This week – from 4th to 10th February – is Sexual Abuse and Sexual Violence Awareness Week and Portsmouth student and S&C reporter Maia Cook interviewed Gemma Green from PARCS (Portsmouth Abuse and Rape Counselling Services) to talk about how the team work to combat rape culture in the area.
PARCS offers counselling and support services to individuals and groups of any gender identity, from the age of 5 years old through to adults, within Portsmouth and South East Hampshire. The team also offer support to the families of children who come in for counselling.
‘We’re at a point now where we are almost 38 years old and we now run a free counselling and psychotherapy service for anyone who has experienced sexual violations – that’s for all gender identities, no matter how long ago it happened,’ said Gemma.
‘We offer a specialist service for children 5 years and up as well. We have a specialist domestic abuse counselling service, because we acknowledge that there can be some crossover in terms of sexual violence and domestic violence. We still have the helpline that we started with many, many years ago and we have some drop-in groups, we have an allotment group, we have an ISVA – which is [an] Independent Sexual Violence Advocate – for from 5 years to 12 so if there’s a court case they can support them through that process.’
Gemma explained the importance of raising awareness, but also of taking it one step further. PARCS do a variety of educational work within the community, aiming to decrease the amount of offences and increase the amount of support for victims .
‘Our community-based work is in Portsmouth schools – we’re in every secondary school – and we deliver consent workshops, we work with PSHE [personal, social, health and economic education] and RSE [relationships and sex education] and make suggestions to schools about what that should look like and what it needs to include. We also work with anyone that will have us in for training, from football coaches right the way through to security guards at the Pyramids Centre, and again, it is a really clear model that addresses community responsibility for the prevention of sexual violence. PARCS believes we all have a responsibility in preventing sexual violence and what we try to do is, as well as raise awareness, provide people and support people with the skills that they need in order to challenge it or offer survivors better support. Within that work we also work with groups that are seldomly seen and heard – so young people with learning disabilities, young people exploring their gender and sexual identity, young people who will identify as part of the BME communities and exploited or trafficked young people.’
Gemma also talked about rape culture – how it acts as an obstacle in what PARCS are trying to achieve and how they work to overcome it. By being active in the community, PARCS work to abolish the secrecy and shame that comes with being assaulted. Their project ‘The Elephant in the Room’ sees the PARCS team taking a large inanimate elephant (see image below) out with them to various locations and even events like Victorious. The elephant acts as a starting point for questions and conversation.
‘People didn’t expect to see us [at Victorious] but why shouldn’t we be here? We’re visible, we exist, survivors exist, and we see it as a positive thing because then it lets sex offenders know that we’re going to be talking about it, we’re going to be having a voice and that removes some of the secrecy that they operate in.’
Returning to the effect of the media and rape culture on victims, Gemma recalled an experience that showed her the impact of the media on victims and survivors of sexual violence.
‘I remember when the story about Jimmy Savile came out and I was working with this group and some of the group were saying “Oh isn’t it great that we’re all talking about it? I know this thing is awful that’s happened, but now we know about it and we talk about it”, and I remember one of the girls in the group saying, “Yeah and every time someone has something to say about sexual abuse I’m reminded of my own”. I will always remember that because I think it’s quite powerful for the other young people in that group to hear that some survivors will feel a backlash from media stories, depending on how [the perpetrators] are depicted, which you will know is [as] ‘evil’ or [a] ‘monster’. We dehumanise them, which is unhelpful because they are humans, they’re dads, they’re uncles, they’re football coaches, they’re mums, they’re people working in nurseries, so it removes it from being a human being.
‘Often survivors will also hear those narratives that come from the media – they’ll hear people talking. With Jimmy Savile, the conversation was like “Why didn’t they come forward sooner?” It’s always questions about a victim – why were they doing this, why were they doing that? So, I think it’s challenging those type of narratives – again our centre director has said, and this is something that stays with me: “We all have a responsibility and a choice around stories that we tell, stories that we pass on to other people and the stories we believe.”‘
Finally Gemma tells me about a PARCS’ film called Telling Tales, which highlights that our society continues to experience the same cases of sexual abuse we always have.
‘In it one of the women says, “Has anything changed? These are the tales told through the ages – it’s the same stories just at different stages.” That’s kind of how I sit with it and how I think PARCS kind of sits with it…we can talk to women that have been at PARCS for 20 years and they say, “It’s the same stories – we’re seeing the same story over and over again.” It just might be played out differently. We might see it on Instagram now whereas we would have seen it in the street previously.’
Gemma explains how even with movements like ‘#MeToo’, there is always a backlash. To prevent this happening she reiterates the important of education.
‘I think in terms of working with communities, just providing space for people to have a think about what they actually think, rather than what they see written in newspapers and online articles [is important and] developing their sense of agency and their own moral compass really, developing empathy.
‘We work with what’s called the ‘bystander model’ [and] we’re one of the first rape crisis services to start working with [it]. The bystander model…trains bystanders to respond to a situation, whether that be through intervention or through just sitting with someone when something’s happened, as well as developing empathy, [and] supporting people to be able to challenge it in a way that’s not just shouting at someone.’
Gemma also believes activism is important.
‘I’m all for activism, absolutely all for activism. I would say that PARCS’ activism is very gentle and very kind and it meets people where they’re at, it tries to understand where they’re at, even if they’re very shouty and work with where they’re at, rather than going “well I think this and you’re ridiculous” or “women’s rights are…” It doesn’t work. If you start to pull away at the pillars of [what] they’ve constructed that keeps them safe, they are not going to react well. They are going to do everything they can to keep the pillars up.’
Gemma gives the example of the still common misconception that what women wear can cause rape.
‘You know the ‘what was she wearing?’ [stereotype], we could say something like: “What would a boy need to be wearing to be asking for it?”…rather than going “You’re wrong” and just coming at them from our perspective we work with it. We don’t take the pillar away because that’s what’s keeping the house up, we sit alongside it and it will take us a long time.’
If would like to find out more about PARCS and the services they offer, contact the team on 02392 669513 or contact the Young Persons’ Service on 02392 669519, or visit the PARCS website at www.parcs.org.uk. You can also follow PARCS on Twitter and Facebook.