ask to admins and mods on mumsnet.com to move the thread where they think it'll fit properly.

Second, I received very bad news this morning. As very few of you already know, I suffered an ordeal after an ordeal due to the fact I reported rape after being raped multiple times by my ex boyfriend.
I was also denied any kind of counselling and therapy everywhere because, in few words there are no rape crisis centres from Aberdeen to the northest point of Scotland. So no therapy groups, no face-to-face counselling, nothing. Our only way to deal with abuse and rape is to phone or email these charities, sometimes to get some visits, not very often though because the few volunteers can't cope with all the people who are asking for help.
Now they want to strip us of the only chance we have to recover from what happened to us.

From October, any raped and abused woman in this area won't have any help and support because the Scottish Government, cutting 50% of these charities funding, will force them to close down. For people who are not familiar with Scotland's geography, the area of Scotland that'll be left without any support is about 10.316 square miles, an area as big as the whole US state of Massachusetts.

So I think it was good to open a petition in their favour. I post the link in case you'd like to sign it:
www.change.org/petitions/scottish-government-stop- cutting-the-50-of-funding-to-rape-and-abuse-charities

It's very important that we keep getting help and support from them because there are no official counselling services in the Highlands provided by NHS.
In few words, from October onwards, if we need support we'll have to pay for it, using private counselling and therapy.

That also means that nobody will do it (economy is very poor up here, mainly agriculture and tourism) and that will also cut down the rape reports.
Maybe that's how Scottish Government wants to solve the problem that there are only 3% of convictions after rape trials. It's worth noticing that only 10% of the rape reports gets to a trial.
Well, easily done... NO rape reports, NO hassle to convict rapists!

Thanks for your attention ladies.

Merl xx

That's good news Merlin. Many voluntary organisations are struggling with public sector budgets stretched and more competition for dwindling grants from trusts and foundations, and a decrease in the level of donations from the public (not surprising when financial times are hard.)

Cupcake78, this area in underfunded because it's deemed "not necessary".
Rape is an underreported crime and victims are rarely believed. If they're rarely believed... why all these centres to cure something that never happened?

Kritiq, I had a chat with the volunteer coordinator at Rasane, they need a huge amount of money to keep it open and the donation process is going slow. I know they're organising few charity events in Aberdeenshire, I hope they'll be able to collect enough donations to save the charity.