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More than support to court: Rape victims and specialist sexual violence services

This article explores the involvement of specialist sexual violence services, including Independent Sexual Violence Advisers (ISVAs), in supporting victims/survivors of rape and sexual abuse to engage with the criminal justice system (CJS) in England and Wales. The underpinning research, conducted i...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Hester, Marianne, Lilley, Sarah-Jane
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066863/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30111902
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269758017742717
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author Hester, Marianne
Lilley, Sarah-Jane
author_facet Hester, Marianne
Lilley, Sarah-Jane
author_sort Hester, Marianne
collection PubMed
description This article explores the involvement of specialist sexual violence services, including Independent Sexual Violence Advisers (ISVAs), in supporting victims/survivors of rape and sexual abuse to engage with the criminal justice system (CJS) in England and Wales. The underpinning research, conducted in one area of England, included referral data from the police and key specialist sexual violence services, interviews with 15 victims/survivors of sexual violence in contact with the police and specialist services, and interviews with 14 practitioners from sexual violence and related services. We examine the complex needs of victims/survivors of sexual violence (who have experienced historical child sexual abuse, acquaintance rape or rape in the context of intimate partner abuse), how their needs differ and vary over time, and the ways in which these diverse and changing needs are met by specialist sexual violence services. Non-specialist agencies, such as statutory mental health services, are unable to provide similarly targeted responses. The research found that specialist sexual violence services play particularly crucial roles through the use of approaches that can be characterised as flexible, enabling, holding and mending. However, this important work could easily be lost in the current climate of local service commissioning, to the great detriment of victims/survivors of sexual violence.
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spelling pubmed-60668632018-08-13 More than support to court: Rape victims and specialist sexual violence services Hester, Marianne Lilley, Sarah-Jane Int Rev Vict Articles This article explores the involvement of specialist sexual violence services, including Independent Sexual Violence Advisers (ISVAs), in supporting victims/survivors of rape and sexual abuse to engage with the criminal justice system (CJS) in England and Wales. The underpinning research, conducted in one area of England, included referral data from the police and key specialist sexual violence services, interviews with 15 victims/survivors of sexual violence in contact with the police and specialist services, and interviews with 14 practitioners from sexual violence and related services. We examine the complex needs of victims/survivors of sexual violence (who have experienced historical child sexual abuse, acquaintance rape or rape in the context of intimate partner abuse), how their needs differ and vary over time, and the ways in which these diverse and changing needs are met by specialist sexual violence services. Non-specialist agencies, such as statutory mental health services, are unable to provide similarly targeted responses. The research found that specialist sexual violence services play particularly crucial roles through the use of approaches that can be characterised as flexible, enabling, holding and mending. However, this important work could easily be lost in the current climate of local service commissioning, to the great detriment of victims/survivors of sexual violence. SAGE Publications 2017-12-06 2018-09 /pmc/articles/PMC6066863/ /pubmed/30111902 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269758017742717 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Articles
Hester, Marianne
Lilley, Sarah-Jane
More than support to court: Rape victims and specialist sexual violence services
title More than support to court: Rape victims and specialist sexual violence services
title_full More than support to court: Rape victims and specialist sexual violence services
title_fullStr More than support to court: Rape victims and specialist sexual violence services
title_full_unstemmed More than support to court: Rape victims and specialist sexual violence services
title_short More than support to court: Rape victims and specialist sexual violence services
title_sort more than support to court: rape victims and specialist sexual violence services
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6066863/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30111902
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0269758017742717
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