The Samaritans: a "Specific Demographic"

[Jaysmith71]

Samaritans volunteers abused their position of trust by having sex with vulnerable callers, The Telegraph understands, prompting the charity to 'listen in' to conversations for the first time.The “shocking” incidents are believed to include volunteers meeting up with callers for inappropriate relationships.It is understood that there was a “specific demographic” of some "middle-aged men” who were abusing female callers by meeting up and having sex with them.The charity, which provides a helpline service for people in emotional distress or at risk of suicide, has strict rules concerning volunteer contact with callers.The incidents have prompted a mass overhaul of policies announced...

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/01/exclusive-samaritans-listen-conversations-volunteers-had-sex/

I quite often ask for a man and am always told that you get to speak to whomever answers the phone and if you want someone else you have to hang up and call back. It can often take over ten minutes to get through so anyone in a fragile state would find that challenging.

I'm just responding to the poster who said that women should be put through to women and saying that as a user of the service that isn't always what I want.

Yes, that was me. I was explaining that there’s no reason in principle that a system that connects female volunteers and callers could not be adapted to cope with your individual wants.

Just to echo what @JulesRimetStillGleaming is saying, I work for an organisation that does 1-to-1 work with vulnerable adults of both sexes, and it's surprising how many female service users insist on working with male staff and volunteers. It's not something the organisation has ever audited, so I can't say with any certainty whether or not those outnumber the times where we have female users asking specifically for female staff, or indeed male service users asking for a specific sex, but anecdotally, from taking the referrals myself I encounter requests for male staff as frequently as I do female. It's not as simple as women invariably wanting to work with other women in all cases. The same is true when it involves GP's and Psychiatrists. The majority of our repeat customers with a preference tend to be strident about wanting a male doctor, where as very few specify that they will only accept a woman. There's no 'one size fits all' approach that would work.

It strikes me as very unusual that your service might have as many requests for male GPs as female, especially from female customers, but okay, sure.

It’s irrelevant anyway since Samaritans currently don’t offer people the option of choosing their volunteer’s sex. So no one would be losing out in the situation where callers and volunteers were sex matched. Meanwhile, it would protect female callers and female volunteers from the endemic male predator problem which the Samaritans are dealing with. Heads women win, tails no one loses.

It strikes me as very unusual that your service might have as many requests for male GPs as female, especially from female customers, but okay, sure

It's a pretty small and niche organisation, so I wouldn't necessarily expect what we encounter to be the norm everywhere. Just to expand a bit, the majority of our service users are female, roughly a 60/40 split at last count. We don't assign healthcare professionals, but what I do often involves interaction with and/or challenging GP's and psychiatrists, so quite often the question of changing someone's existing GP or psychiatrist comes into play, and this is where the expression of preference often comes up. What we do, however, does involve asking our service users at the point of referral whether they have a preference for working with our male or female staff, and while the vast majority don't express any preference at all, requests for male workers from female service users are common enough to the point whereby we actually struggle to meet the demand with regard to male staff.

It’s irrelevant anyway since Samaritans currently don’t offer people the option of choosing their volunteer’s sex. So no one would be losing out in the situation where callers and volunteers were sex matched. Meanwhile, it would protect female callers and female volunteers from the endemic male predator problem which the Samaritans are dealing with. Heads women win, tails no one loses

Agreed.

Only reason I replied was to emphasise the point that @JulesRimetStillGleaming was making, i.e. you can't just assume that in all instances a female service user is going to prefer a female member of staff, or more specifically, not have a preference for working with male staff, because in my experience women who prefer working with males are not at all uncommon.

Should probably add to clarify: presumably the reason that you can’t ask for a male or female volunteer but instead have to keep calling back is that they don’t have a male or female phone queue. So a sex-matching system would in fact benefit people who (in good faith) want to talk to an opposite sex volunteer; it would become technically possible to provide that if asked for.

requests for male workers from female service users are common enough to the point whereby we actually struggle to meet the demand with regard to male staff.
Do you think the users are worried about being judged by a woman or maybe its easier to disassociate from certain problems speaking to the opposite sex.
I was hoping to do some volunteering phone work the stories of prev callers and worse perve volunteers is awful.

Volunteer help service is unlikely to have the resources to match sex

And for a variety of reasons those who need help may not feel comfy talking to same sex.

There are other solutions. If Samaritans gave it proper thought I'm sure they could reduce this immensely.

A university member of staff who targetted me after finding out about my family issues was allowed to become a Samaritan. Part of the problem I had was him asking me for sex. I reported him for harassment and nothing was done. I reported him to uni and almost got kicked out. When I went to join Samaritans in my third year I found he was the trainer!!. When I mentioned it the person I spoke to, in a sarcastic tone of voice, she said "oh that was you, we don't want liars here"...

It was a course most women don't tend to do. I was one of two who graduated. The other slept with him. After graduation I found out many many women who had tried to do the course left because of him. I also found out his behaviour wasn't only limited to women, though he always targetted vulnerable gay men (which given I was at uni decades ago was most of them - he was the lesbian and gay association contact for the department - they covered no one else when I was at uni).

He's now married to another man and still volunteers for Samaritans - yes despite rules he advertises it. I can almost guarantee he's one of the people in this article. Samaritans got me through my uni experience, I'd delibrately never rung the nearest branch (it wasn't like it is now then); but it made me feel sick to find he was working there.

I did become a volunteer, years later at another branch and then we weren't allowed to put the phone down on anyone and it was 100% confidential. I left after a series of difficult calls, including sexual ones, we had plenty of training in that, I had one who was threatening to hurt someone (nothing I could do but listen) and the last was a man who wanted company as he died and that was horrible to go through, nothing I could do. Now it's very different, I rang after social services crisis worker said to phone them instead and all I had was pressure for my number and address to inform social services due to safeguarding. I refused and they ended the call. I've never rung again.

Volunteer help service is unlikely to have the resources to match sex

There’s no reason to think it would be resource intensive for a large national organisation which already has a complex phone infrastructure to do this. And as mentioned people who want to talk to the opposite sex would benefit.

They’d probably have to recruit more male volunteers though; and they’d have to give a shit about protecting women, which seems like a bar that big name NGOs can’t clear.

Do you think the users are worried about being judged by a woman or maybe its easier to disassociate from certain problems speaking to the opposite sex.

In all honesty I think it's down to a huge number of different reasons. When I come to think of it, I also prefer male doctors and psychiatrists. Sometimes it's as simple as having had a poor or unsatisfactory experience with one or more female 'authority figures' initially, other times it's a distrust of females due to family background. I think there's also an element of misogyny, especially in some of the older service users, in that they honestly don't believe that females can possibly be as well educated or capable as males. A lot of people are still in the mindset of 'doctor knows best' and wouldn't dream of challenging them, and I think to an extent that tends to go hand-in-hand with the ones who inherently believe that female doctors couldn't possibly be as competent at males. With regard to our staff specifically, I think that part of what influences preference is that quite often our staff are put in the position where they are perceived as challenging authority figures, and I think there's still a tendency in some people to believe that males are taken more seriously and carry a bit more weight when they are standing up to someone perceived as an expert. I can kind of understand that even though I don't accept it myself, because we do encounter some really old-fashioned professionals who invariably take it as a personal slight if a patient has the temerity to question them. There are still a lot of curmudgeonly and pompous doctors around, so I can understand why there might be a perception that other males are less likely to be intimidated by them, even though I think it is just that, a perception and nothing more.

Why a woman might prefer to talk to s man-

The issues they have are caused by a woman.
They have had one or more men in their lives that have been kind and lovely.
Wanting to talk to someone s bit.. distanced.. can't think of the word.
A belief that men are more straightforward / practical than a woman. Stereotype but deeply embedded.
And yes I imagine concern about being judged by a woman or certain assumptions being made esp if had bad experience in past.

Off the top of my head!

Men (often?) prefer to talk to women about personal/ emotional stuff as that's what women are good at (stereotype) and norms of masculinity around boys don't cry etc.

Also of course what is going on/ went on in the past could have been done by a man / men from CSA to bullying to DV etc etc

Female GPs have a v high suicide rate. Lots of stuff on it. One theory is that with a male GP it's hello this is wrong. Business like chat. Thanks bye.

With women patients start offloading other issues/ disclosing big problems at home etc.

That's horrific, but I guess unsurprising.

It really does show the efforts men will go to to abuse though. You don't just turn up and ask to volunteer and that's you. There's an interview and really rigorous training and lots don't make it.

And at least in my branch if the other Sam on duty wasn't on call they'd be able to hear you, so there's an element of risk.

Given that the vast vast majority of the volunteers are women, that makes the likelihood hood of men being abusers even greater.

I think the official line of never putting the phone down is bollocks ... in reality actual Samaritans can and do terminate calls. The organisation does however need to do much better on banning persistent sex callers - at the minute it takes 10 reports, it should be dropped to 3 max. However many persistent callers simply change their phone sim and start again. Abusers gonna abuse.

I think in branch people ignore the don't hang up nonsense because there is a tacit recognition that this issue isn't treated seriously enough.

BTW there are female sex callers too. They are much rarer (the men are dime a dozen) but they target male volunteers.

I think Samaritans have gone about this all wrong. They should have been up front with their findings and what they do moving forward. Now they seem like they've been caught with their trousers down and saying what will appease. It may well truthful but because it's come after the leak it puts Samaritans in the defence position rather than directing the narrative.

What a shame that as all this comes out they are in the process of diluting their recruitment process and considering volunteers working from home. Surely, they should be looking to bolster these at a time like this?

"they’d have to give a shit about protecting women, which seems like a bar that big name NGOs can’t clear." - too true. Because they like to bully their own female staff. If the development NGOs are a guide.

Yes @rabbitwoman, Bundy volunteered at a suicide prevention hotline. He worked with a woman named Ann Rule who went on to write an autobiographical true crime book about it called The Stranger Beside Me. It's an interesting read if you're into that sort of thing.

I left Samaritans over safeguarding issues in our branch that weren't being dealt with. One of the old men had abused a new volunteer and, even when he admitted it, was allowed to carry on in his role, having unsupervised contact with vulnerable women and girls. Another female volunteer was told that if she didn't shut up and stop talking about it she'd be asked to leave.

I was told that in another branch, male volunteers were receiving nudes from young female callers. The managers were aware but I doubt much was done about it.

Also, the permissive attitude to sex calls was disgusting. A very disturbing and threatening call I received from a trans woman was the final straw for me.

Wrote a letter of complaint but was told to mind my own business, or words to that effect.

The charity was set up by a total pervert, the CofE vicar Chad Varah. He styled himself as a sex educator and was involved with organisations that were linked to Paedophile Information Exchange. He set up the Brenda Line, a subsection of Samaritans, which men were allowed to call for a wank.

It is, and always has been a men's asexual rights organisation.

The ‘Brenda’ service was stopped in 1987.

I had never heard of the Brenda line. This article about the manual is really disturbing

wellcomecollection.org/articles/XqKkYxAAACMATUnN

Well yes, and it’s stopped. Over 30 years ago. Lots of things have changed since then I imagine, including that the number is now a National number.

It’s obviously horrible and worrying to hear about these incidents but I imagine most volunteers are decent people who give up their time with no thought of exploiting vulnerable people.

It’s distressing to hear stories of people having bad experiences in the past. I hope systems have improved since then .

@theThreeofWeevils

I haven't placed much faith in the Samaritans' "commitment to confidentiality" since 2014. Google their Radar App...

Gods sake does no one have any critical thinking skills anymore? Rhetorical question obvs. It doesn't take a genius to figure out this could be used to torment people more. Gah sometimes I want to bang heads together in places where decisions like this are made.

Apparently, yes. From their website:

The Samaritans Radar Twitter plug-in was closed permanently in March 2015.
What was 'Samaritans Radar'?

Samaritans Radar was a free Twitter plug-in which used an algorithm to allow Twitter users to monitor each others’ posts. It was launched on 29 October 2014 and suspended on 7 November 2014. It was closed permanently on 10 March 2015.

Samaritans Radar used a list of keywords and phrases to identify tweets that indicated someone might be struggling to cope.

It then sent an email alert to users who had signed up to monitor that account, flagging the tweet or tweets in question and linking to guidance on the best way of reaching out and providing support.

The idea was to give Twitter users a second chance to see potentially worrying tweets from friends, in case they missed them when they were originally posted.

Samaritans Radar was designed to provide an online safety net, after a 2013 study found an association between rates of tweets per users determined to be at risk for suicide, and actual suicide rates.
Why was it suspended?

Samaritans Radar was suspended following negative feedback and advice, including serious concerns raised by people from the mental health community who use Twitter.

This feedback included concerns about privacy – as people being monitored were never notified or asked to consent – and concerns that the use of Samaritans Radar would people to censor their tweets, making Twitter a less safe space for people who were struggling, and seeking support and community.

The potential for Samaritans Radar to be used, not only by friends but by bullies, was also raised.

All data associated with Samaritans Radar was deleted.