Deborah Frances-White: But you clearly are very... this is, you know, something that you have found great purpose in understandably, the Shakhti Women's Aid Centre, you were working with black and Asian women, and then you move to Rape Crisis, Scotland on the national helpline. What were your experiences there?
Mridul Wadhwa: Well, the helpline is a really incredible place. It is really still hard in our society today to talk about sexual violence. And the ability to contact somebody and speak anonymously is the very important, sometimes first step, or sometimes the only step to talk about your experience of sexual violence. And then it takes a huge amount of courage to do that, to talk about what's happened to you, or even actually, question whether what happened to you was abuse or not. I think we are still a society that is still not very good at talking about sexual violence, particularly sexual violence, that is not rape. Because, you know, like, although I work in every crisis centre, people think that only if you've experienced rape, can you seek support, but actually, I think if you've been harassed on the street, you should be seeking support around this because it's, you know, like, there is no hierarchy of violence.
It's the impact that we are interested in, and we provide services. So the helpline is that these where people phone, either, because they're questioning whether what's happened to them is sexual violence, whether sometimes often you will hear people talk about whether they are worthy of our time as workers who worked on that helpline, or will work in Rape Crisis Centres or women say like, is this abuse? And the more and marginalised you are in our society, the more harder it is for you to get that answer. Like (a) the answer is, that is what happened to me abusive because there's this whole intersection of being either trans or non binary or black or brown or disabled, because there are so many other acts of violence that are perpetrated against you on an everyday basis. And then if sexual violence is part of that abuse, is this something that I can seek help for.
And I love the people I worked with on the helpline, I still have a really, really strong relationship with them, I host their pop quiz (?), twice yearly pop quiz, and it’s real fun. But they are the most wonderful, warmest, kindest women I know. And it is a huge honour to have worked with them.
So I used to train people who worked in the helpline but also, to know that when anybody who phones because it's open to anyone who lives in Scotland, to use the helpline, they will be received and held and respected for whatever they're thinking around their experience of sexual violence. It truly is non judgmental, and when we say and more services will say that they are non judgmental, and I would believe that they are, but I know that the spaces I work in currently and the National helpline for Scotland is a really non judgmental space. You will be heard, you will be given time you will be given space, there will be no pressure on you to report your experience to anybody, like you know, there's sometimes there's this fear that sometimes survivors, and that's a term we use on the helpline or in the Rape Crisis movement in Scotland, think that they must report what happened to them like there is no pressure to do that.
Sexual violence is the loss of control. And everything that happens after that in terms of your recovery, only you can control. That is your right, I think that's the gift that we must give ourselves if we've experienced sexual violence, because the abuser has taken away that control. Everything that happens after that should be yours. It's your story. And we recognise that within our services. And that's what that helpline is like. And in fact, that's what a Rape Crisis Centre is like as well, the one that I work in right now, these are beautiful spaces.