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.

Plus, the sex line worker has 'consented'. I'd imagine quite a bit of their enjoyment is in the non-consent of the volunteers .
Exactly.

I helped run a national helpline aimed at supporting new mothers (I wont give details as I am no longer involved). I helped develop a protocol to enable volunteers to ascertain whether the call was 'genuine' or not - we did have genuine fathers calling, and wanted to help them, so a male voice could not be sufficient to alert us.

Yes, we had male callers who were wanking, or who wanted to fantasise. They sometimes pretended to be women (with a deep voice, or a voice that sounded false) and wanted to discuss postnatal or pregnancy underwear, or some aspect of sex. Some would ask the volunteer personal questions.

We did not require our volunteers to continue with a call which made us feel even slightly uncomfortable or suspicious. I'm glad the Samaritans have adopted this policy, because I know of a couple of volunteers with Sams who stopped because of being required not to react and just to listen.

There are questions you can ask on most helplines to flush out the wankers and fantasists, and that's what we did.

I can't say we got hundreds of these callers, but probably every volunteer got the occasional one (I certainly did). It makes me so cross. I would say 'I'm sorry I don't think we are the service you need' and put the phone down. I really wanted to say 'get off the line you filthy selfish perv' but in fact that sort of reaction probably drives them wild, pathetic as they are.

I volunteered for the university student helpline ‘Nightline’ when I was a student 11 years ago - and we would get a lot of sex calls then. Some were really disturbing, especially for an 18 yr old, with not much training on them.
The worst part was that they sex callers clogged the line for genuine people in distress.

I wonder if men who don’t do this even know that it is a problem.

I wonder if men who don’t do this even know that it is a problem.
I guess not unless they've volunteered on a crisis line or been close to someone who has.

How is this not treated and reported as a crime, which it is.

Surely its very easy to track the caller, as the helpline has the callers numbers and can easily start to record a call and pass the whole lot over to the police?

Couldn't be a simpler and more evidenced way of securing a conviction.

If all helplines advertised this as part of their services as a warning, wouldn't it put off male callers who wanted to abuse the helplines. There are serious consequences for abusing 999 services, it should be the same across the board.

Its very sad that so many desperately needed volunteers have been harmed as a result of abuse under a service who's intent is support! then lost the volunteer to boot.

I am very sorry for any women who've had to walk away from offering support because of these men. They've done the right thing though in leaving and protecting themselves from those getting their rocks off on hurting women.

I am confused though that Samaritans is supposed to be anonymous and yet has callers numbers. It can't be both. One of its founding claims is anonymity, which does undoubtedly widen access to many who wouldn't otherwise call.

How does removing anonymity do anything but exclude some of the most desperate and vulnerable?

Another option is to patch a wanky caller straight through to male help! Female volunteer 'needs a break' pass to male, end of.

Are there any official comments from Samaritans?

It would be good to publicise it.

This thread is depressing. But it needs to be spoken about. I had a friend who worked on a Rape Crisis helpline and they had to I produce a blanket 'we dont take calls from men' policy because they were getting so many sex calls. Such a shame for all the genuine male survivors trying to get help

Userwhatevernumber

God that's reminded me that I volunteered for Nightline when I was at university in the 80s and exactly the same thing - men calling to talk about their underwear and insisting on talking to women. It was grim and never mentioned in trainings or meetings. We just had to put up with it or leave.

Never better use of tinkly little laugh and head tilt
.

Transfer caller to a recording message and/or male responder, and immediately take a real caller in genuine need.

Recordig machine (not message)

I wonder why they can't be prosecuted?

What I found disturbing was a teenage relative got a job in customer support for a large shoe company a couple of years ago. Instead of phone calls the caller had the option of video calls, I'm sure someone determined enough could have found the address for the call centre. I'm sure you all know shoe fetishists are all well known phenomenon and it is unbelievable a company should be putting a female employees is that position.

When I worked for the Samaritans there was a recognition that if these men were calling the Samaritans then it might be preventing them calling someone else/doing something even worse and therefore protecting other women.

Shouldn't any and every company has duty to protect their staff from abuse and mechanisms to record and report abusr direct to police.

Frankly, I just don't think those responsible are giving it the high profile it should have.

I think having a f2f is a great way of providing good customer service, but it should be balanced with recording of the callers face and speech which in the case of abuse is handed over to police.

This should be written into all caller transaction service provisions.

All these perverts seem to have a free rein to victimise women.

Its very alarming how widespread this seems to be.

There needs to be a FOI request publicised on the levels of male abuse on charity helplines that actually lose callers (and possibly lives) as a direct result.

The govt should legislate for this to protect women being targetted like this.

How come all these people know about this and those in power have never acted to change it?

Where I worked the numbers were masked. It was totally anonymous.

The idea that allowing men to do this on the helpline stopped them from getting their jollies with other women is abhorrent. Luckily it seems things have moved on since then!

No point publicising what is already widely known.

It's very common and Samaritans are taught during their training how to deal with sexual and abusive calls. Nobody has to stay on the phone to anyone, they can cut them off.

Incidentally it isn't just women who are subjected to that type of call, I have a friend who works for a charity with a helpline which he mans occasionally and he's had goodness knows what said to him.

I'm really glad they are allowed to cut them off. I hope they block their numbers too. Like someone else said, it shows a complete lack of empathy that men think their sexual pleasure is more important than someone's life.

The fact that women have to leave the Samaritans as a result of this is another tragedy, because lots of women would prefer to speak to another women when in distress, especially if they are experiencing domestic abuse or have been raped. By driving out the female volunteers you are also hurting women in distress who desperately want to speak to other women and get emotional support.

No point publicising what is already widely known.

Well it isn't. It needs publicising how prevalent this is.

Incidentally it isn't just women who are subjected to that type of call

Its already been said on the thread that women are specifically targetted, and men at Sams not getting them.

That some have experienced zero abuse to men whilst its been a regular occurrence to women.

Men don't phone men for this, they want to assert power through sexual dominance of women.

Did you read the thread?

Well this is a depressing thread. I had been living under the delusion that pervy men get their phone kicks from sex lines but of course I underestimated the special thrill these losers get from forcing sexual conversations on non-consenting women.

What is it about men and consent? This constant obsession with pushing women’s boundaries and forcing sexual encounters on women who don’t want it even though the whole of society is set up to satisfy male sexual whims already with an entire sex / porn industry focused on their pathetic wants and ‘needs’.

And then people say we’re bigoted for wanting space away from males.

What is it about men and consent? This constant obsession with pushing women’s boundaries and forcing sexual encounters on women who don’t want it even though the whole of society is set up to satisfy male sexual whims already with an entire sex / porn industry focused on their pathetic wants and ‘needs’.

And then people say we’re bigoted for wanting space away from males.

YY!!

Yes, I've noticed the same InionEile. It's all about boundary pushing.

I noticed it when I was on dating sites. I put photos up of myself covered up in jeans and shirts and still attracted creeps, abusers and misogynists who I would have expected to more go after the younger women in store revealing outfits. Granted they just mass message all women on there, but I realised after bad dates, that I was actually attracting abusive men by looking more covered up and less confident because I think unfortunately they like the idea of degrading women who are dressing in more covered up ways. I've worded this clumsily but hopefully it gets my point across, and that is that a lot of men seem to want to bring ALL women into their sex games - they don't like any of us being able to opt out.

This can also be seen by the way they put spy camera in public toilets then put it on porn sites, despite the fact there are surely millions of hours of actual porn on there and lots of porn actresses willing to film porn.

There seems to be something about involving unsuspecting women into sex games that appeals to them. It's extremely grim and we need more protection against it, not less.

Typo correction: *more revealing outfits, not 'store'

Inion, male Samaritans also receive obscene phone calls from women. That is a fact.

Inion, male Samaritans also receive obscene phone calls from women. That is a fact.

This is where statistics come in handy. I wonder how many men receive calls like this from women, compared to women receiving calls like this from men.

Anecdotally, just from discussion with other volunteers at my branch, women get the overwhelming majority of sex calls but men are more likely to get abusive calls of other kinds - people who are really angry and just want to yell at someone. We get more sex callers than abusive callers, though. Samaritans keeps statistics on numbers of sex calls, but I haven’t seen a breakdown by the sex of the volunteers taking the calls.

Someone asked upthread about anonymity. AFAIK, although individual volunteers can’t see the caller’s number and trace the call, the system has that capability and regional caller support can spot patterns and block callers- callers ring a single number and the calls are routed to branches that have a volunteer free to take the call.