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.

Hanging up the phone isn’t enough. The criminal violation has already taken place and the woman volunteer has already been harmed.

Yes, exactly. These calls are intrinsically abusive. I have said to colleagues within Samaritans that, if a man acted in such a way in any other setting, I would immediately call the police, so why should my boundaries disappear the moment I assume the role of Samaritan?!

Hang on, let me rephrase that so as to be clear... It's not true that Samaritans demand female volunteers abandon their boundaries, in fact we're encouraging to end sex calls as quickly as possible. But I think there certainly is a failure to recognise the potential and actual harm that these calls cause to volunteers. The problem is typically seen as twofold: 1. They block the lines so suicidal callers cannot get through, and 2. They cause female volunteers to leave, and so the surface becomes further under-resourced.

I worked for CL about 20 years ago. At that time it was particularly difficult to "trace a call". But we were very much supported and encouraged to end calls that we thought were being made by adults. So much easier when your client base is supposed to be children. If we were at all suspicious we would raise a hand and a supervisor would listen in for a few seconds and give you the nod to terminate the call.

Samaritans has historically been a rather closed organisation, and it was founded quite a long time ago now, in the 1950s. The tides of modernity are only just reaching its shores. For example, it was only a year or so ago that Samaritans developed a procedure for safeguarding. It was done reluctantly and in the face of much internal opposition. I believe Private Eye reported on the furore.

Cultural phenomena such as '# Me Too" have had minimal impact as far as I can see. At the branch where I volunteer, a young woman was sexually harassed and subjected to unwanted touching by a long-standing, and hitherto highly respected Samaritan who was supposed to be mentoring her. When she reported it, and produced evidence of what had been going on in the form of incriminating texts and emails, he took a voluntary leave of absence, only to return a few months later as though nothing had happened.

A different young woman was scheduled to work alone with him overnight, and was warned of his past behaviour by another volunteer, who was then contacted by the Directorate and told that unless she stopped talking about what had happened, she would be asked to leave.

This is so shocking. Another charity that I shall never give money to.

Is anything sacred when it comes to male sexuality?

Good god I had no idea! My mum used to volunteer with the Samaritans and I have called them myself in one particularly low occasion. I've worked in switchboards and emergency control centres and I have never had a sex call, I must have been lucky. Or maybe this wasn't prevalent 20 years ago?

The ‘no judgement, 100% confidental’ stance, I strongly feel, was fundamental to me being able to properly support actively suicidal callers (and every other caller in genuine distress as well). I wasn’t there to stop them, or persuade them otherwise, if they wanted to end their lives I respected those feelings, and listened to their thoughts and emotions around it. I would stay on the line until they were unable to reply and for a good deal of time afterward, we were there for them, no matter what. The vast majority of the time the active listening, Sam approach allows people the space to express these thoughts and emotions and they no longer wish to end their life right in that moment, they are able to talk themselves out of it. If they had the same conversation with someone they knew, or the mental health crisis team etc, there’d be all sorts of reactions to manage and actions taken - with Sams, they remain in control of the situation, they know there will be no consequence to them expressing these suicidal thoughts, unless they want there to be.*

Upholding the confidentiality & non-judgement stance for me is about being there for those people in such severe distress they are planning to end their lives. If we end that, we risk stopping people we could help from calling us. I even feel uncomfortable with some of the posts discussing the content of sex calls in this thread (they’re all really common tropes though, none of them unique, I think vols & ex-vols have mostly been careful to avoid specifics) - but it does rankle against the training.

I think there have been some really interesting wider philosophical points raised. Personally, I never felt violated or harmed, I respect that others have though. When I was on the phone as a Sam, it wasn’t about me - nothing was personal to
me, it was all about the caller. Many volunteers don’t even use their own names. So I never felt involved in a sex call - it was all on them, and I mostly felt pity/mild annoyance, nothing stronger than that.

Clearly the Samaritan approach is wide open to abuse - I cannot, however, see any practical way forward to stop sex calls that wouldn’t ultimately damage the service for genuine callers. I’m not sure what calls for FOI requests or journalistic investigations would practically do, apart from put genuine callers off the service. No one calling Sams in severe emotional distress wants to feel like the listener is trying to second guess whether they are a pervert or not.

*(For non-Sams - if people wanted medical help, they were encouraged to end the call and phone 999 - we would call 999 on a callers behalf under certain circumstances, although that is also open to abuse. I am aware now with the new safeguarding framework that if callers disclose certain identifying details then that may be acted on without their consent in some specific circumstances - perhaps a current Sam can comment more on this).

A relative was a Samaritan in the 80s and 90s. Cross dressers made up a HUGE proportion of her calls; she was quite baffled by the whole thing. All they talked about was the desire to be their "real self" and she felt quite sorry for them. Except, she added, it was "definitely a sex thing and some of them sounded like they were playing with themselves"

So it's not new. But how lovely that they're now allowed bring their fetish everywhere in the name of "progress".

I've called the Samaritans a few times and found them brilliant. I'm not sure i'd still be here/ relatively sane otherwise. Looking back they must have been grateful to speak to a genuine caller in distress rather than someone trying to rope them in to their paraphilia without their consent.

I think they could easily take an approach that meant as soon as the call wandered into wank fantasy territory they said something like "that's outside my remit I'm afraid and if you continue I'll have to end the call. Please call back if you have a genuine concern in future."

But then I'm a hard hearted bitch who doesn't really care about the suicides of child molesters or rapists as long as they don't involve innocent bystanders.

May I ask those who have worked for Sams what you think of my suggestion that the service be sex-segregated (as could be justified under the Equality Act given what this thread is revealing) so that women volunteers take calls only from women and men take all calls from men (but also from women if there is capacity). Curious to know if it would help and would be practicable.

@Ruffle. That’s the approach they do take.

@Antibles. I don’t think it would work and wouldn’t want to stay a vol if it became the policy. There are lots of genuine male callers (most are genuine, I’d say) who are helped by talking to female vols, and vice versa. Plus there isn’t always a volunteer of a specific gender available to take a call. And it’s not always possible to identify someone’s gender from their voice - how would we segregate it?

I started my helpline ‘career’ with Nightline and we were trained extensively to spot these callers. Even then in the early 2000s I remember reading research about it from two specific angles:

1. Whether the sexualised calls were a form of fetish that could escalate - if I remember rightly there was some evidence it could lead to flashing, stalking and assault and the advice then was not to engage as it could encourage escalation

1. The impact on female caller takers where research showed a similar response to women who had been assaulted in some way - anxiety, avoidance etc

I now run a women only helpline (ironically under threat of closure and having to crowdfund to try and survive) and we literally never get these calls.

I volunteered for Samaritans years ago, and yes, many sex calls.
The worst is when you dont realise until they grunt, but also you cant just put the phone down necessarily if youre not sure whether it is or not, as people do call up about abuse etc, and you wouldnt necessarily imagine theyre describing a fantasy.

Sam's have the means to track calls, record and report them, otherwise, exactoy what would be the pibt of the reports and how could they be blocked.

There is deception going on, to the public and workers. The only ones happy are the wankers.

The wankers can just phone back.

Its the ultimate emotional blackmail isn't it. I will abuse a child if you hang up, or losing lives if money is lost to support the lifeline as a result of withdrawing funding because of the wankers and abuse the line itself self-generates.

If the Samaritans took the policy that they would trace, and report these calls to the police, they would stop virtually overnight. Someone upthread said she worked for the emergency services and didn't get these kind of calls - perverts aren't going to call there - they'd literally be reporting themselves to the police!

It's not true that Samaritans demand female volunteers abandon their boundaries, in fact we're encouraging to end sex calls as quickly as possible.

Your boundaries have already been abandoned by the fact that you're put in the position to field these calls in the first place. They aren't inevitable. If the men who do this knew they faced a strong risk of prosecution , they wouldn't do it. Instead they get confidentiality and no judgement. Even the woman Samaritan hanging up the phone will give them a cheap thrill because it's a reaction.

Of course there's nothing stopping Samaritan volunteers from calling the police themselves when this happens. The charity's ethos doesn't override the law. A crime has still been committed.

It's all very well saying sams are trained to hang up when they realise it's a sex call. I was there a year Very very rarely did i spot a sex caller until it was too late. It was always men, never ever women, and I'd say 90% of the sex calls were trans men. That was at the start of the trans juggernaught and we were told to respect them with their high pitched voices, talking about underwear and fantasies of being caught. Of course, it's all taken a massive surge forward now and i doubt these calls would be allowed to be deemed to be sex calls any more!

Sams have always resisted any changes, even when suicidal people called and every single ounce of your being wants to help you have to step back and keep asking the caller 'so how do you plan to kill yourself' in accordance with the script. Even when its clear the caller is in two minds. The whole experience took a mental toll on my health.

we were told to respect them with their high pitched voices, talking about underwear and fantasies of being caught

You were instructed to indulge men's fetishes? Men who were literally getting off because they were making you, a woman, listen to their sexual fantasies and violating you and your boundaries?

This really is disgusting, and horrifyingly eye-opening. I had no idea.

Couldn't agree more with the last few posts. Sams are letting their female volunteers down. If the pervs knew that ther calls would be traced and reported for malicious communications/sexual harassment/whatever - they would STOP doing it.

The police manage to chase up women telling the truth about biological sex on twitter, question them, and threaten to charge them - so why can't they act on these calls.

Samaritans have indulged and condoned crimes against women systematically.

Something could have been done years ago

Again. Seriously doubt their motives.

Sams needs dropping completely and a new service, untainted and with protections for women inbuilt.

Samaritans are a bloody let down to their volunteers and callers.

They also need to give up their pretence of anonymity, and use their records to prosecute criminals. It doesn't make them any less criminal because they use a high pitch voice ffs.

Where I work, we have all been told to do suicide prevention training, which seems to take a very different approach to the Sams "if they wanted to end their lives I respected those feelings," as described by a PP.

I would stay on the line until they were unable to reply and for a good deal of time afterward

Am I correct in reading that as not intervening whilst someone commits suicide at the other end of a phone line? If I am, then that's beyond fucked up.

There is absolutely no reason why an abusive phone call can't be traced and the person prosecuted. It's such an easy fix.

It won't compromise genuine callers, why would it?

The abusive phone calls would stop quite quickly. Job done.

Yes, thats what I thought too. That Samaritans wait on the line whilst you kill yourself.

I am sure they must not just immediately acceot this though without some drilling down and pertinent questioning.

I think many wouldn't call a trackable line, which it is, but thats not advertised.

They receive calls because they claim to be anonymous which they clearly aren't.

So it's already trackable? So why are they prosecuting these sex offenders?