Nina,
Amen to the fact that one of the hardest jobs is to counsel a trauma victim and that the money is appalling.
I found that being a crisis volunteer gave me the greatest personal satisfaction. At least I wasn't sitting on the sideline and superciliously sniping.

The reality is that some people having faced trauma use the experience to overcome the pain to SOME degree (one never fully gets over it) and then help others.

While others don't comprehend, some even mock. Sadly some are overcome by it. Most ignore it because its more comfortable to believe "it won't happen to me or mine".

I raised the other issues simply because I've dealt with them as a volunteer counselor and hoped by doing so the fortunate few would see that the contributing issues are neither simple [cut and dried] or necessarily gender specific.

Anti
Publicity for a cause like this is hardly a personal payoff. "The squeaky wheel generally gets more abuse than oil." (copy right pending :-) )

ninaf,

'Of course I am not equating rape with unwanted advances.'
You work for the Rape Crisis Centre, and you are doing 'workgroups' with teens, discussing 'unwanted sexual advances'. They're the thin edge of the wedge, it's all part of the rape education. We can put it in the same bag cant we.

'This was not a legal discussion about crime'
Only because you're not setting the laws Nina. Who knows where along that thin edge of the wedge progression from 'unwanted sexual advances' in your sexual ethics 'workgroups' is ripe for legislation if you could just raise more awareness.

ie 'that we don’t dismiss certain behaviours as “normal sexual socialisation” simply because those behaviours don’t conform to out stereotyped views of what *sexual offences* look like.'

'(I was simply making the point that when people think about the online sexual coercion of minors they often imagine it to involve Dennis Ferguson types, when in reality it is far more often someone known to the minor.'

As I said earlier, master of the bleeding obvious. That was one point in your article. But you did manage to lead through paedophilia to teen unwanted advances quite nicely, as cornflower described. Why you only have to put the thoughts together like September 11 and Iraq.

'parents often dismiss these contacts as being far less harmful.... '
Oh but we shouldn't should we Nina. The paedophiles and the teen boys are one and the same.

'you might want to get your own facts correct'
Yeah I noticed that after I posted. Attempted rape. Doesn't really weaken my point, which was defending you anyway.

"However, the NSWRCC has grants worth a $million and only answers a few phone calls, the vast majority of which are repeat calls about events that occurred some lengthy time previously. Here's a tip, a "crisis" is not an ongoing state of affairs, it is a short-term situation that requires urgent resolution."

Hey Anti- OK I'm going to respectfully disagree with you on this but I'll explain why. According to your crisis/ trauma model, a person would be in 'crisis' immediately after an assault and you'd expect this trauma to subside over time. However the reality is that while trauma does generally decline over a long period it doesn't do so in a consistent arc. Often there are flare ups in response to memory triggers/ anniversaries etc etc. Often the centre gets callers who are suicidal or thinking about self harming over events which occurred many many years ago. You may not agree but I would label anyone who is suicidal as "in crisis"

"From my reading of the centre's literature, most of the funding is for purposes other than rape crisis counselling"

Anti, I would really encourage you to read 2 documents
1) "NSW RCC A best practice manual for specialised sexual assault crisis telephone and online conselling" I think it may help relieve some of the anxieties you have about the service provision.
2) The AGM report out later this year. It will point to the fact that the overwhelming majority of funding goes to into providing counselling for clients (through wages to counsellors, telephone lines etc). As for 'staff development' etc this refers to developing better counselling skills which benefit clients. Similarly,
other travel money is spent sending trainers to regional areas to train SA counsellors in those areas. RCC gets funding for this as they are recognised as having some of the best practices in this country when it comes to crisis counselling.

ninaf: << ...it's not helpful for you to simplify and caricature my position in these debates in such a juvenile and unconstructive way >>

Unfortunately, it seems to be the only way he knows. Sometimes, as in this case, it obscures entirely a valid point that he's attempting to make - however obliquely.

'It is estimated that in Australia at least one in four girls and one in seven boys will experience some form of sexual abuse. '

Could I ask, estimated by whom? Whenever I see a claim like this I immediately get suspicious. Too often feminists have just put around rubbish numbers to serve their own purposes. The problem with advocacy groups like the RCC is that they are not impartial or evidence based. They exist only to push their own pre-conceived ideas and agendas.

I fear your work with 'teenagers' is really code for telling girls they may have sex, regret it and then blame the boy. It's all about power.

My fear is that things are only going to get worse. Under the Labor government giving money to hysterical advocacy groups is called giving the community back its 'voice'. Their funding will slowly increase until we have the hysteria we got at the end of the last Labor government.

Pied
"If you call those people and alert authorities it places the children behind more closed doors Pelican. Before we decide to save kids we should all want to know what system we are putting them in"

True Pied. That is the other side of the problem, the potential to place children in another abusive environment. It is a complex problem and needs a real overhaul including consultation with people who are 'in' the system from all sides (homes, governments and community groups).

As long as it is not just a talkfest but a dofest.