Samaritans and sex calls

[ahumanfemale]

Not a TAAT but I saw elsewhere multiple mentions of the abundance of sex calls that The Samaritans receives.

I used to volunteer for a similar helpline. It was abroad and for English-speaking people. We too had regular sex callers. All - ALL - would only talk to female volunteers. I thought it was because we were a small-scale charity and it was cheaper to call us than any 0800 equivalent. It wasn't until just now that I realised our helpline wasn't unique in this. And the majority of ours were either wearing women's clothes - or fantasising about it. The underwear of underage teens was also a feature. Some clearly got off on trying to make us uncomfortable. They didn't realise we weren't uncomfortable, just bored.

And honestly, I'm fucking angry. This needs to be publicised. There are LITERALLY men out think their wank is more important than people in severe distress getting help. They LITERALLY put having a wank above someone not committing suicide. There are enough of them that The Samaritans includes their calls in its training, as our training did too.

And people - women - think these men won't go into mixed sex changing rooms and won't get thrills from making women uncomfortable and won't use their conversations to wank to either in situ or later?

The policy at my helpline changed and we were able to put the phone down on them after confirming they weren't in distress (as in they kept wanking and talking out their fantasy or whatever, rather than respond to us). This was done because someone pointed out it was abusive to expect female volunteers to be wank-fodder. I've no idea what their policy is now or what The Samaritans' policy is.

I'm disgusted that this is so common. And fwiw, we never had female sex callers.

No the Samaritans office accepted callers at the door every day until 11pm. There were several cubicles.

BT - directory enquiries was (s?) free from phone boxes. Some numbers and second calls had to be given verbally.

Men would call knowing these things in order to maximise the time to wank before female operators could end the call.

Is there anything that deviant men will not use to get their kicks?

GCmiddle

Ffs. That's awful.

I had tended to think of these people as what we used to call heavy breathers. Asking raspingly what you're wearing, and getting down to it immediately. Not sitting there for a whole fucking hour while you invest yourself in the call.

That's disgustingly violating.

No, many Samaritans branches are open for face-to-face support as well. In my branch we had a visit room for this with live CCTV and another volunteer monitored the whole time, panic buttons etc.

The whole non-judgement, 100% confidentiality aspect of Samaritans is its strength and brilliance in my opinion. I actually left when they brought in new guidelines around safeguarding that I felt went against the original ethos of confidentiality the organisation, although that wasn’t the sole reason it was a big trigger. I think they had to, due to funding pressures etc.

I also developed excellent wanker-radar - some regulars I would recognise within a sentence or two - so my mentees tended to do well on that front as well! To be honest, the Samaritans active listening approach - no self-disclosure, focusing on feelings not facts, asking about emotional distress and how it is affecting you - when used ‘against’ a masturbator is quite effective at killing the mood and revealing what they are doing quite efficiently, and then you can just say “Samaritans cannot help you” and put the phone down. Have a biscuit and then move on to the next call where hopefully you can support someone in need.

Is there anything that deviant men will not use to get their kicks?
Apparently not. If suicide and rape crisis lines are open game, nothing is off limits.

I'm wondering if I should have posted this in AIBU. All these women who are happy to change next to random male strangers because their DF and DB abd DH are all wonderful simply have no idea...

My mum is was a Sam volunteer in the 1980's when I was little. When I was married she never went into a lot of detail but she said she used to get a lot of perverts in the phone lines

This thread has completely depressed me. I had no idea. :(

I think it’s been since time immemorial as well - chatting to my partner’s grandmother about her time working on a telephone exchange in the 50s/60s she said they’d get a lot of calls asking them about their underwear etc.

ahumanfemale I honestly think that some women are wilfully blind to this sort of thing. They have rationalised inappropriate male behaviour towards them as "part of life" (or led incredibly sheltered lives!) and simply do not want to accept how common this sort of thing is.

I wonder if the men calling these helplines to get their sexual kicks are the same men who sleaze on teenage girls on the bus, who shout sexual comments to schoolgirls on the street...? The same type who will set up camera in toilets and changing room? Or are there just so many different perversions ? I used t think of phone sex lines "ugh gross, but at least it keeps them off the streets! But does it? Or does it encourage them, and their behaviour escalates into real life anyway?

Either way - some of these fetish men will be next to women in gender neutral loos and changing rooms everywhere. Such a grim realisation.

I'm a current Sam volunteer, been doing it for about five years now. Like Cwentryth, I have a good radar for sex callers and could usually spot them within a few seconds. Without breaking any of the rules there are things you can say to let them know you're onto them ('What made you call Samaritans today?' is surprisingly effective), and then they usually hang up. But it does make me angry that these men misuse the service, and that we lose good female volunteers because, understandably, they don't want to deal with sex callers.

I think it's unfair to blame Samaritans, though - the Brenda line is a long time ago (from an era when all kinds of organisations were doing some very dodgy things), and certainly in our branch volunteers are encouraged and supported well - no-one thinks sex calls are reasonable or acceptable, and there's certainly no pressure in our branch to be nice to them when you end the call (I tend to say in very severe tones that they can call back any time if they're distressed and want to talk about it, but the helpline is not there for them to get their sexual kicks). Callers who make enough sex calls eventually get blocked (though then they start again with another number). But it's hard to see what the organisation could do to stop it: in our branch only about a third of the volunteers are men, and in any case it would be incredibly unfair on genuine male callers to treat all men as potential sex pests. (As things are, I think we probably hang up on some genuinely distressed men because their unhappiness happens to relate to their sex lives, but I think that's a price worth paying to protect female volunteers.)

I think the misuse of Samaritans is one aspect of a much wider problem, which is that society is too willing to accept that men are just like that. I'm amazed that there are so many men out there who think it's just fine to call a helpline for people who are feeling suicidal and tie up the line for twenty minutes if they get the luck to get an inexperienced volunteer who can't get rid of them.

Like another poster up thread I manned an office and phone through my University all night, and this was definitely a thing. Again it was written off as harmless in a way I hope it wouldn’t be today. As a Male/Man volunteer I obviously wasn’t what these callers were after, but it was very disempowering when a female volunteer had to field one of those calls and you sorta feel powerless. Not that it was about me, but it sucked.

I get the logic that procedures are in place to do the utmost to encourage genuine callers to be able to speak up and in their own time, but we mustn’t forget a duty towards the volunteers that give their own time and that these sorts of things can have an cumulative effect in grinding someone down.

I’d usually address it early on when working with a new volunteer (we had one Male and one Female on each night as a matter of policy) and offer to pick up the phone first and if it was a female caller offer to transfer to the female volunteer if preferred.

A friend of mine answered emergency calls - 999 - years ago and had tons of them then.

It's the one thing that would stop me volunteering for the Samaritans.

I remember years ago the Samaritans had a policy that the volunteer couldn't put the phone down first, which meant those guys could keep talking for hours. It's so abusive.

999 calls too

Unbelievable. Hope they get an absolute bollocking from the police? My friend's 4yr old dialled 999 and they sent a car round the next day to tell her off.

It’s important for me to say that in my branch , no woman is expected to acquiesce to any person. I am supported appropriately by other sams to have firm boundaries.

It is also worth pointing out that, for me anyway, being present to listen to every man woman and child caller who is in a time of crisis far outweighs the prevalence of male wankers.

Samaritans current training supports you to put down the phone. It is also bad practice to stay on a call for an extended period of time, even if the call is successful.

I work in an IVF clinic and get regular calls through our enquiry line from men wanking off/wanting to donate sperm and could we collect it whilst it's fresh/asking how to ejaculate inside their partner and could we talk them through it etc etc. Really pisses me off

But... I will also say I have received calls where men have tried to coerce me into helping them out in a, go on ye will, ye will kind of way.... but I’m so stressed it’ll help me sleep .... please????

A depressing but informative and balanced thread, thank you to the op and contributing posters.

My friend agrees childline gets adult sex calls from pervs. She says they hang up on them

I worked on a free to call BT service briefly about 20 years ago. (Directory Enquiries for the Blind and Disabled). We used to get men ringing up and trying to tell you about how they were wearing stockings etc.

I assumed they chose that number because it was free.

I am glad that policies these days are geared towards enabling volunteers, however, that's not even the point. It's not about the volunteers (who ultimately can, sadly, quit). Genuine callers don't have many, of any, alternatives.

Phone lines for SUICIDE, RAPE and EMERGENCY SERVICES get men calling to have a wank. And this is widespread, as my experience wasn't in the U.K. So there is a persistent trend amongst men - who knows what percentage, but considerable in proportion to the number of genuine callers - to prioritise their having a wank over potentially life saving assistance to others.

Someone might literally die so they can cum. This should be classed as one if the most deprived social acts there is - akin to wanking beside someone about to jump off a bridge. And they can't pretend not to know what Rape Crisis, The Samaritans, Childline and 999 are for.

ahumanfemale

I agree.

naive me was thinking because there were so many phone sex lines

Phone sex lines cost money. Sam's, emergency services etc are free.

"Phone sex lines cost money. Sam's, emergency services etc are free."
Plus, the sex line worker has 'consented'. I'd imagine quite a bit of their enjoyment is in the non-consent of the volunteers .

I suspect that the reason men phone all manner of places to wank during a call with a female is because they require the call to be unwanted.

It’s exactly the same as flashing. The thrill relies on the shock of the unwilling participant and it is known that flashers escalate to other sex crimes as the thrill impact lessons with repeated umm exposure.

So it is entirely predictable that the same men will go on to thrill seek in other ways that rely on the shock and unwillingness of their victims.