A CASE STUDY OF THE DUBLIN AND GALWAY RAPE CRISIS

CENTRES : THE THERAPIST’S PERSPECTIVE

Elizabeth Ryan-Larragy B.A. (Communications)

This thesis is submitted for the qualification of M.A. by research

University : Dublin City University

Supervisor : Dr. Margaret Gibbon

School o f Applied Language and Intercultural Studies

Date : August 1997

V olum e 1 o f 1
I hereby certify that this material which I now submit for assessment on the programme

of study leading to the award of a Masters Degree in Communication and Human Studies

is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the

extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work.

Signed: • I.D. Number : ^

ELIZABETH RYAN-LARRAGV '

Date : August 1997

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

My special thanks to all o f the women in the Dublin and Galway Rape Crisis Centres
who participated in this research. My thanks also to Deirdre Walsh, Mary Canavan and
Yvonne Jacobson for their comments and contributions.

To Rachel and Simon who lived with such good humour with this work for the last two
years, particularly Rachel who prepared the work for final presentation.

To Pat for proof reading with such careful and generous attention. To June for her proof
reading and for her quiet support which meant more than she knew.

To Sheila for the two weeks o f quiet that enabled this work to move towards completion.

Finally, to Dr. Margaret Gibbon who once told me that the “example was all” and then
became that example.

Liz.
August, 1997.

And to the magician within.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

1. INTRODUCTION i

2. LITERATURE REVIEW 1

3. METHODOLOGY 27

4. ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES - A FEMINIST

CRITIQUE. 49

5. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. 82

6. CONCLUSIONS. 163

Appendices.

Bibliography.
A bstract: A Case Study of the Dublin and Galway Rape Crisis Centres:

The Therapist’s Perspective

This thesis examines the historical development and current therapeutic practices of

two of Ireland’s feminist-inspired rape crisis centres (Dublin and Galway).

The focus is on the perspective of workers in these centres, whether as volunteers or

paid employees. A number of spokes persons and workers in each centre were

interviewed over a 15 month period. These interviews form the bulk of the primary

data and are used throughout. Interviewees were questioned on a range of policies

operating at the centres: recruitment, selection, training and legal issues.

Although at the outset the case study was not designed to allow comparisons to be

drawn between the two centres concerned, major differences in policy and approach

between the Dublin and Galway Rape Crisis Centres lead to inevitable comparison.

Indeed, these differences inspired many of the conclusions of the study.

Where as one centre continues to operate according to the feminist analysis which

first inspired rape crisis centres in the West, the other has adopted a hierarchical

management structure with severely curtailed opportunities for volunteer input.

While superficially using a similar therapeutic model, the two centres in fact operate

from radically opposed premises. This thesis argues that the loss of a feminist

perspective on rape reduces the long-term effectiveness of rape crisis centres since
without such a perspective, the conditions giving rise to rape are not addressed.

Instead the symptoms of rape are “managed” by “professional experts”.

I.INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this research is to make visible the perspective of the therapist/supporter

in relation to sexual violence in order to understand the effect o f such a perspective in her

work with women who have been sexually violated.

It seemed to me that sexual violence is often viewed from the perspective of the

victim/survivor or from the perspective of the perpetrator. My interest in this work stems

from my own background as a feminist, and also counsellor and therapist for almost

twenty years. My work in counselling and therapy has been within the voluntary sector,

in private practice and in the public social service setting.

Counselling and therapy does not take place in a vacuum. It is important that the

political as well as therapeutic stances held by those who seek to intervene

therapeutically in the lives of those women who have been sexually violated are

understood. Such understanding, I believe, is essential to the service of this work.

I chose two Rape Crisis Centres in which to carry out my research work. My reason for

this was simple. It gave me access to a number of women who worked in this area. Both

of these centres also had women who worked, at least in part, on a voluntary basis.

Much o f the original and pioneering work in the anti-Rape Movement was undertaken by

volunteers and Rape Crisis Centres continue to make use of volunteer counsellors.

Whilst volunteers are regarded as an invaluable part of the work of Rape Crisis Centres

they also often have to prove the capabilities in the face of considerable scepticism.
For clarification this work is divided into five further chapters. Chapter Two reviews the

relevant literature across a fairly broad spectrum. Chapter Three outlines the

methodological approach taken. Chapter Four deals with the organisational structures of

each o f the centres as these were found to be fundamental to the work of the therapist and

thus to the research study. Chapter Five deals with the further findings of the research

and Chapter Six offers a conclusion.

Term s: The term therapist/supporter is used together to refer to women working

in both centres.

The term worker/supporter is used in relation to the women in the

Galway Rape Crisis Centre.

The term therapist is used when referring to the women who work in the

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre These terms reflect the differing views of both

centres in relation to their work. The Galway Rape Crisis Centre uses the

term ‘supporter’/worker emphasising their belief that any woman could be

a member of their collective and their belief in womens’ ability to support

each other.The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre recruit only women with

professional qualifications to the staff. The women described

themselves as therapists and I refer to them as such.

RCC is used simply to denote Rape Crisis Centre.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW.

The discussion o f the literature reviewed here is wide ranging in its scope. It deals with

explanations and theories offered for the existence of sexual violence, in particular

feminist theories ; legal practices around such violence; the nature and the structures of

those organisations that intervene in an attempt to offer support/therapy to the survivors

of such violence, and finally it reviews the therapeutic practices offered to survivors of

sexual abuse and violence.

Feminist discussion of power have focussed mainly on male power over women.

Patriarchy is defined as a ‘political system in which the balance of power and authority

between men and women favours men. (Russell cited in Radtke and Stam) Among the

experiences which have mobilised women in the gender struggle are rape and battering,

which illustrate men’s bodily power to harm and co-oerce women. Power, as the

capacity of men to oppress, dominate, exploit and subordinate women is well explored in

feminist accounts. Patriarchal force, or male violence against women and girls has been a

focal concern and at times the key issue for Western feminism since 1960 (Caputi cited

in Rafter and Heidensohn, 1995).

Feminist analysis has argued that rape, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, prostitution and

pornography are acts of dominance expressed through sexuality. These forms of sexual

violence against women are not rare, abberant or deviant behaviours. The hypothesis is

1
that a willingness to engage in rape and sexual assault is not confined to a small number

o f ‘abnormal ‘ men has been confirmed by surveys which indicate and rape and sexual

assault are relatively widespread (Sampson, 1994) . Only 7.8 per cent of U.S. women are

not sexually assaulted or harassed in their lifetimes. (Russell cited in Radtke and Stam,

1994 p. 198). About one third of men say that they would rape women if assured that

they would not be punished and each year in the U.S. 30 % of all women murdered are

killed by their husbands or male lovers; and at least 1.8 million are beaten by their

husbands or male lovers annually (ibid.,)

Whilst it is acknowledged that there is an increase in the disclosure and reporting of

rape and sexual abuse as a crime it still remains seriously under-reported. In the Report

on the Conference for Safety for Women the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre argued that

approximately 20 per cent of those attending the Centre reported the crime to the Gardai

and only half o f those cases reported proceeded to trial. This figure, argues Paul

O’Mahony, of an 80 per cent of sexual assaults hidden from official notice can be

considered an “underestimate” since there are likely to be many more victims who would

not go so far as to approach a Rape Crisis Centre”( 0 ’Mahony, 1993). In 1987 research

in this country suggested that fully 6 % of the population at large had been victims of

child sexual abuse.(Market Research Bureau of Ireland, 1987 cited in O’Mahony, 1993)

In 1996 in her paper addressing the annual conference of Marriage Guidance Counsellors

2
(Limerick, 1996) on the subject of Child Sexual Abuse, Deirdre Walsh suggested that

taking the reported incidence of child sexual abuse and using these figures to estimate

those going unreported, the incidence of sexual abuse of children had now reached the

level o f 10 per cent in this country. This Walsh points out now means that in statistical

terms , such behaviour is high enough to be considered ‘normal’. Walsh argues that

“whilst we may live with the reality of the incest taboo, call it a myth, call it whatever

and yet the statistics belies that fact”(Unpublished paper, Annual Conference of Accord[

Assoc, of Marriage Guidance Counsellors] 1996).

Research shows that whilst crime statistics show a substantial increase in the number of

reported incidents of rape and sexual violence since the early 1970’s the results from

victim surveys conducted over the same period suggests that the actual number of

offences has remained stable. The amount of sexual violence had not changed

significantly but the willingness of victims to report it had. (Beime and Messserschmidt

cited in McCullagh, 1996)

Theories to explain sexual violence have broadly speaking fallen into three categories:

sociologically theories, biological theories and psychologically theories.. Sociological

theories explains the occurrence of sexual crime by the operation of power and gender

relationships in society. Feminist explanations and analyses of sexual violence fall into

the first category and are discussed below. Biological theories are explained by

3
Darwinian theories of evolution or by the influence of hormones on behaviour and the

psychological theories by the functioning of individual offenders. These latter two are

usefully summarised by Sampson (1994).

Biological theories according to Sampson see rape and sexual abuse primarily as

products o f societal functioning. Its proponents argue that all men have the built-in

potential to rape a woman. This potential they argue springs not from power

relationships between the genders but from the biological imperative of evolution. These

theories argue that human sexual behaviour is driven by the need for humans to attempt

to maximise their potential for successful reproduction. The interests of the female lies in

the attraction of a mate who will be able to support her and her offspring after mating.

For the males the successful males the successful strategy is one which maximises the

potential for reproduction: the successful male is the one who impregnates a large

number of fertile females. Rape is therefore to be seen as a mating strategy entered into

by relatively unsuccessful males. Unable to attract females because they do not possess

the characteristics which indicate that they can provide and care for mother and

offspring, they are forced to engage in rape to have any chance of reproduction. Sampson

argues that despite the claims of the proponents of this theory to scientific rigour, the

scientific basis of the theory remains unproven. Attempts to derive general evolutionary

theories from the observation of the behaviour of insects and animals, and to apply them

to human reproductive strategies remain controversial within the scientific community.

4
Sampson points to the questionable nature of the reproductive theory as evidenced by the

fact that girls below puberty and women beyond child-bearing age are often the victims

of rape. Nor he argues does it explain the sexual abuse of women that stops short o f rape

and the sexual abuse of other men and male children.

The hormonal version of the biological school suggests the possibility that hormonal

imbalances may influence offenders and it is this area that has been the subject of

research in recent years. This research has concentrated on the links between sex and

aggression, which appear to be mediated by the neural substances and activated by the

same endocrines, the sex steroids (Moyer, cited in Sampson ,1994). Whilst studies have

indicated some evidence that a higher than normal proportion of particularly aggressive

or sadistic rapists have high sex steroid levels there is little to indicate that this is true of

a substantial number of abusers.

Psychological theories look to the individual to explain the phenomenon o f sexual

violence and are, according to Sampson, attractive because they often bring with them

the promise o f enabling the reform of the individual offender. These theories have been

slow to develop. This it has been suggested is partly because psychoanalytic theorists

made little attempt to address this issue largely because of Freud’s belief that accounts

o f childhood sexual abuse were fantasy, and because of the confusion in his writing

between rape and seduction. Brownmiller is more explicit in her criticism arguing that

5
the legacy of Freudian psychology was the fostering of a totally inaccurate popular

conception of rape. (Brownmiller,1975)

Sampson suggests that the prevailing explanation within psychological theory

characterises abusers as inadequate, immature or mentally disordered, abusing through

drunkenness or because some action in the offended had aroused uncontrollable urges in

the offender. There are some indications that sexual abusers have poor impulse control

and that there is a link between alcohol use and sexual offending. There is also support

for the explanation that some offenders are inadequate and emotionally immature or lack

social skills. However, Sampson argues that this evidence is strictly limited. Scully

(1990) points to the fact less than 5 % of rapists have been diagnosed as clinically

psychotic at the time they commit the offence and further that the vast majority of those

who commit crimes of sexual violence are not psychologically or emotionally disturbed

in the normal sense of these terms (Scully cited in McCullagh, 1996). The consumption

o f alcohol before these offences are committed only indicates that alcohol may be

frequently used by offenders as a deliberate disinhibitor. (Coid cited in Sampson, 1994).

Bart O ’ Brien comments that these kind of psychological explanations tend to remove

from the offenders responsibility for their actions and are put in a legal language that can

be used in court to defend the assailant so that he may be found not

guilty. (O’Brien.1985).

6
There is in recent times an emergence of cognitive/behavioural explanations of sexual

violence. These suggest that sexually abusive behaviour is behaviour that is or can be

learned (Bandura cited in Sampson, 1994) Sexual offenders come to associate certain

stimuli - these may be scenes of violence against women or images of children - with

sexual satisfaction, perhaps as a result of a childhood sexual experience. This sexual

orientation is reinforced by masturbation to fantasies of rape of child abuse. This theory

has taken particular force from indications that many abusers claim they were themselves

victims of abuse. However, the fact that many sexual offenders report experiences of

sexual abuse does not necessarily show a causal link with their later offending. Grubin

and Gunn reported that there was a strong association with their rapists’ reports of

sexual abuse and their reports of other physical abuse and that it was impossible to

conclude whether sexual abuse was a significant factor in their offending. (Grubin and

Gunn cited in Sampson, 1994) Sampson further points to the fact that most of the

victims o f sexual abuse are female, and yet there are far fewer female abusers. It is

difficult he suggests to explain this in terms of a causal link between being abused and

becoming an abuser. Some victims of abuse may take on the identity and behaviour of a

sexual abuser, but the process of learning to become a sexual abuser requires more than

just exposure to abuse.(Sampson,1994) Lupton points to a increasing dominance of

approaches that individualise the problem of sexual violence and ignore its gender

determinations whilst criticising feminist analysis largely on the assertion that it fails to

acknowledge the specificity of each individual occurrence of abuse (Lupton in Lupton

and Gillespie, 1994).

The feminist work in relation to rape during the 1970’s argued (mainly) that rape was an

act o f violence and was not about sex (Brownmiller, 1975, Griffin 1982). Griffin

argued that rape was an act of aggression in which the victim is denied her self-

determination that rape was fundamentally motivated by hostility rather than sexual

need; Russell also argued as a result of her work with survivors that rape was motivated

not by sexual urge but by the need to assert power over a woman (cited in Bell,

1993,p. 163). Feminists argued that the fact that most rapes seemed to be planned

undermined the notion that rape was a consequence of mans overwhelming sexual need

(Wilson, 1983, p65). This view sees rape as a “pseudosexual act”, its motivation

dominance, even anger. (Groth and Burgess cited in Sampson, 1994) The

characterisation of rape and a pseudosexual act finds parallels in writings about male

rape. McMullan (1990) argues that whilst relatively little has been written on this subject

the few published studies tend to indicate that it is usually carried out by men who regard

themselves as heterosexual and who claim that they would never engage in consensual

homosexual acts. The primary motivation is to humiliate.

As the feminist work of this period began to place rape as a political act the narrative

Plummer argues began to assume a fundamentally different form, becoming one of

power and gender rather than sex and desire, a story of women’s lives under male power
and regulation rather than a story o f male sexual release and woman’s provocation

(Plummer, 1995,p.67) Prior to the 1970’s it was probably difficult for women to find

texts that would enable them to locate what might have been sensed as their own

experiences.

Susan Brownmiller’s work on rape has done much to bring the female fear of rape into

public consciousness. Synthesising the stories of rape of Huguenot women in sixteenth

century France, the rape of the Sabine women in early Rome, the rape of black women

on the plantations in Southern United States, the gang-bang of the modem Hell’s Angels

and the mass rape-murders of a psychopathic Boston strangler she constructs an

historical narrative to explain rape as a universal essence of male power. Brownmiller’s

work illustrates how rape becomes part of an ideology which serves important social

functions in keeping women in their place. Rape, she argued “ (I)s nothing more or less

than a conscious process o f intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of

fear” (Brownmiller,1975)

Since then Plummer points out there has been a constant stream of pamphlets, manuals,

theoretical analyses and empirical researches written from within a contrasting range of

feminist perspectives. This discourse has been marked by the way in which the women

within it merged the private with the public, the personal with the political. This

statement became fundamental to feminist analysis and came to assume a whole

S
complex of meanings. (Plummer, 1995)

It did matter that women were treated as sex objects to be consumed by the more

powerful men. It did matter that wives had to pander to their husbands because they

could not earn enough to live on their own. It did matter that organisations whose

rhetoric leapt from one grand proclamation of freedom to another still refused to

consider the inequalities of women. Men have power over women and where their was

oppression there politics came in. Politics and power, came to mean almost the same

thing. (Phillips, 1991)

In Sexual Politics , Kate Millet, defined power as the essence of politics and patriarchal

government as ‘the institution whereby half of the populace which is female controlled

by the half which is male’ (Millet, 1970, p. 25). In its most radical form the statement

that the personal is political dissolved all distinction between the private and the public,

the personal and the political, regarding all aspects of social existence as if they were an

undifferentiated expression of male power. Less radically it claimed a relationship

between the private and the public arguing “ that the key point is that they cannot be

dealt with as if there were two separate worlds, as if one exists in a rhythm independent

from the other” (Phillips. 1991) Relationships within families are moulded by public

policies in relation to housing, education, social welfare and relations in the workplace

are shaped by the inequalities o f sexual power. From this perspective Phillips argues it

is impossible to think o f the personal as being outside politics or to believe that politics

10
can be immune to sexuality and ‘private’ concerns. In this argument the denial of social

responsibility for what occurs in private is not just “nonsense but directly

oppressive”(ibid.,)

Carole Pateman makes a similar argument this time in relation to prostitution. For her

“subordination is a political problem not a matter of morality, although moral questions

are involved” (Pateman, 1988.p.205) Vikki Bell points out that to desire someone

younger than oneself, with less access to power is certainly not an abnormal desire, but is

the predominant construction of masculine desire in the contemporary form of

heterosexuality (Bell, 1993, p .158)

This ‘desexualistion’ of rape Vikki Bell suggests is problematic insofar as sex has been

set up as the key to our inner selves and the very truth of the individual and thus the

desexualisation of rape undermines the meaning of rape as such a grand transgression.

She raises again the argument familiar in feminist circles. Is rape about sex or power? Or

is rape about sex and violence?(Bell,1993). The earlier feminist work of the 1970’s

tended to argue that rape was about violence and not about sex (Russell 1975;

Brownmiller,1975; Griffin, 1982) The reason behind this was to reveal the power

relations that are involved in rape and that had been ignored by legal and media

discourse. By showing how rape was motivated not by sexual desire but by power also

highlighted its privileged position in connection with the operations and maintenance of
power. However, Bell points to the fact that there was always ambivalence in the

feminist ‘not sex power’ or ‘violence not sex’ argument and how later feminist texts

have argued that rape is about sex. Plaza(1980) argues that rape is about sex and cannot

be treated as if it were the same as a punch in the face. Her argument ‘though is not

about the parts o f the body involved but about the ‘actors’ themselves. According to

Plaza it is social sexing which makes rape sexual, meaning that it opposes men and

women, members of two sexes. Thus: “rape is an oppressive practice employed by a

(social)man against a (social) woman”. Her use of the term ‘social’ is to convey her

belief that although a man can be raped, in the process he is placed in the position of a

woman. When a man is raped she argues “he is constituted feminine by that act” It is

social sex, not biological sex, she argues that rape is about.(Plaza cited in Bell, 1993,

p. 166).

Through a different argument Catherine MacKinnon (1982;1987; 1989) also

(re)introduces ‘sex’ into the feminist debates of rape. She argues that the umbrella terms

‘violence against women’ does not address the way in which women have been

oppressed through sex.

Adrienne Rich’s groundbreaking article ‘Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian

existence (1980) explores the violence done to women through the enforcement of

heterosexuality as the ‘normal sexual preference’ of most women. Radical feminist

12
theories argue that the heterosexual couple is the basic unit of the political structure of

male supremacy. Andrea Dworkin argues that in so far as women submit to heterosexual

sex they do so because they are forced [financially, psychologically or with fist and gun]

into submission. Dworkin argues that women are forced into heterosexuality because

they are oppressed; that as women our collusion in intimate relationships with our

oppressors in a measure of our powerlessness.(Dworkin, 1981) The same argument has

been used by feminists to explain why women remain in violent relationships with men

who abuse them - because they have nowhere to go, because they have no income of

their own, because they have to take care of children . Women are forced by men into

intolerable positions and compelled to remain there through mens’ use of their greater

power.

Kitzinger (1987, 1991) argues that power does not simply deny and repress women’s

sexuality but also actively constructs it. Heteropatriarchal power promotes, cultivates

and nurtures heterosexual pleasure. Recently radical feminism has begun to explore the

meaning of women’s desire for and enjoyment in heterosexual sex (Dworkin, 1987;

MacKinnon, 1987; Jeffreys, 1990) and argues that it is the eroticisation of the power

relationship between the sexes and that this normally takes the form of eroticising the

subordination of women. “In heterosexual desire our subordination becomes sexy for us

and for men” ( Jeffreys cited in Radtke and Stam , 1994, p.201) The problem Kitzinger

argues is not just the abuse of male power through sexual violence... the problem is the

13
construction o f sexuality. Heterosexual sex involves male power and female

subordination, sometimes apparently reversed, but only as a ‘game’. She goes on to

argue that nor is this confined to heterosexual sex pointing out for homosexual and

lesbian sex frequently eroticises differences like age, race, class and explicit sadism and

masochism. She suggests that there is a deliberate introduction of power difference in

order to sustain sexual desire. This radical feminist deconstruction o f ‘sex’ and ‘power’ ,

Kitzinger argues, makes explicit the productive nature of power and “its ability to

generate and construct even the most ‘personal’, private area of our individual lives, our

sexualities” and further that sexual desire can only be reshaped through reconstructing

the social and political conditions within which sexuality is defined (Kitzinger cited in

Radtke & Stam„1994,p.207)

Creating social and political change requires a clear understanding of the conditions of

social and political realities. I want to return to another aspect of Susan Brownmiller

work as it illuminates womens’ social and political reality.

In tracing the punishments for rape from the Babylonian code to English common law

shows how typically punishment was usually brought by one male against another for

damage to his property. Women become the property of men - fathers, husbands,

brothers, who own their virginity and sexuality. “Rape is simply the theft of sexual

property under the ownership of someone other than the rapist” It is men who need

compensation, retribution and revenge, not the woman herself Not all ‘sexual

14
properties ‘ are of equal value; virgins are worth more than whores and those higher up

the socio-economic ladder are worth more than the poor. Gradations of the seriousness of

rape are locked into this view of rape as property violation.

It was this kind of understanding that brought a critique of ‘rape in marriage’ (Russell

cited in Plummer, 1995). Most legislation has denied the possibility of rape in marriage

thus reinforcing the view that a woman had no right to consent to sex in marriage, but

must submit to her husbands sexual demands and in a very real sense is his ‘chattel’. If

rape was simply about coercive sexuality or even violence then there would be no

legitimate rationale for excluding marital relations from rape laws. (Plummer, 1995)

However, it was not until the late 1970’s when the women’s movement launched a bitter

attack on rape laws along with research documenting the extent of rape within marriage

that the possibility of rape within marriage was conceded. By the early 1980’s ten states

in the USA had deleted the spousal immunity clause; and in 1980 in England, the

Criminal Law Revision Committee in its Working Paper on Sexual Offences

recommended the abolition of the immunity clause (ibid.,) In Ireland the Criminal Law

(Rape) Amendment Act of 1990, extended the definition of rape, and provided for

marital rape (Shanahan, 1992).

However, whilst progress was made at one level within the legal system feminist

discourse throughout the 1980’s has been critical of the androcentrism o f the law and

legal practices around rape (Hall cited in Rafter and Heidensohn,1995) Feminists have

15
repeatedly criticised what is now regarded as the secondary revictimisation of rape

complainants in criminal trials. (Waller, 1977; Madigan and Gamble, 1991). Whilst the

Criminal Law (Rape) Amendment Act 1990 in this country allows forjudges to hear

cases in camera it does not as McCullagh points out solve the problem of male

dominance among court officials. (McCullough, 1996). An interesting argument offered

by Paul O ’Mahoney is that the legal principle that a person is innocent until proven

guilty beyond reasonable doubt ensures the right of the accused to challenge and

counterattack and in so doing amounts to a strategic advantage to the accused in rape or

sexual abuse cases. In such cases there is frequently no independent witness and no

unambiguous factual corroboration. In these circumstances the victim risks severe

attacks on her character and motivation (O’Mahony.1993).

Whilst the previous character of the victim may only be discussed at the discretion of the

judge, Shanahan argues that this request is usually acceded to. (Shanahan, 1992) Similar

legislation in other countries has not constrained the nature of the cross-examination of

the rape victim nor has it changed the outcome of rape trials (Matoesin, cited in

McCullough, 1996).

Rape reform issues are attracting increased research attention. However, in the field of

academic criminology dominant feminist constructions of rape (referred to above) have

been and continue to be contested by andocentric discourses. Hansson points to the fact

that since the late 1980’s most androcentric, often victim blaming, analyses of sexual

16
violence have been developed from victimology. (Hansson cited in Rafter &

Heidensohn,1995) The concept of ‘victim-precipitated rape’ was explained by

Menachim Amir (Amir,1971 cited in McCullagh,1996). This referred to a situation

where victims indicate their agreement either verbally or through gesture or body

language and then at a crucial stage in the process they change their mind. Hitch-hikers

who have been raped fall into this category because getting into a strange car could be

construed as ‘inviting a sexual relationship. This argument has been extended to the idea

that being in certain parts o f cities at certain times is an indication of availability for

sexual relations. This concept has been criticised on the grounds that it re-inforces and

indeed represents a belief that is a critical curtailment of women’s freedom to dress,

behave and use public space in the manner in which they choose(McCullough, 1996;

Hutchinson ,1984). Feminists also argue that this argument shifts the focus of blame and

of responsibility from the offender to the victim in that women are held responsible for

provoking male violence and men’s violence is typically excused and/or normalised

(Foley cited in Lupton and Gillespie, 1994).

Sheila Rowbotham(1989) describes how women moved from a puzzled indictment of

men’s emotional incapacity and women’s emotional dependence to a realisation of

coercion and control. Heterosexual love began to look like a trap. The family stripped of

its romantic gloss began to emerge as a site of male power, “ a power that in its more

benign form got women working excessively long hours for minimal rewards and in its

17
worst could expose them to physical and sexual abuse” (Phillips, 1991,p. 102).

Bell(l 993) argues that feminism draws attention to “that sexuality which other

discourses have not, that is the problems of ‘normal’ male sexuality and of ‘normal’

family relations, and that feminist discourse in raising incest and sexual violence

challenges the notion o f a harmonious and power-free familial space and is critical of

those discourses that which seek to conserve an ideal of the family. (Bell, 1993, p.106).

Phillips(1991) argues that the womens movement as it re-emerged in the 1960’s, clearly

identified the heterogeneity o f power and the fact that domination was no respector of

place and further that, in seeing the personal as political, it allowed women to move

outside of their personal preoccupations and experiences and treat these experiences as

the political centre of their lives. What women had thought of as an experience peculiar

to themselves could be seen as part of a pattern of sexual relations that is then available

to political change.

This allowed women claim the kind of changes they could make as being politically

important. In essence contemporary feminism challenged the way men thought of

politics and argued that politics has no integrity until it is grounded in everyday life. The

‘personal is political’ also claimed a continuum between those things considered trivial

and minor and those to which the terms political could be confidently attached. The

relationship between the means and end became part of what was being stressed. The

ways in which women related to one another became a crucial part of what the

18
movement was about.(ibid.,)

Jill Vickers suggests that conceptualising social arrangements for social organisation and

control as technologies is a useful first step in developing a general theory to explain

oppression, exploitation, domination and subordination of all forms. Her choice of the

term technology is chosen to signal that they are highly variable artefacts of human

intervention (Vickers in Radkte and Stam, 1994.p.l87). She points to the insights

offered by Mary Douglas into the nature of the technologies of human organisations we

create as a species; that institutions are composed both of structures and o f legitimising

myths; that the legitimising process always involved naturalising the structure, in the

sense that the structure had been naturalised when people view it as natural. These

institutions and technologies of which they are a part, however, can take on lives of their

own in that they can be borrowed, imitated or imposed, recombined and refurbished. The

ability to understand the mechanisms of social organisation and control Vickers argues

increases the possibility to integrate this conception into our theories of oppression ,

exploitation and subordination.

The contemporary women’s movement has recognised a particularly powerful

connection between hierarchies and authoritarianism and has been constant in its

determined critique o f unnecessary hierarchies. (Phillips, 1991) This critique has

stressed importance o f social arrangements and again observed how they can be

borrowed to reproduce oppression, discriminatory practices. (Vickers in Radtke and

19
Stam. 1994). Feminism meant thinking about the way you organised as something that

was as revealing and as important as your goals. The form as well as the content must

be radicalised. (Phillips, 1991) Resource mobilisation theorists suggest that analysing a

movement according to structure is more important than by ideological distinctions and

have further emphasised the political relationship between structure and ideology,

treating activists as intentional agents of social change (Dalton, Kuechler and Burklin

cited in Mathews 1994, p.2). Sustaining non-hierarchical structures within the women’s

movement has Phillips points out been problematic.) Ferree and Hess describe the

collectivist and bureaucratic structures thus: The bureaucratic organisation ... is

characterised by a formal division of labour, written rules, universal standards of

performance, hierarchical offices, impersonal relationships, technical expertise, and

individualistic achievement norms [T]he collectivist organisation is a community of

like-minded persons, with minimal division of labour rules, or differential rewards.

Interaction among staff is holistic, personalised, informal and designed to achieve

consensus (Ferree & Hesse,1985.p.49). Collectivist feminists regarded the means to

achieving a goal as important as the end itself, linking this with a wider cycle of protest.

(Mathews ,1994) Many feminists ‘though did not make an issue of organisational

structure arguing that conventional organisation was a matter of convenience and

effectiveness’. Jo Freeman further argued that a group’s structure is decisive in its

survival and that bureaucratic feminist organisations were more likely to succeed at

mobilising sufficient resources to continue doing the work, even while undergoing

transformation, including radicalisation.(Freeman,1975, p.145) Ferguson on the other

hand argues that bureaucracy as a discourse is distinctly anti-feminist; hierarchy,

impersonal rules and differential rewards being expressions of power and oppression and

thus the antithesis o f feminist principle. (Ferguson, 1984)

Mathews in her work suggests that the evolution of the anti-rape movement in the U.S.

and North America, from being a radical branch of the women’s liberation movement to

being an accepted part of service provision occurred as it adopted more moderate goals

that could be translated into state-supported programmes.

There is also a clear trend towards a social service agency orientation in the work.

Mawby and Gill argues that this reflects a much closer alignment with statutory agencies

(Lupton & Gillespie, 1994; Mathews, 1994;Kaye Scott, 1993). Within feminism there has

been a tension and an ambivalence about the relationship between violence against

women and the state. The liberal view of the state as the appropriate institution to control

violence is in tension with a radical analysis of the state as using violence repressively to

uphold power relations, including oppressive gender relations. (Mathews, 1994)

Adopting a more formalised structure was a feature of the change in trend (Mathews,

1994) and paralleling this structural change has been the professionalisation o f rape

crisis work. This has occurred in two related senses. One is the increase in the paid

professional work and the other is the adoption of the work of the anti-rape movement

by established professionals. (Mathews, 1994) Foley argues that the movement has been

divided into two camps: those that have adopted a social service approach and employed

21
professional administrators, psychologists and therapists; and those groups who have

resisted such attempts to professionalise, emphasising the ability of any woman to do

rape crisis work, and that have kept their original vision of providing a support service

alongside attempts to challenge social institutions that encourage and condone male

sexual violence.(Foley cited in Lupton & Gillespie, 1994)

Feminists have also challenged the way in which the understanding of male violence has

shaped service provision for women who have experienced sexual violence redefining it

in terms of women’s illness rather than men’s sexual violence. Foley argues that

women’s reactions to male violence has been pathologised by medical labels like ‘the

battered women’s syndrome’ and the Rape Trauma Syndrome thus turning womens

reactions into medical diseases. Armstrong suggests that in relation to survivors of child

sexual abuse that the fact of survivors speaking out has not, as hoped, challenged male

power, but instead opened up new ground for therapeutic intervention. The result here

has been a move away from defining child abuse as a criminal act in favour of labelling

child abuse as a sickness (Armstrong cited in Lupton & Gillespie 1994). The focus now

is on individual pathology, the ‘illness’ of the batterer and the psychological profile of

the victim replacing “ the understanding and emphasis on the impact of gender

domination” (Morgan, cited Lupton & Gillespie,p.59) Correspondingly there is an

emphasis on medical/therapeutic intervention for women who experience male violence.

Mathews argues that while rape crisis work originated as an expression of the new

22
feminist politics it is now also a manifestation of a therapeutic society. It has been

argued that the framework of therapy has become the model for dealing with numerous

social problems in the late 20th century with the vocabularies of the therapeutic

increasingly deployed in every practice addressed to human problems. Individuals

personal traumas are recorded and attended to whilst the social causes are left

unaddressed.( Rose, 1989)

The individuals, however, as Rose argues are destined to return to these. Rose points out

that contemporaneous with the nineteenth century transformations in the organisation of

asylums, prisons, hospitals and schools, new systems were devised for documenting and

recording information concerning inmates - files, records, case histories. The individual

entered the field of knowledge not through any abstract leap of the philosophical

imagination, but through the mundane operation of bureaucratic documentation. These

routine techniques of recording were transformed into systematic devices for the

inscription o f human identity into material form - pictures, charts, diagrams. These

techniques o f the visualisation and inscription of human identity were used not only to

render the individual visible but also became devices that turn the ‘phenomena’ into an

appropriate form for analysis. The psychological sciences differing from other sciences

only in their low epistemological threshold. That is to say, that frequently the norms that

enabled their objects to become visualised and inscribed become part of the scientific

programme of perception as a consequence of having first being part of a social or

23
institutional reality.(Rose, 1989). Feminists argued for the need to make visible not only

those societal or institutional rules but the epistemologies that underpinned the

therapeutic society .

Epistemology is formally defined as the study of how knowledge is possible and how

knowing is done (Bateson cited in Kaschak,1992). Prefeminist epistemologies Kascak

argues were based on the world views and experiences of men against which women

were are often still are measured. These were made to appear “objective, evaluatively

neutral and universally applicable [T]he epistemology of a dominant group can be

made to appear neutral and its value base invisible, since it coincides perfectly with what

society appears to be in some, generic universal form” Feminists began to expose,

critique and challenge masculinist epistemology in its use as the foundation of traditional

psychological thought. (Kaschak, 1992,p . 10) The underlying theories of therapeutic

systems were attacked for accepting and perpetuating sex-role stereotyped behaviour

rather than encouraging women not to adapt to limiting social and cultural roles but

rather to move toward equality.(Dutton-Douglas and Walker,1988 cited in Cantor, 1992)

Feminists, including those working within psychotherapy, have critiqued and reframed

approaches that disempower women or rely too heavily on the exercise of therapist

power for effectiveness (Lemer,1988;Leupnitz,1988;Miller 1976 ) placing new emphasis

on the importance of restoring personal power instead of the individuals’ ability to adjust

well to the status quo (Greenspan, 1993 cited in Cantor, 1992). Applying political gender

24
analysis to mainstream therapies theories feminists tried to eliminate the more sexist

parts whilst trying to keep those aspects that made theoretical sense. Jean Baker Miller

examined the notion of womans’ development of a relational self rather than the

theories of autonomy that have dominated psychoanalytical theories. (Miller, 1984 cited

in Cantor 1992). Indeed, it is the psychoanalytical theories that were initially the main

target o f feminists. Freud and his erroneous views of “little girls’ fantasies of sex with

the fathers” placed an undue emphasis on adaptation to sex role socialisation as the way

for women to achieve happiness. In spite of this general feminist critique of Freud,

varieties of psychoanalytical feminism have evolved, and attempt to develop Freudian

theory in a feminist direction. There has been a return to the study of psychoanalysis and

the psychodynamic therapies in the light of feminist ideas. (Mitchell, 1975;

Perry; 1993;Tong, 1989.)

McLeod and Saraga in their discussion of a feminist theory and practice in relation to

child sexual abuse have, within their critique of psychoanalysis, pointed also to its

potential contribution . They argue that as a discipline its practitioners are enabled “to

hear the unspeakable and thus allow it to be said. In having a place for childhood

sexuality, for fantasy, and a morality for parents and adults (which is often crushing in its

demands) it has a way of theorising the internalisation of guilt which abused children

and adults feel. It is a common experience for those abused to feel love as well as hatred

or fear for their abuser. Psychoanalysis in this way enables the understanding that both

feelings can exist simultaneously. Whilst remaining highly critical of psychoanalysis

they acknowledge the contribution this makes to theory and practice on sexual abuse and
the support it gives to sufferers. (McLeod & Saraga,1988, Feminist Review)

Others, however have argued that salvaging theories such as the psychoanalytical is an

impossible process and have concentrated on developing a new theory. (Brown, 1988;

Lerman, 1986; Rosewater, 1988 cited in Cantor, 1992), although many of the modified

theories and techniques are integrated within the new feminist theory too.

Feminist therapy it is argued does not exist within one unified, organised school. It lies

within the attitude and way of relating of the individual therapist. It is a perspective. It is

about values and a way of thinking (Perry1993 ;Chaplin 1988) Ell

However Rowan points to the fact that what is most significant in feminist therapy is

that in its practice, more than any other therapeutic approach, the political and the social

context, within which therapy takes place is centrally placed. (Rowan, 1993). Kaschak

states her belief that “[T]he feminist analysis of women’s status in society and its

concomitant intrapsychic and interpersonal effects to be the hallmark technique of

feminist therapy”(Kaschak, 1981 cited in Prozan 1992,p .183)

I indicated at the outset that this review was wide ranging in its scope. There are two

reasons for this. Firstly, there was a need to evaluate the literature that seemed relevant

at the outset of the research. Secondly, during the research process I found it necessary

to extend my review into areas I had not anticipated as a way of understanding

participants responses - These were in particular organisational structures and legal

26
practices around rape and sexual violence. In essence the research as it progressed

required as part of the methodological approach a continuing review of literature. Whilst

literature review and methodological approach are dealt with here separately in reality

each is an integral part o f the other.

3. M ETHODOLOGY

This chapter will address three issues. Firstly it will outline the views that inform and lie

behind the specific methodological choices for this research. It will then address and

explain those choices in the context of the research and finally it will offer and discuss

the experiences of the research process itself.

3.1 M ETH ODOLOGICAL APPROACH

The methodological approach and perspective of this researcher is feminist. This

enquiry is marked by that distinctiveness. It is centrally concerned with gender in the

belief that human social relations are structured by the differences in the social positions

o f men and women and importantly, by the difference between them in power. The fact

that this is also an inquiry into rape and sexual abuse accentuates this:- both centres

(Dublin and Galway Rape Crisis Centres) subscribe to the view that rape is a product of

the relations o f power, - a part o f deep and long standing inequities between men and

women.

27
It is guided by the belief that it is important and appropriate that it is women who reveal

what women’s experiences are. Women’s invisibility from history has much to do with

the focus of the male gaze. Shulamith Reinharz has argued that male academics rarely

undertook studies of women’s organisations and communities This has had important

consequences: - neither women nor their accomplishments have been visible in

historical accounts; a distorted sociological understanding of women was reinforced

because women’s groups were not understood; the social forces responsible for

women’s status was overlooked; sociology invited additional errors because

generalisations were grounded in a single sex (male) perspective. (Reinharz, 1992 p. 166)

A distinctive feature of feminist research is that “It generates its problematics from the

perspective o f women’s experiences” (Harding, 1987) This study, therefore, deliberately

problematices gender perspective. It set out to look at how the perspectives and

experiences o f women who work with the victims/survivors of sexual abuse informed

that work. My intention was that those problematics would more be more than voiced;

but also that they would be seriously engaged with in a manner that enlarges our

perspectives and in time our experiences through our actions.

I want to say something further about the perspective of ‘woman’. Underneath or beyond

the differences among women there is a shared experience and that is the experience of

being oppressed as women. Women of different races, classes and cultures share the

experience of sexual oppression, of male domination. Those differences give rise to

28
differences in the experience of oppression. Angela Davis in examining rape and racism

points to the absence of black women from the anti-rape movement and suggests that

this may in part be due to “that movement’s indifferent posture towards the ‘frame-up’

rape charge as an incitement to racist aggression”(Davis cited in Jaggar & Rothenberg,

1993,p.468). There are differences between how we as women understand and

experience ourselves. These differences are, as they must, be articulated, consciously or

unconsciously in the nature of our engagement with our world and our oppression

within it.

There are differences in the perspectives, experiences and, in consequence, the actions

o f the women who participated in this research. Indeed, those actions may serve to

underpin and re-affirm a class value system, whether this is by conscious intent or not.

The purpose in giving a voice to such differences is not to arraign women for their

diverse responses to oppression but to understand and to focus on those differences and

their structural determinants; to understand what are the implications in the differences

in their responses for themselves, for the women with whom they work and for the

work itself. Social class is an issue in the therapuetic/counselling process. It can only be

addressed if its existence is acknowledged. Feminist research must be guided by concern

not exploitation.

The articulation and hearing of difference ‘though is not enough. Differences once

spoken and heard need to be taken account of. The difficulty is in the manner of that

account. It is not enough to tolerate other voices, although it does indeed represent a

29
starting p o in t. Tolerance itself can be an expression o f privilege, as Elizabeth Spellman

argues that tolerance. She notes that those who tolerate usually hold more power and

authority than those they tolerate. Their toleration does nothing to change that fact. If

feminism’s attempt to deal with difference means including the lives and concerns of

some women without challenging the class privileges of other(women) then Spellman

argues, to speak of “difference is simply disingenuous.’’(Spellman,1988.p.183) Listening

to different voices, allowing them to be heard may not alter anything. Seeking out

voices and seriously engaging with how they critique one’s own voice is at the heart of

real acceptance and change. Politics is almost by definition a matter of engaging with

other people and other concerns .

Within a feminist methodology or perspective differences must thus be noted and taken

account o f if we are not to be left with an understanding of the ‘condition of woman’ that

is as “exclusionary as masculinist accounts of the situation of man” (Spellman, 1988.p.

183).

“Consciousness raising is feminist method” (McKinnon cited in Harding 1987

P. 135). Consciousness raising has a place within feminist practice . Points of

similarities and difference need to be negotiated and challenged in order to understand

the purposes of those who create and maintain them. There are many similarities and

significant differences voiced by the women who participated in this research. These

30
I believe reflect social and political differences between those women and, a difference

in the political stance adopted by them in relation to the work they engage in .These

differences also serve both to enable and to constrain that work .

O f fundamental importance to me was that the nature of this research should and would

be exploratory . I did not have a hypothesis to prove or to test. But I did have a purpose.

I wanted to ‘know’. Specifically, I wanted to know:

• about the women who worked with other women who had been raped and women

who had been sexually abused.

• what the women who participated in this research felt and thought about rape and

sexual abuse.

• what they thought and felt about the perpetrators of these acts.

• what they thought and felt was the nature of their work.

• what they felt and thought about why they were selected for this work.

• to know how they felt about the training they had or received for the work.

• how they felt about being paid or not being paid for their work and how all this

might shape that work.

A major task o f feminist research is to explore the experiences of women and to treat it

as valid in its own terms. “To see what is there, not what w e’ve been taught is there, nor

even what we might wish to find, but what is”.(Du Bois 1983 cited in Hammersley,1995.

31
p,46). As a feminist, I am committed to the valuation of women’s experiences and the

use o f this experience as the ground for critique.

As a therapist I have learned that ‘knowing’ lies in the openness to the unknown, in a

willingness to find out, in recognising that the only way I can come to know is by

accepting that I do not know. “ When a therapist learns to follow cues and listens to the

resulting dialogue between the two viewpoints of ‘binocular vision’(Bion 1975), of

knowing and not-knowing he will frequently find himself led towards the understanding

which is needed.” (Bion cited in Casement,1985,27).

The more truly exploratory research is, then the less likely it is to become tilted in any

pre-detemiined direction. In this research I began with a strong focus on the perspective

o f the individual therapist/counsellor. The centres (Dublin and Galway RCC’s) simply

seemed to offer a place of access to the individual therapist/counsellor, Listening to

what emerged led me towards the realisation of the crucial importance of the structure

of the centre in which the work was carried out and that this research needed to focus

on and understand those structures and the philosophy that lay behind those structures.

This research consequently addresses itself to the policies and practices of each centre.

The stance o f knowing that one does ‘not know’ in order to know is not to suggest that I

regard myself ( or indeed any researcher ) as being without a particular orientation

32
anymore than I subscribe to the notion of the therapist/counsellor being in Freudian

terms a “blank canvas”( Clarkson, P. 1994). It seems to me that authentic therapeutic

work and authentic research both require “trying to work out the tension between

objectivity and subjectivity” (Reinharz,1992,p 263) Although I dislike the terms

subject and object it seems useful to hold them in trying to work this out. Researcher

and participant occupy the same research space during a particular research moment.

Therapist and client also share the therapeutic space. This space in therapeutic terms is

regarded as “belonging essentially to the client”(Clarkson ,1994. P. 180) The therapists

proactivity is usually, though not always, regarded as detracting from the primary task

o f enhancing the client’s autonomous proactivity. Therapists are expected to notice

their own transferential projections and expectations in the ways they react to their

clients, and use that information in ways that serve their clients. “This objectivity

requires considerable knowledge o f self as subject “ (ibid.,) Similarly, the research

space belongs primarily to the participants who inhabit its ground. Evans refers to “the

importance of the researcher having experiences related to her research, while also being

reflexive about the nature of the relation between experience and research (cited in

Reinharz 1992. P. 163)

What level of objectivity that is possible is in direct proportion to the degree to which we

acknowledge our own subjectivity and our own perspective. It is also necessary to

acknowledge that our knowing o f ourselves is limited to that which is ‘consciously’

available to us and also that this conscious knowledge is only part of what is reflected

33
back into our work. What we are unaware of and unconscious to in ourselves is also and

often more powerfully contained in our work. In therapeutic terms it is that which is

unconscious on the part of the therapist that has the greatest potential to corrupt the work

o f the client. The therapeutic stance consequently moves the therapist to self-awareness.

It is the responsibility of the researcher for the same reasons to move constantly towards

self-awareness.

I am aware that it is my belief and interest in this that in part motivates this research. My

wish ‘to know’ the perspective o f the therapist reflects my belief that this perspective,

conscious or unconsciously known, is reflected by the therapist (and researcher) back

into and shapes the work, again whether this is by conscious intent or not. It reflects my

own dialogue not just with theoretical concepts of the therapeutic process but also with

the politics and actual practice of this process.. Personal histories have become the site

on which explanation of pain, of conflict, of confusion, of the meaning of everyday is

sought. Understanding one’s own herstory can only offer partial explanation. Histories

are constructed in social, political and economic realities.

Politics and therapy may not be the same but yet they are not different. Feminist

counselling is a recognition of the interconnectedness of our ‘internal’ psychological

worlds with the ‘external’ material and social worlds. It concerns itself with the effect

and influence of other social hierarchies such as race and class and sexual orientation.

Feminist counselling and therapy are profoundly social and political as well as personal

34
and individual (Chaplin,J. 1988 P.4). What is surprising is that this is often heard as

being radical. It’s radical element lies in acknowledgement. Counselling and therapy

has always been deeply embedded in social and economic contexts. They have also been

built upon masculinist epistemologies.

“Sometimes I think that women and men live in different cultures’YMcKirmon,. cited in

Harding ,1987. p. 143) They don’t. But the they do reside in a dominant masculinist

culture which renders woman invisible. Feminist therapy involves “returning her own

vision to each woman, and in this way contributes to the feminist cultural vision”

(Kaschak,1992. p.225). Feminist therapy and feminist research have in common a goal

to make women’s experiences visible.

3.3. RESEARCH METHOD.

CASE STUDY

The research method chosen for the purposes of this inquiry was a case study which

includes literatureview/analysis, interviews and participant observation. The research is

qualitative. It emphasises detailed description and understanding of what emerges from

interviews with participants.

The choice of case study as a method allowed the possibility o f focusing specifically on

the experiences of the women working within two Rape Crisis Centres, (Dublin and

Galway) with women who had been raped and sexually abused. It was not the intention

35
at the outset that the study would be comparative. The centres were in fact chosen for

the similarities - both being located in cities. My thoughts behind this choice also

included the possibility that because cities tend to have diverse populations the women

who worked in those centres had the potential to represent different social groups in

those populations.

This case study is comparative. This was not my original intention but result of

following the cues of the research material as it emerged. Both centres in fact

operate within very different organisational structures. The Galway Rape Crisis Centre

is a collective structure whilst the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre is now a hierarchical

structure (originally the Dublin centre was formed also in the collectivist structure). For

the women who worked in the Galway RCC a key philosophy of their work was that

their structure of work should reflect the value base of that work.

Working and organising in a non-hierarchical way was for them a vital part of their

therapy. During the course o f the research it became clearer through the voices of the

women involved in the research that the structure of the centre was crucial to the

women’s experiences of themselves and of their work and in consequence impacted on

the work with the women who came through the doors of each centre.

For this reason a chapter is devoted to the discussion of the structures of these centres.

36
The study does not offer completeness in itself. In truth it provokes more questions

than it does answers. It does endeavour to make vivid the experiences of the women

within these two centres in the belief that these experiences when examined individually

or viewed in relationship with, or compared to others, move towards a more complete

understanding of the work of these and other Rape Crisis Centres.

This method was chosen because it gives a unitary character to the data being studied

by interrelating the variety of facts to a single case. Case studies do not necessarily

establish generalisations but have value in making it possible to generate and test

theory “which at best remain hypothetical and at worst unreal and barren. Theory is

impoverished without case studies. (Reinharz,1992)

Case studies allow analysis of change over time. Within the period of this research it

was possible to observe the changes in the therapeutic response of workers in the

Galway Rape Crisis centre. It was also possible within the case study method to see the

changes in the structure and political perspective of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.

(these issues are discussed within the findings of the research)

Case studies help address the need for the provision of adequate historical

records of organisations in which women have been and are involved. This study

contributes to that record.

37
Case studies provide material for comparative research and for cross-cultural

studies. Drawing on case studies o f Rape Crisis Centres in Canada and the U.S.made it

possible to see the development of a process within RCC’s over a period of time. This in

turn made it possible to see the similarity in the pattern emerging in the Dublin RCC

with those centres mentioned above. It also highlighted that the process of development

in the Galway RCC does not fit that pattern and may offer a model and possibility for

survival within a different political stance, (discussed again within findings of research).

Individual case studies, including this one, make it possible to combine individual cases

to examine the relation between cases and particular social structures and processes.

This is vital if the work of Rape Crisis Centres is to effective in not only in dealing with

the aftermath o f rape for its survivors but also in confronting and ultimately preventing

rape.

INTERVIEWS

The choice of semi-structured interviewing using open-ended questions was made for a

number o f reasons, most informed by feminist consciousness of the relationship between

researcher and the participants in the study. It allowed the participants in the research

active involvement in the process and the gathering of information about themselves.

The interviews although semi-structured were guided by a list of questions

38
in order to facilitate consistency. ( a list of the questions asked is included in Appendix

1) This includes all questions that were common to the interviews - but does not include

those questions that arose following a particular response. Care was taken that this list

did not drive the research in a way that would de-value the “open ended nature of the

questions which allows for the richness of difference between participants”

(Reinharz,1992)

I use extensive quotes in reporting the participants responses. There are two reasons

for this. Firstly, it is respectful of the participants views in that it allows those views be

heard in their own words rather than those of the researcher. Secondly, it allows the

reader, through the excerpts, “to make their own interpretation as well as considering the

researchers “(Ibid). It also addresses a characteristic of feminist researcher which is to

draw the reader in and “to forge a connection through her between the reader and the

people studied”(Reinharz, 1992. P. 267). It was my specific intention that the voices in

this research would be engaged with explicitly by the reader. An important aspect of

the interviewing process is that it allows the participant ‘through’. I mean this in the

sense that it allowed participants to answer not just what was being asked by the

intention of the researcher in the question but often to answer a very different question

which she heard and which illustrates much more graphically the nature of the work as

seen by the participant.

39
Given that the intention was to illuminate the perspective of the therapist /supporter the

interviewing process ( described above) which allowed and facilitated this was

particularly appropriate to this research. I am conscious here of McKinnons’ view that

“personal statements say more than we know”(cited in Reinharz, 1992. p .170)

At the same time , as a therapist I am aware of my own ability to facilitate disclosure

and aware that the participants in this research had a similar background. This dynamic

certainly had the potential to facilitate deep and personal disclosures. I believe that there

is a need to hold an awareness always that participants share their thoughts, feelings and

experiences as women and not as “data providers” and to make that awareness

‘visible’(Oakley cited in Roberts,1981)

In each interview I chose to ‘remind’ participants of my research intention. (This was

implicit rather than explicit. - In each interview I drew attention to the fact that I was

recording responses, often this was simply done by asking a participant to slow down,

or repeat a comment to ensure that I was correctly noting it. ) Again feminist research

must be guided by concern and not exploitation.

Interviews were conducted on a one-to-one basis and usually lasted for an hour and a

half. In some cases a second interview was arranged if there was further material to be

covered. The exception to this was an interview with two members of the volunteer

40
group with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre who were jointly interviewed (arranged by the

centre). This interview last for approximately two hours.

One group interview was arranged with the therapists from the Dublin RCC. This was

intended as a preliminary meeting prior to individual interviews with each of therapists.

These planned subsequent interviews did not in fact take place as the Centre withdrew

its permission for me to do this. The group interview is included in the research. This

interview was very brief - lasting approximately twenty-five to thirty minutes. An

account of the protracted correspondance between me and the centre is given in

fieldwork Appendix 2.

Transcripts of interviews with participants were sent to participants through their centres,

not with a view to encouraging changes, but out of courtesy.

PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION.

The main effort o f the study was devoted to interviews. However, I have included

my observations of myself and the women who participated in the research in their work

setting which constituted the research space that we shared. This includes observations

of that work space. This is limited by the fact that I did not spend long periods of time in

either centre. This comment is not intended to diminish those observations which I

believe offer considerable insight into the ethos behind the work of each centre.
Although a vast literature exists on the gendering of space and the effects of space on

social relationships in general, the approach taken in these observations is intuitive and

involves a semiotic reading of the work spaces. (Ardener. 1988).

My experience as a therapist and counsellor disposes me towards and is consistent with a

feminist ethnographic emphasis in methodology. Just as the ‘clients’ body language

or choice of chair to sit in, can and is seen, as part of her story (Egan, 199;

Peris,Hefferline & Goodman 1972)so too is the choiceof building, notices, paintings etc.

part o f the story o f the structure and ideology ofthe work setting. Environments have the

potential to alienate or to include. Different women of different classes come for

therapy/support. The physical surrounding of the therapeutic space can offer either

comfort or intimidation.(Chaplin 1988.Perry,1993). How we arrange ourselves and our

settings is part of the language of our story and appropriate reading material for the

researcher. My observations ofthese are thus included.

RI S FXRr HFK EXPERIENCE OF RESEARCH PROCESS.

I began this research process with a quiet sense of purpose. There were issues in which I

was interested and I felt had a value in exploring. I was not prepared for the depth in the

change of the intensity of that purpose. This has become much more than a research

project reflecting interests o f my own inquiry. I find it difficult to succinctly capture that

change. It lies in the difference between the respectful intellectual knowing of the

importance of a piece of research into a specific group of women’s lives and work and

42
the intensity of emotional engagement with the need to understand and to come to terms

with what was being uncovered and to come to terms with my own responses to that.

Most difficult for me was the realisation that despite my belief in the value of the work

of all o f the women in the rape crisis centres I found it increasingly difficult to

empathise with those women whose approach to the work was substantially scewed in a

therapeutic direction with the feminist political aspect considerably diminished. This

was all the more so because as a therapist I subscribe to the belief in and the

commitment to the importance of professional therapeutic standards.

I realised during the research process that I had not anticipated finding myself critical;

that my assumption was that I would somehow be at one with the way the work was

carried out. So the intellectual premise of acknowledging and facing differences between

women has taken on a dimension that is much more real; that is much more

uncomfortable and challenging because it involves my knowing o f my differences with

some of the women whose work I both value and am committed to.

There has also been a real struggle to find a way to say what emerged from the research

in a way that facilitates listening and change in, rather than damage to, the structures that

have been , with considerable cost and effort to many women, been put in place and

which afford comfort to many more women who have availed o f them and who continue

to avail of them. I am acutely aware that Rape Crisis Centres’s often operate in hostile

43
environments. “[The] centre also found itself subject to public attack - seen as mad dykes

shouting about rapes that never happened” - (Therapist. Dublin RCC).

However, if my intention was one of quiet purpose at the outset it has, in the process of

this research, become crucially important to highlight and amplify the findings of this

research because of its potential value to inform the future of the work .

It is my view both o f the therapeutic process and the research process that it’s

centrepiece should the encouraging images of a better future.lt is the responsibility of

research to discover and to articulate patterns in order to judge their strength and scope.

Recognising patterns is not meant to bring inquiry to closure but to open “fields of

meaning and to generate new interpretative possibilities” (Frye, cited in Jaggar &

Rothenberg , 1993. p. 107) It is in this spirit that my comments and experiences of the

research process itself are offered.

Collective structures are often regarded as being less efficient. Reasons given for this cite

time required to reach decisions, the need for consultation with other members in order

to reach consensus. This was not my experience. When I approached the Galway Rape

Crisis Centre with a request that they facilitate my research I was informed that the

collective would consider this request. I was also told that the decision would be made at

their next collective meeting.( All collective members attend collective meetings ). As

meetings are held weekly there was very little delay and within a week they responded

44
positively to my request. The centre I subsequently learned had facilitated a research

project (through University College, Galway) and had found the experience a helpful and

positive one. My impression was that this coloured their response to my request. All

further requests that I made were dealt with and responded to quickly. If something

needed to be checked with the collective I was told how long it would take and the

response was always within that time frame - usually about four days and never more

than seven days.

When I stated that I wished to specifically cover an aspect of the work such as training or

selection procedures I found that the collective structure facilitated this easily in that all

its members are involved in all aspects of the centres work. Policies/practices in relation

to issues were therefore understood by all members because all members were involved

in deciding on what those practices/policies should be. This was clear to me because

when I asked who might be the best person to discuss training or selection their

response was that any o f the workers could explain or discuss this with me. This

démocratisation of knowledge is held to be one of the crucial characteristics of

collectivist organisations. (Gralton,1992) From the point of view of carrying out research

this was extremely facilitative. The fact that all the members were a part of the decision

to participate in the research may have made it easier for each of them to respond to my

on-going requests for participation in interviews or requests for other pieces of

information.

45
My experience of the Dublin RCC with its hierarchical structure was somewhat

different. Whilst the initial request was agreed to without conditions, the Centres

management subsequently decided that it was not possible for me to interview therapists

individually. By the time that decision was made I had interviewed Department Heads

with responsibility for Counselling, Training, Education and the Volunteer Group. This

was almost one year into the research work. Hierarchical structures are regarded as more

efficient with specific individuals taking responsibility for specified areas of work

allowing for more effective work practices. This was not my experience. My ‘phone

calls were rarely returned and it was only in the latter stages of the research that my

correspondence was replied to.

I found the experience difficult and frustrating. The bureaucratic structures far from

enabling decisions seemed to constrain them. I was often met with “if would be better if

you spoke to ‘X ’ about that decision “ or only ‘X’ can deal with that” The autonomy of

workers within hierarchical structures is discussed in the next chapter which specifically

addresses Organisational Structures.

There seemed to be a real difficulty also in sharing information between the women in

the centre. On three separate occasions I was asked to submit my research proposal. The

request seemed genuine in that each time the request was made the individual concerned

46
explained that she did not have a copy of it. ( Appendix 2 schedules the events and the

delays and difficulties of the research in the Dublin RCC)

Certainly when I met with the therapist group they were not aware of my research even

though I had been in the centre for several months at that stage. It seems unlikely

therefore that they had been consulted regarding the original request.

From a therapeutic perspective, clients are more likely to work harder at achieving

goals(decisions) that they have actively chosen and feel therefore that they have

ownership of. ( Egan. 1994. ) Similarly, workers who share the decision making process

in relation to the work it would seem are more likely to participate in the implementation

of those decisions.

In both centres participants in interview settings were generous with their time, open and

reflective in their responses, and willing to share their views and feelings. I therefore

have to believe that the structure within which the participants worked was a strong

feature in explaining my research experience. In summary then my research experience

within the Galway collective structure I would describe as

• open

• flexible

• responsive

• efficient

47
whilst my research experience in the Dublin centre with its hierarchical structure was

that it was:

• less flexible

• less responsive

• less efficient

• closed

It seems also that my experiences are reflected in some o f the comments made by the

women themselves regarding the structures they work in

“theatmosphere... theinformalfeeloftheplace. Youcanjustcallin..we keepa

structurebutit’sstillwelcoming, it’snotoff-putting”(worker Galway Rape
Crisis Centre)

“we alsotalkaboutfacingtherealityratherthanidealisingthecentre;
therearedelaysingettingappointments... thereisalotofdifficultyinthe
frontlineofpeople gettinghelp..it’
snotacaseofpeopleareinandalliswell’’
(Therapist, Dublin RCC)

"Therewas asenseofbelongingnotjusttothegroupbuttothecentre.
You couldwalkbythedoornow andnothaveanyonetodropinandsay 'hello’
to” -(VolunteerDublinRCC)

48
^ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES - A FEMINIST CRITIQUE

4.1 ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURES.

Organisational structures are discussed as a separate chapter within this study.. This is so

done in order to discuss the structure of each centre in the belief that behind the structure

o f each centre lies the philosophy which guides and shapes the work of that centre and

speaks most clearly the direction, intention and aim of the work. Examining the

structure itself then is a fundamental part of this inquiry.

Feminism concerns itself with structures that are democratic and enabling, and

stresses the relationship between the means and the ends. It also addresses itself to the

importance o f understanding the ways in which a structure constructs relationships in

order to understand if, in its daily practice, that structure may in fact subvert its own

stated ideals.

Both Galway and Dublin centres say that their role is one of empowering women who

come for therapy/support

“therapycancompoundvictimconsciousnessunlessasenseoftheirown
powerandresponsibilityisre-established“(HeadofTraining,RCC Dublin).
“ thisisaboutempoweringwomen intheirlives”(TherapistRCC Galway)

The Galway collective structure extends this ideology explicitly to the way in which they

work together as women, believing that it should reflect the value base of their work.

49
Decisions in the collective structure in Galway are made within the collective’s regular

meetings. Every member of the collective is allowed an equal input. The aim is that of

consensus -

“ toarriveatadecisionwithwhicheachmember iscomfortable, itinvolves

much discussion,negotiationandcompromisebetweenmembers inorderto
reachthisfinaldecision...oncethedecisionhasbeentaken,itisfelttobea
lastingonebecauseextensivediscussionhasgeneratedfirmgroupsupport”(
Gralton, 1992,p.63)
"...Itmightbeeasier.,ifdifferentpeoplehaddifferentrolesandtook
responsibilitybutIdon’tthinkitwouldbebetter.Ican'timaginethewomen here
handingoverresponsibilitytoamanagementcommittee. There’ sarealwishand
arealdesiretoworkasacollectivehere...tohave equalpower, shared
responsibility.It’
sapoliticalidealandit’
shardtoputintopractice it’
sa
hasslesometimesbutitisempowering”(workerGalwayRCC).

“IthinkIhavemore ofastakeinthis{collective},more responsibilityforwhat

happenshere... (I)feelveryresponsibleforallofwhatwe do.Notjustpartof
it”(WorkerGalwayRCC).

In 1984 the Dublin RCC moved from its collective structure to its present traditional

hierarchical management structure.

“Thecentreisnow runbyaBoardofDirectors Theyhavetobeconcerned

withpublicimage-ithastobegoodandpalatable’’(Therapist,Dublin,RCC).

“This centreisrunonabusiness-likebasis.......Ithinkthoughabusiness­
likeimageisveryimportant...we'vejustrunacorporatequiz.Itwas very
slick. We hadpeoplelikePatKenny ...itcostIEP400 athrow. Whenyou’re
targetingpeoplelikethisthenabusiness-likeimageisimportant...butmore
important,you havetohavecredibility,andthesepeoplewereimpressedatit
beingrunlikeabusiness” (VolunteerandCentres’representativeon Rape
CrisisCentresNetwork-DublinRCC) .

50
 “In1992aBoardwasformedtostrengthenourposition ithelpedestablish
ourcredibility (A)BoardcertainlyhelpedourrelationshipwiththeHealth
Board”(Therapist,DublinRCC).

“It’s(thework)moreskilled. Alsoitgivesuscredibility.Itimprovesthequality
ofthe workwithclientsanditalsoprovidesamoresolidbasistoprovide
training”(HeadofTraining,DublinRCC).

What is reflected in this language is the move from the non-hierarchical structure of

collective self-help towards a hierarchical and commercial relationship between client

and therapist. Whilst reflecting some of the thinking behind the move from a

collective to hierarchical management structure the reasoning is also very similar to the

reasons given by employers to introduce organisational or technological changes -

specifically, increased efficiency and /or market viability (Watson ,.1980. p.222). This is

consistent with the move suggested above.

There are, of course, implications for those who work within the altered structure.

“forhistoricalandotherreasonsthemanagementstructuredoesn’tonlyinvolve
thosewithawarenessoforeveninterestintherapy. Thisgeneratesdifficulties.
Fundingdecisionstendtobeadministrativedecisions.,decisionsaremade on
thesame basisasforpsychiatrichospitals...thisapproachismoreacceptableto
thedecisionsmakers., it’
scosteffective”(HeadofTraining,DublinRCC)

“IntheDublinRCC when apersoncomes inthere’saprogramme, atimeto

finish,althoughtheclientmay notbefinished. alsothetherapistsare
51
 verybusy. Theyhaveanagenda. Thewaitinglistcausespressure. There’
s
apolicydecisionthattherapyshouldendafter18months”(Therapist-ex
RCC, Dublin).

The experience o f the women working within this traditional management structure

indicates less comfort with the reality of working with it than their counterparts in the

collective structure o f the Galway RCC. Their comments above highlight particularly a

reduction of their autonomy within the structure both in terms of the overall decision

making process and also in relation to their individual work with clients.(deciding when

therapy should en d .). The autonomy of the work within hierarchical and collectivist

structures o f these centres itself will be discussed later in this section.

The women working in the Galway RCC cite autonomy in the workplace as extremely

important.

"Therehastobeastructurethatwillsupporttheworkandtheworker...
supervisionhelps...sotoodoeshavingcontroloveryourworksetting.Ifyou
didn’tthere’
dbeevenmorestress,butbecausethisisacollectiveyoufeeland
youknowyou haveacertainamountofcontrol”(Worker, GRCC)

There is too an increased potential for conflict as the women working in the hierarchical

structure of the Dublin centre adjust and defend their interests and themselves in their

work , in the face of this reduction in autonomy and increased pressure from the

managerial initiative, which is now more powerful than they are.

52
 “.. [A]11hereshouldworkwithinbroadlysimilarframework. (We)ensure
thisbybuildinginon-goingtrainingcomponent. Therearemanagement
difficultieswiththis.Themajorconcernofthemanagementisthatweseeas
many clientsaspossible. Timespentintrainingistimespentawayfrom clients
The CentreisrunbyanappointedBoard-Heads ofDepartmentsform the
managementteamwiththeDirector. TheDirectorisnotatherapist. Therapists
seeagoodservicetoclientsrequiringon-goingtraining.TheDirectorfeels
thattherapistsarehiredastrainedcounsellors,sowhydo theyneedextra
training
That’ sputtingitinsimplisticterms”(Therapist,DRCC).

Unfortunately, as permission was not given to interview individual therapists about their

work, I was not able to ascertain how conflict was dealt with in the Dublin centre. I did ,

however, discuss this with workers in the Galway centre.

“they’re(difficulties)confrontedopenly.It’
snoteasy.Itcanleavearawness.
Ittakeseffortandtrouble.ButIthinkit’ sagoodway’’(Worker, GalwayRCC)

“You can bringup conflicts,workthemthrough.Idon’tthinkit’saseasy

todothisinahierarchywhenyouknowwhoeveristheboss,isstilltheboss
attheendoftheday’’(Worker, GalwayRCC)

The following comment made by the women also give an impression of a sense of

increased pressure. This may be in part caused by the reduction in autonomy but also

because the increased effort to see more clients. Watson argues that demands for

increased effort often result in less opportunity for the worker to use their craft skills

which has a tendency in turn to reduce rewards such as job satisfaction. (Ibid., P.222)

“we workedhardforthistimeforourselvesastherapists.,ifwe let

go ofit,itmightbedifficulttogetitback” (Therapist,DRCC -referring
53
 to tim e a llo c a te d to therapists on a w eekly basis to m e e t together)

My impression is that within the hierarchical structure there may not be either a vehicle

and certainly there does not seem to be the time to work through differences or

difficulties whilst within the collectivist structure there is space and willingness to

confront and work through difficulties that cause conflict.This capacity to deal with

conflict is important. Jo Freeman argues that whilst the ideal in collectivist groups is that

all are equal, in reality those who knew one another best had a hidden advantage. They

spoke to one another outside of meetings and (perhaps unconsciously) formed a caucus

that then shaped general discussions. The members of the Galway Centre by bringing

conflict into the open avoid creating this hidden structure of power by bringing conflict

‘into account’ (Freeman,cited in Phillips, 1991)

Pressure created by demands o f a structure does not only impact on therapists, but also

on the work. The following comment was made in relation to the therapist’s own

response to dealing with rape victims.

‘‘
Alsovictimsoften ‘rally’inacrisis.Thattogetherwiththepressureofworkin
thecentrecanfeedinto:there'snopathologyhere. Youcangetoverit
quickly.,maybewantingtobelievethisbecauserapecanhappen toyou too.”
(HeadofCounsellingRCC Dublin)

In the same way, support offered by the choice of organisational structure also affects the

work and the women who come for support.

54
 “It’s(thecollective)notjustaboutthisbuildingoraboutthoseofusworking
here Thewomen who come haveastrongfeelingabouttheplacetoo.Theyfeel
comfortablehere. Theysaythatit’ sagoodplaceforthemtobe...thatthey’re
treatedwithrespect,allowedtobethemselves. “(Worker GalwayRCC)

The following comments made by a members of the volunteer group of workers attached

to the Dublin Rape Crisis centre highlights another aspect of its hierarchical

structure/decision making process, that is its exclusionary potential.

This group of volunteers are responsible for staffing the twenty-four hour crisis -line

service (outside usual working hours) offered by the Dublin Centre. As volunteers they

are neither staff nor Board members. These are comments from volunteers on the issue

o f mandatory reporting, an issue on which they were to some degree in the front line as

the following comments indicate.

“Iwas intheofficethedaymandatoryreportingwas inthenewsandmostofthe

callsIgotwereagainstit”.(Vol.RCC Dublin)

“peopleareworriedthatitwillbeliketheOrkneys...familiesbeingsplitup”
(VolRCC Dublin).

The group were informed after the decision was made and apparently without
reference to them. As a group they were simply not part of the decision making

process.

55
 “‘
X ’toldusthatthedecisionwas takenafterdialoguebetweenstaff
andtheBoard”(Volunteerworker DRCC referringtoadecisionmade
byRCC Dublinregardingmandatoryreporting)

The comment,made by one of the volunteeers ,on how the decision was made without

reference to the volunteer group, contained no criticism. It was an observation rather, on

the fact that it had not been an easy decision and had been taken only after dialogue

between the Board and the staff. It is,however, an example of how organisations are in

fact a reflection of a wider social structure. People are not slotted into pre-given

organisational structures but rather those structures reflect the outcome of interactive

patterns o f human relationships, particularly relationships of power. Watson argues that

people do not simply follow organisational rules or procedures because the organisation

requires it but comply, more or less, with rules because they recognise a set of

expectations that they should obey them. (Watson, 1980. p.205)

The work of the volunteer group was described in this way

“theirlisteningisan invaluablepartofourtherapy"
(Supervisor, Vol. Group,DublinRCC)
At the same time though they are regarded as

“[being]different.It’
soutsidethecentre.,notreallydrawn in..theywouldn’t
reallybeawareoflobbying it’ snotinvolved”(Supervisor, Vol.GroupD.
RCC).

56
The members o f the volunteer group did not have expectations of being equally treated

and consulted, nor were they expected to within this structure. Their work is voluntary

and unpaid. Voluntary, unpaid work, particularly where carried out by women, does not

accrue the same rights and privileges as does paid work within our social structures.

Their treatment within this traditional structure reflects that social reality. The position

o f the volunteer group is discussed further in the next section of the this chapter.

The structural nature o f an organisation is often more subtly, though not less effectively,

displayed in others ways - through its language, its location, its environment. This is

discussed under ‘Hidden Hierarchies’ below. However, will discuss one aspect of this

now because it deals with how this hierarchical structure excludes the Voluntary Group

within the physical arrangements of its environment.

In the hallway of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre , directly behind the the receptionist’s

desk, there is a large poster. This poster is divided into two sections. On the left hand

side there is a list of names under the heading Our Workers. On the opposite right hand

side, and at a lowerlevel,there is another heading which says Volunteer Group under

which there is another set o f names. In this poster the hierarchy is made very clear, both

linguistically and graphically. The volunteers operate at a lower level within this

organisation. Indeed, it could be argued that through the use of the term ‘Our Workers’

that what was implicit in the decision making process described above, is now made

explicit, that is the exclusionof the volunteer group.

57
The feminist movement crucially recognises the existence of structural oppression.

The re-alignment o f the relations of power that are held to be at the base of women’s

oppression, requires the transformation of patriarchal, capitalist and racist social

structures.

Feminism stresses the relationship between the private and the public arguing that they

cannot be dealt with as two separate worlds. Relationships within families are shaped by

the public policies of the social world; conversely relationships in the workplace are

moulded by the inequalities of sexual power. Relationships of inequality are

reproduced within this hierarchical traditional structure and thus contribute to the

maintenance o f inequality in relationships.. This is surely deeply incongruent with the

stated intention o f the work of the Dublin RCC of enabling survivors to re-establish a

sense o f their own power and responsibility.

“From thetherapyside,when awoman comes inhereshe’ strainedtodoher

own work. That’sthemodel Iwouldn’twanttobetellingsomeone ina
worksettingwhatgoes.Itjustdoesn’tfittogether.Itwouldn’tmakesense”
(Worker, GalwayRCC).

It is also hard to reconcile this with their acknowledgement of the need to

“becognisantoftherealityofpowerinsocialstructuresandeconomic
structuresofrelationships"(TherapistDublin,RCC)

58
It is the realisation that our experiences have a commonality and that they are

political in their origin that has empowered the feminist movement. It also raises the

paradox between empowering the women who come for support/therapy whilst at the

same time disempowering their own workers and volunteers.

“Ithinkifyoudon’tfeelempoweredinyourown work, ifyoufeeldecisions

aretakenwithoutyou,thenit’
shardtoempowerothers.”(Worker, Galway
RCC)

When women gain access to positions of power, that must not result in the undermining

o f the critique of power. For if this were to happen then “equality would no longer hold

the promise of an end to oppression, but of equal access to the roles of domination and

oppression” Kappeler,1995. p. 108)

How each centre does things is as important as what it sets out to do. Again, feminism

concerns itself with structures that are enabling and democratic. Democracy builds from

participation, from inclusion rather than exclusion. It is inconsistent to speak of

empowerment, of political equality, and to structure social working arrangements in a

way that deprives, or worse yet, excludes individuals of the chance to participate, as the

case o f the volunteer group. The right to participate in the decision making process with

59
those with whom we share a common activity is fundamental to political equality.

“Politics has no integrity until it is grounded in everyday life”(Phillips,1991, p. 111.)

Organisational style for the Galway RCC is part of their radical critique. Their

non-hierarchical, non-competitive collective means that “ there is no management

structure in place so that paid and non-paid workers have equal say at all levels of the

decision-making process’^ Gralton, 1992. p.46)

“Thecollectivestructureallowsyou make acontribution.I’

m reallylistened
tohere.’’(WorkerGalwayRCC)

Collectivist feminists did not just come upon that form of organisation accidentally but

organised in that way because they were part of a larger cycle of protest, which engaged

in creating a new frame o f meaning that challenged the existing social paradigm

(Tarrow,1989; Kriesi, 1989;Dalton, Keuchler and Burklin, 1990 cited in Mathews N.

1994).

The collective structure chosen by the Galway RCC counters marginalisation that occurs

in hierarchical structures by giving different voices equal standing.

Democracy is a developmental process. Democratic processes need to be learnt.

The ability to participate in democracy, argues Carol Pateman, stands or falls on two

important issues, (cited in Phillips. A. 1991.P.39)

60
First, the educative function of participation. That participation is something that is

necessary and that also needs to be learnt and practised is clearly understood in the

Galway RCC as evidenced in these comments:

“[W]erequireparticipationinallaspects. We lookforawillingnesstotry,
to ‘
muck-in’(WorkerGalwayRCC) ’
"Ittookme alongtimeheretotakemy ownpower. Iwas new
tothegroup.It’seasytosaypower isequal,butittakeslongertoactuallyputit
intopractice Theyrespectedme asan individual...theyhadfaithinme”
(WorkerRCC Galway)

The experience o f hierarchy and subordination undercuts the equal development of

ourselves at citizens and impacts on our ability and belief in ourselves to make

decisions and contributions. The following comment is an example of how a therapist

did not question her right nor recognise her ability to effect or contribute to change in an

existing practice within the organisational structure.

“ourtrainingcoursesarefocusedonsexualabuse.Ithasstruckme thoughthat
perhapswe couldputonacoursethatwoulddealmorespecificallywithrape...
“thatwas thestructurewhenIcame in”(Thiswas inresponsetomy questionas
towhytheeducational/trainingworkhadthisfocus).
(andagainlaterinsame interview)
“I’vecome intoasituationwhere it’salreadysetupthatway’’(Education
Officer, DublinRCC)
Or even, where the worker holds a strong view it may be difficult for her to influence or

change policy.

“Ihaveenormousdifficultywiththispersonally.Ithinkthatbythetimetheclient
comes throughthedoortheyhavepaidenoughandIdon’tfeeltheyshouldpay

61
 forthisservice.Nobodyshouldhavetopay.However, thatismypersonalview
anditiscentre policy(tochargewomenforservice)”(TherapistDublin,RCC)

The second part o f Pateman’s hypothesis is what she regards as the crucial role of

industry. Drawing on Almond and Verba’s work(1963) she notes the high correlation

between how much we participate in politics and whether we think of ourselves as

competent or politically effective.and stresses the very clear indication that those who

work under hierarchical control, with decisions taken over their heads will attach least

weight to political involvement. Without the experience of affecting decisions at work

we believe that there is nothing much we can do. Thus the “private sphere of work

underpins the public sphere of politics; what happens in one shapes and constrains what

is likely to occur in the other” (ibid.,)

“Iwantthewomen who comeheretogetagoodserviceandIfeelresponsible

forensuringthat.Ihaveahandinthis.I’m reallyapartofit.I’m notjustblindly
following”(WorkerGalwayRCC)
[WJe’renot seennow as justhelpingwomen out’butasanestablishedpartof
societyprovidingacompetentservice”(Worker,GalwayRCC).

The women working is this centre clearly see themselves as credible and effective. Their

sense o f efficacy and control is facilitated by its collective structure . Within this

structure the women deploy their social knowledge in a way that is local, contextual, and

concrete. This is a ‘politics of difference’. This aspect of collective structure will be

returned to later in terms of its implications for influence within the community.

62
Part o f their belief in themselves as credible and effective comes not only from the level

o f their participation but also from the nature of that participation The centre does not

only seek and encourage equal participation in the work but also equality in the kind of

work that each participates in.

“We alltakepartintraining...ifwe hadamanagementcommitteewouldIstill

havethesamefeelingthatIhaveto-daybysittingwithandsupportinga
woman..ifIhadtoanswerthedoorandhandover,alotwouldbelostinthat
way.Iftherewereamanagementcommitteewho didnotdocounsellingIwonder
iftheycouldmake decisionsregardingthatcounsellingprocess...
Supporting, counselling,educational,,therunningofthecentre
We ’renotjusttrainingpeopletobecounsellorsbutalsotobemembers of
acollectivewho runthiscentre”(inresponsetowhatisinvolvedintraining)
Worker, GalwayRCC)

By ensuring that all participate in all of the tasks of running the centre it prevents

those with highly valued skills avoiding more mundane work and in this way makes

equal respect a more substantial affair.

This is very much in opposition to hierarchical work structures which, reflecting

hierarchical societal patterns, use peoples’ resources according to their level in the

hierarchy (and reward them accordingly). The lower the level in the hierarchy the lower

the skill presumed. It also recognises a need to learn that what have been considered

natural talents and skills can be taught and passed on.

“I’vebeen involvedinP.R.work. IneverthoughtIcoulddothat.It’ s

goodtolearn,toknow thatyou cando otherthings. It’sbeengreattowork
withagroupofwomen who haveconfidenceinme Iwouldnever
63
 havegainedasmuch ifmy rolehadbeencounsellingonly”(Worker, Galway
RCC).

In this way it avoids the power that is usually attached to a superior skill, empowering its

workers to do many tasks by involving all equally, and avoids tensions that seem

implicit in this comment

"thelobbyforchangeispartofthecentre'swork.Inthepastthatwaspartof
everyone’swork.Nowadays thoughitistheDirector’ srole.Itisnotnecessarily
from directexperienceoftheclient”(Therapist,DublinRCC)

This belief in self and autonomous potential gives further weight to Pateman’s argument

regarding the empowering potential of participation.

There was certainly a good deal of ambivalence in the Dublin RCC regarding

the political aspect of their work.

"Inselection[ofvolunteers]we lookattheirbeliefsystemaroundthepolitics
ofrape.[We], tryandseehow theyunderstandsexualviolence.[Itisimportant
thatthey]haveasenseoftheimbalanceofpatriarchalsociety...[Thatthey]
seesexualviolenceasnotjustpurelysexualact,butoneofpower [we]
wouldn’twantthoughtobeseenaspurelyfeministorganisation. Violencecanbe
maleorfemale”.
It’
s(politicalaspectofeducationalwork) nothuge.Itendtofollowthe
groupI’m workingwith. We willmentionitifitcomesup...butthemainfocusof
thisworkisincreasingtheperson’ sunderstandingofhow theycanhelpthe
person infrontofthem.”
IntheworkIdomen areintheminorityontrainingcourses.I
wouldn’twanttopresentmyselfinanyway tothreatenthem. They
oftenfeeldisadvantaged.”(Therapist& EducationOfficer,.DublinRCC)
[The]"Centreisnottherapeuticallydriven,buttherapistsare. We ’renot
interestedinshenanigans Thisisapoliticalcentre.Sometimesit’ s
difficulttomanypoliticsandtherapy,[to]saywhatclientsneedandsay
64
 what’
spoliticallycorrect”(Therapist.DRCC)

In contrast, the women who worked in the Galway RCC consistently spoke of the

their political commitment and also named their work in the Centre as being

fundamentally political.

“we haveandwe wantagreaterpoliticalrole.It takestimeandenergy. We’d

liketohavemore time.,tohaveavoiceon currentnationalwomens’issues.”

“my attitude,mypolitics,myfeministoutlook”(inresponse to the question of

why she was selected for this work)

“it’sdefinitelypolitical. Thecentrehasadefiniteviewofsexualviolence.
Counsellingandsupport[ofsurvivors]isoneway,speakingoutandraising
awarenessisanother.Supportisdirectedtowardsempowerment. We owe itto
thewomen who comeheretospeakabouttherealityoftheirlives.Itispart
ofourpoliticaltask"
“Iseeit[thework]aschallengingattitudesinrelationtosexualviolencefrom a
feministperspective”
we areveryawareofthepolitical.Atalmosteverymeeting, theneedforusto
bemorepolitical,todomorepoliticalwork, comesup’’(Workers, GalwayRape
CrisisCentre)
The workers in the Galway Centre also have more clearly defined political views of

perpetrators than those working in Dublin. This will be discussed later in the research

findings.

These two centres originally were founded by women who shared similar personal and

political backgrounds. Their interpretations of rape and male power were similar.

65
Both shared a view that rape expresses the power of men over women.

‘‘[Thatthoseselected]seesexualviolenceasnotjustpurelyasexualactbutone
ofpoweralso thattheyhaveasenseofimbalanceofpatriarchalsociety”
(TherapistDublinRCC)
"[I]thastobeacknowledgedthatapatriarchalsystemplaysitspart....ithas
tobeseenthatsexualviolenceandabuseispartofabiggersystemwhich
oppresseswomen"(WorkerGalwayRCC)

They established centres( at different times) which were to offer similar services to deal

with and confront rape. They offered counselling/support/therapy, telephone crisis-line

services, public educational programmes and both lobbied for legal reforms. It is not

clear if in the beginning they both saw their tasks as primarily political, not only

providing counselling/support services that women need but also transforming

consciousness o f their subordination. What is clear though is that there is a difference

now in their perspective and emphasis as evidenced in their comments above . While the

content apparently remains the same, the political form has changed.

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre is now less politically feminist in its focus than is the

Galway Rape Crisis Centre.

“partofthefeministethoshasbeenlostovertheyears. We wereseenas
militant.That’
smellowed. We’remoreconsciousofourpublicimage. That’s
goodandbad. We couldbebraver. We’reapoliticalentity,notalwaysin
thebestways"...(Therapist,DublinRape CrisisCentre)
“we’relookingforviewsthatarecompatiblewiththesupportofrapevictims....
Sometimesviewsarefeministandsometimesthey’renot”(Therapist,DublinRape
CrisisCentre)
66
 “[Cjounsellinghereisnotafeministagendabutbydefinitionitisempowering”
(Therapist,.DublinRape CrisisCentre)
“Well, ifthepersonalispolitical,andcounsellingisaboutchangethen
presumablythereis[apoliticalcontent]somewhere. Idon’tliketothinkit’ s
overtlypolitical,buttheprocessofjustlooking, ofthinking,inthechangesthey
havemade intheirconstructionsofthemselves,thiscanbeseenaspolitical”
(Inresponsetoaquestionastowhethercounsellingworkhadapolitical
dimension-Therapist,DublinRape CrisisCentre)

The diminishment o f the political nature of a centre is a recognised trend in RCC’s and

also other social movements where hierarchical structures have been

introduced.(Mathews. 1994; Scott,1993; Kappler,1995). This trend is also accompanied

by a focus on providing social services, usually therapeutic, for the victims of sexual

violence. Again this is a clear trend within the Dublin centre.

“Inthepastpeoplewereinvolvedhereasvolunteers. Theirinterestinsexual
violencegrew outofan interestinwomens’issues,thatgaveaqualitytothe
place. Thenotionofcollectivitystillhangsaround.Peoplecominginnow though
arenotexpectedtohavethatpoliticalcommitment.It'snotnecessarytohavea
commonphilosophy. It’smore aplacewhereyouworkwithwomen andmen than
aplacethatwouldencapsulateavisionofwoman. Thevisionismoreahuman
vision,workingwithpeoplemarginalisedthroughsexualoppression”(Head of
Training,DublinRCC)

In a sense I suggest that the trend away from feminist politics is inevitable within a

hierarchical structure. A feminist organisation that is a structure of authority , giving

some women rule over others, is self-contradictory, for feminism is essentially about the

“démocratisationofsocialinteraction”(Radtke& Stam,.1994.p.166)

67
There are two other factors that reinforce this trend that will be dealt with here. The first

has to with recruitment and selection policy and the second with funding.

4.2 PROFESSIONALISATION.

Paralleling structural change has been the professionalisation of rape crisis work. This

will be discussed further but for the moment the argument will be restricted to how this

is handled within the two structures and how this has contributed to the decline of the

political emphasis now being discussed.

The Galway RCC argues, again in keeping with the base value of their work, to select

women on the basis of their politics, their beliefs and their qualities rather than on their

qualifications.

“It’snotenoughjusttobeacounsellor ’’(Worker, GalwayRCC)

“Somepeoplewho'vedoneprofessionalcoursesmightnotnecessarilyhave
naturalcounsellingqualities,ortheymay notbepoliticallycommitted.
Thepotentialtodo theworkismore importantthanhavingit[backgroundin
counsellinj)already A woman’ spoliticsmatter.(Worker, GalwayRCC)

"[A]nywoman couldbeamember ofthisgroup’’(Worker, GalwayRCC)

68
The Galway Centre’s choice of action is characterised by its organisational

structure. Authority and expertise do not necessarily reflect for them an ability to do this

work. This is in keeping with the roots of early anti-rape crisis work in counterculture.

Mathews also argues that part of the efforts to respect and empower women lies

in the emphasis of the ability of any woman to do rape crisis work. (Mathews, 1994)

The Dublin RCC have a policy of only recruiting professionals to their

staff. No formal qualifications are necessary for voluntary work in the Centre.

“thecentrenow recruitsstaffwho areprofessionallyqualified”

(HeadofCounselling,DublinRCC)
“A backgroundinpsychologyorsocialscience isrequired.However, training
incounsellingorpsychotherapyisalsorecognised.Suchtrainingthough
mustbeaccredited”(HeadofTraining.DublinRCC)

The reasons given for this have regard to credibility and efficiency. Again , these are the

two reasons given for the move from the collective to the hierarchical structure and

again, I suggest, that the choice of action is now being characterised by the structure of

the centre itself, but this time with very different consequences.

“Themajorconcernofmanagementisthatweseeasmany clientsaspossible.
Timespentintrainingistimespentawayfrom clients’’(HeadofTrainingDRCC)
“ we neededtospeakasprofessionals”[Therewas aneed]forprofessionalism
inordertobetakenseriously’’(HeadofCounsellingDRCC)
“They’refullyqualifiedtoworkwithclients.Theybringthat[qualification]
withthemandtheirexperience”(Supervisor, VolunteerGroupDRCC)

69
The logic o f Dublin centre’s hierarchical, traditional management structure’s decision to

recruit in the traditional way, experts and professionals, with less emphasis on the

political dimension, consequently moves the centre away from its original identity and

political orientation and towards a therapeutic service, thus narrowing the focus of the

work.

Mathews argues that the involvement of social service professionals in the rape crisis

movement has contributed to this trend. She cites the service nature of their experience

together with the fact that they often lack a critical stance towards the state as being

partly responsible for this. Citing the work of Gusfield(1982) and Wilson(1983), she

argues that an important feature of their involvement is their influence in

"orientingsocialproblem tothestate...[they]allundergoredefinition. They

aretakenoutofthepoliticalarenaandbecomemedical,sociological,
psychological, legalorpurelytechnicalissues’’Mathews,1994.p. 105)

This shift away from the political and towards the therapeutic essentially means that

what is occurring is the managing of the aftermath of rape and sexual violence. Political

action also tends to focus on improving the victim’s/survivor’s treatment within the legal

system with lobbying for legislative change: for harsher/more consistent sentencing

policies and fairer procedures for the victims . Lobbying also remains at the traditional

site o f politics only. This will be returned to later in the research findings.

70
Again, this is dealing essentially with the consequences of rape rather than confronting

the power structures that cause sexual violence. The focus is on rape as problematic for

the individual; in its criminal sense by focusing on the perpetrator(s) as individual(s)

with personality disorders or as a problem for victims, but not as a reflection of

problematic gender relations . The danger is that this treatment focused on the individual

in reality changes nothing but colludes with the abuse in that it fails to challenge the real

issue o f power. Both centres agree that the problem arises from powerlessness . It has to

be tackled within that context, in structures within and outside the family, Such

structures include social movements, not least Rape Crisis Centres. Egalitarian structures

need to be fostered within support/therapeutic relationships and within the structures that

provide them.

4.3 FUNDING.

Resources for social movements, including rape crisis centres, are problematic. They

also have implications for the direction of services and for their autonomy.

Both the Dublin and the Galway Rape Crisis Centres receive funding from the

Department of Health and the Health Boards. They are also funded through donations

and through their own fund-raising efforts. The Dublin centre makes a charge to the

women who use its services. The Galway centre does not. This issue of charging women

for the service will be discussed later. The Dublin Rape Crisis centre also earns revenue

from its training courses.

71
The Dublin centre regards its business-like image as an important feature both in its own

fund-raising activities and regarding its activities that generate funding within the centre

itself.

‘‘
Intrainingtheworkisclear-cut and importantlyitalsogeneratesincome.
Withclientwork. thenatureoftheworkcantakealongtime,soitmay look
likeasmallamountofwork”[intermsofnumberofclients](HeadofTraining
DublinRCC)
‘‘
It[corporatequiz]cost£400athrow [WJhen you’retargetingpeoplelike
thisabusiness-likeimageisimportant(Vol.DublinRCC

Connections to such corporate organisations through donations raise philosophical or

ethical difficulties. Targeting corporate donors has implications and

consequences.Mathews points out that in the late 1970’s rape became a ‘legitimate topic’

in the U.S. and corporate funding became available for the first time. However, despite

the need for funds many rape crisis centres refused this offer. Within the movement

there were differences on this stance. Some felt that the money could be used to do good

work. Others though argued that the anti-rape movement would lose its credibility in

lending legitimacy to organisations that in fact sustained conditions that oppressed

women by giving such institutions an alliance with feminist groups.

Connections to state funding also have important implications for centre’s autonomy and

72
direction. It places regulation of their work with an external agency The recent

experience of the London RCC is a good example of this. The London Borough’s Grants

Committee withdrew funding from the Camden-based , London Rape Crisis Centre

because the Committee regarded the services they were funded as not being adequately

provided. Whatisimportanthereisnotwhetherinthisparticularcasethecriticismwas
validbutthattheyhadthepowertodothis.There are echoes of this in comments from
the Dublin RCC

“We ’reapoliticalentity,notalwaysinthebestway. Gettingpublicfunding

means we haveto ‘kow-tow., [thisis]notalwaysagoodthing,
butwe needthefunding...”
IntheDublinRCC, when aperson comes inthere’saprogramme, atimeto
finish,althoughtheclientmay notbefinished. alsothetherapistsare
verybusy. Theyhaveanagenda. Thewaitinglistcausespressure. There’
s
apolicydecisionthattherapyshouldendafter18months”(Therapist-ex
RCC, Dublin.)
“Clientsdon’talwaysdo whatthey’resupposedtodo [I]tcantakealong
time...we aredependentonfundingandthatrelatestothenumberofpeople
seen”
“Fundingdecisionstendtobeadministrativedecisions [I]tcan bedifficult
toshow howyou work, why andforhow long”.

These comments illustrate a process whereby what the centre offers the women,

their clients, gradually becomes defined in terms of what is compatible with the State’s

bureaucracy. Political and financial needs are prioritised and the woman’s needs denied

or negated. There is also a danger that the interests that lie behind decisions can become

invisible.

“Therapyhereislongterm.Nowpeoplewantshorter,morefocusedwork.
Isupposewe needtoknow ifourvaluesarebeingimposedonourclients
73
 Iftherapistsareencouragedtobeintherapythemselves,theytendtohave
abeliefinlongtermtherapy’’(TherapistDublinRCC)

The assumption here suggests that the reason lies within the individual therapist. From a

therapist’s point of view, this approach is not unusual. It is part of that world to look for

the reason in personal/familial histories. Therapy does not, as already argued, exist in a

vacuum. Therapeutic trends need to be interrogated. Which people want shorter, more

focused work and what are the reasons that lie behind that ? Are they cost related? Does

a shorter, more cognitive approach encourage a woman back into ‘normal’ functioning

in those roles society demands o f her with less questioning of wider structures that

produced that particular ‘self ? Would longer term therapy allow for more exploration

of different relationships between men and women, women and women, between women

and the institutions of the state?

Connell argues, in an examination of state patriarchy, that the most favourable historical

circumstances for progressive sexual politics seems to be the early days of social

revolutionary regimes, but the later bureaucratisation of these regimes is

devastating.(cited inRadkt & Stam,1994p.l63)

I would suggest an analogy here in the movement from collective to hierarchical

structures, including that movement within the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. Scott (1993)

and Mathews(1994) argue that Rape Crisis Centres that adopt a hierarchical structure and

rely on outside funding sources often modify or see a decline in their original political

74
motivation and also change their tactics, becoming more like a social service

organisation. The organisation“forfeits its radical goals, yet survives and fulfils certain

community needs”(Scott,1993.)

This comment would seem to bear that out.

‘‘[Itis]difficulttosaywhatclientsneedandwhatispoliticallycorrect [The]
institutionhastosurvive, ‘thoughIthinkweshouldbebraver”(Head
ofCounselling.DublinRCC)
State funding for Rape Crisis Centres has both the capacity to enable or to constrain. It

can be “evidenceofconcessionswon, butwiththerequirementsofthestateinreturn,

representthelimits”(Mathews, 1994. p i 84) However patriarchal the state is, gender
politics cannot avoid it.

The Galway Rape Crisis Centre also receive public funding and are aware that this could

cause difficulties.

“IsupposethatsometimesthereisconcernthattheHealthBoardmayrequire
ustotreatmen becauseifyougetfundingfrom theDepartmentofHealththen
sometimesyou havetomeettheirrequirements.TheHealthBoardisvery
conservativeandcurrentlysomeofourfundingisfrom theDepartmentof
Health.Isuppose, thatthereisbasicallyafearthattheLondonRape Crisis
Centrehashaditsfundingreduced.InHollandtherehasbeenresearchanda
tendencytoincorporatetheworkofrapecrisiscentresintostateservices.Being
acollectiveisveryimportanttous. We haveinsistedon holdingthisstructure...
we wouldnotgiveitupforfunding’’(Worker, GalwayRCC)

75
This comment makes the clear the centre’s awareness of the potential of conservative

funding to influence the direction and politics of rape crisis work in the long term.

The Galway centre by retaining its feminist politics while nurturing professional

standards embodies an engagement with the state that is both radicalising and

participatory.

“Thereisan expectationherethatpeoplewilltrain,willdotheirown work

on themselvestoo,butthebackgroundinpoliticsisveryimportant”(Worker,
GalwayRCC)

It also provides both a service and a political perspective by offering that service, which

is viewed within the community as competent and worthwhile from a collectivist

structure. In doing this, it provides its own workers, the women who avail of its services,

and the community as a whole with a concrete model of ways in which it is possible for

women to multiply the contexts in which they can exert control over their lives.

It has a vision o f itself and a mode of engagement, both within and outside its structure,

which addresses itself to changing the nature of relationships themselves rather than

managing the outcome of such relationships.

“onethingwe areaboutinthiscentreislookingatpowerissues.There
wouldbeaverydifferentethoshereifthepowerstructureweredifferent”
(Worker, GalwayRCC)
Increasing and extending womens’ opportunity for and experiences of power in

76
social and political structures is an act necessary in order to confront and end rape.

4.4 HIDDEN HIERARCHIES.

The structure and philosophy of each centre is also contained in its setting, its location,

and its accessibility. Social messages are conveyed through posters, notices, and the

language we use to address each other, welcome and to refer to others. All carry implicit

messages.

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre is housed in a Georgian building on the south

side of the city. The Centre has been decorated in pale, neutral tones (blues and

greys). Inside the door there is a reception area with a modem switchboard. There is an

alcove which constitutes the waiting area. Those who sit there are visible to anyone who

passes by.

On my visits there I was greeted in a friendly but efficient manner by the receptionist

who, on the occasions I was there ,was always dressed in a suit. Sometimes a comment

was passed about the weather but otherwise there was little said to me. I felt neither

particular welcomed nor unwelcomed.

I was not invited to help myself to coffee but there was a flask on the table which, after

my first visit, I established did contain coffee. There were also magazines provided.

77
Sometimes, there was another woman waiting there also, and on one occasion a man.

The atmosphere for me felt somewhat formal. There was never any conversation

between those of us waiting. This may have been for all sorts of personal reasons, but I

am sure the fact that there was little privacy from all who passed by did not help. I also

wondered how I would feel, if this were my first visit as a woman who had been raped or

sexually abused and I found myself sitting beside a man. They do have a policy in

relation to male voices on the phone

“from therapevictim’
sperspectivewe believeitwouldbewrongtohear
amalevoicefirst”(Supervisor, Vol.Group,DublinRCC)

It could be any modem office housing any service or business interest within the city. It

certainly conformed to the image described by one of the workers in the centre as

“business-like”.

From the comments taken from the interviews with the women who work in the Dublin

centre, it can be observed that most usually refer to the women they work with as

‘clients’ and as already discussed their selection policy defines them as professional

therapists.

Feminist counselling argues for and addresses itself to the accessibility of its services for

all women who need it. It advocates that its physical environment should be welcoming,

nurturing and should not alienate or intimidate It also recognises that class is an issue,

78
and that access to counselling is still largely much easier for the middle-classes . It

realises that cost, language and style of therapy can exclude working class people.

(Chaplin, J. 1988 and Perry, J. 1993)

The location, the decor, the manner and the dress of the staff of the Dublin RCC

suggests a middle-class environment. This image has implications for potential users of

the centre. There are also practical problems in that the centre is also difficult to and

costly to access if you live in the working class areas on the outskirts of the city. There is

also, as already pointed out, a charge for the service, although the centre argues that no

one is ever turned away because of money. (As already indicated this will be discussed

later in the findings)

One woman working with women from a working class area in the city suburbs said that

some of women who had visited the centre did not continue to use its service because

they found the atmosphere middle-class and were uncomfortable in it.(Personal

Communication)

This is a difficult issue for many therapists. Chaplin(l 988) refers to this in dealing with

social class in relation to the need to extend the availability of therapeutic support. She

argues that while the client cannot know the ‘political’ attitudes of the therapist, it can

help if the therapist “does not work in a very middle-class atmosphere. She further cites

79
psychotherapists such as Adler(1956) and Reich (1970) who deliberately chose to work

in some of the poorer areas of Vienna and Berlin, and who offered free treatment.

According to Chaplin, one o f the difficulties about a middle - class image in a

counselling/ therapeutic setting is that it reinforces the notion of that class being both in

charge and being ‘OK’, with the working class being the ‘problem.’(ibid.,)

In feminist womens’ therapy settings, women are not seen as ‘patients’ or ‘clients’

Therapists /counsellors do not see themselves as experts. Hierarchies exist in language

and thoughts just as much as in structures. Chaplin suggests the more informal attitude

o f an environment evokes a greater sense of equality than the more formal attitude of

hierarchical institutions. She is referring specifically here to counselling or support

settings for women, (ibid.,)

The Galway Rape Crisis Centre is housed in an old building in the centre of the city.

Women who come to the Centre are usually brought directly to one of the counselling

rooms by one o f the workers. On the occasions I was there, I was always asked if I

would like a cup o f tea or coffee, which was made by whoever was there at the time.

Their dress was always informal, casual trousers , jeans and sweaters. On the one

occasion when I had to w a it, it was in a small room just off the hall-way. It was very

similar to a sitting room. Two or three comfortable armchairs, and a small table in the

centre. Another table in the alcove has posters and leaflets giving information on a

80
variety o f services and activities for women including some explaining the services of

the centre itself

The women working there included me in their conversation or sometimes enquired

about my journey from Dublin or my plans while in Galway. On one occasion I was

invited to see a video which they had just produced and were planning to show , on the

following evening, to a small number of people who had been involved in its making. I

always felt welcomed.

There is an awareness in the Galway centre of the effect o f the informal surroundings

“Itmakesitmorepersonal, morewoman towoman. ’’(Worker, GalwayRCC)

“It’
swelcoming, theinformalfeeloftheplace,you canjustcallin.Some
women mightabusethat,otherswouldnot.

There is no charge for the service offered, and there is an awareness of the practical and

financial difficulties women live with and an attempt to ensure equal access to the

service for as many as possible .

“It’sthehallmarkofRCC’sthatthereisnochargeandwefeelstronglyabout
this.’’
“(T)heserviceisfree,itaccessibletoall-sophisticatedtherapyisnot’’
“sometimeswomen needhelpwithtravellingcostsandbaby-sitting”(Workers,
GalwayRCC)

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This intention of this chapter was to articulate and understand the relationship between

the structures and the work of each of the two centres being discussed here. In the next

chapter the further findings o f this study are detailed and discussed.

5. RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.

The findings of the research are detailed and discussed in this chapter under

the following headings:

1. Selection and Recruitment

2. Status of Volunteer Group, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.

3. Unpaid Work

4. Training

5. Therapeutic Model

6 . Emphasis of Work on Treatment of Sexual Abuse

7. Charges for services

8 . Centre’s orientation towards judicial system for women who use their services.

5.1 SELECTION AND RECRUITMENT.

This discussion will look at the selection criteria used by both centres, at the philosophy

behind such criteria and how they are guided by the overall philosophy of each centre.

82
5.1:1 Each centre shares a common policy of advertising for

workers/therapists/volunteers in local and national newspapers. Candidates complete

application forms and are then interviewed .

In the case o f the Galway collective, candidates after completion of training have a

further six months probationary period before they become full members . All members

o f the collective must be in agreement to new members joining.

“It(theprocess)can beabitfrustratingbutitreallyseeshowpeopleworkand
ifwe canworktogether”(worker, GalwayRCC)

This procedure reflects the centre’s philosophy of equal participation in decision making

process and equal responsibility in the organisation of the centre’s collective.

In the Dublin centre candidates, following group interviews with other candidates, have

two further interviews: one with the Head of Counselling and anothermember of staff,

and then a final interview with the Director of the centre.

In this procedure the decision to employ a candidate is taken by those at the higher levels

of authority within the organisation with the final decision apparently resting with the

person at the the highest level, the Director of the Centre. This process seems

appropriate to a hierarchical organisational structure.

83
5 1:2 AGE OF CANDIDATES

Galway Rape Crisis Centre 18 Years and over

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre Therapists 28 Years and over

Dublin Rape Crisi Centre Volunteer Group 27 Years and over

The minimum age limit restriction required by the Dublin Centre for both its volunteers

and therapists is consistent with that usually required by helping agencies and by

counselling and psychotherapy courses (23 years). Also, the term ‘mature’ student for

example is applied only to those over the age of 23 years. Reasons given for this usually

have to do with “life experience, the ability to be reflexive, and the attainment of

maturity”. (Personal communication - Selector for counselling/psychotherapy course).

Having searched the literature on counselling and psychotherapy I managed to find only

one reference to age o f the therapist or supporter:

“Although byandlargeatherapistgrowsthroughcontinuedexperiencethereare
many instancesinwhichayounger, lessexperiencedpersonmightstrikeupa
betterrelationshipwithapatientthananoldhand”(Kovel, 1976) (Dryden, 1992;

Rowan, 1993; Clarkson, 1993; Egan; 1994;Chaplin, 1988; Storr. 1990)

The Galway Rape Crisis Centre states that the average age of the workers is between 24-

40 years. They say that they have not had difficulties with this and that they have a

policy of trying to make their clients comfortable "sometimesan olderwoman might

84
prefertoseeanoldercounsellor” and would arrange this. (This concept of ‘client

matching’ will be discussed at the end of the next section on Sexual Orientation as it is

appropriate to both issues) Whilst the matter of age is one that requires great care and I

would suggest would benefit from some research and monitoring, it would also seem

consistent that the Galway Centre, with their commitment to a feminist approach, adopt

a stance that favours inclusion and also takes a subjective rather than objective view.

“Iwas veryyoungwhenIjoinedthegroup, buttheydidn’tlookdown onme.

Theyrespectedme asan individual"(worker, GalwayRCC)

5.1:3 SEXUAL ORlENTATIONOELCANPJDAim ,

Galway Rape Crisis Centre.

Includes both lesbian and heterosexual women amongst its collective members.

“we do includelesbianwomen. Intheintroductoryweek-end(training)we

encouragepeopletobefrankabouthow theyfeelaboutthis. We thinkit’
s
importanttobeawareofthegayclient,tomake themfeelcomfortable, to
ensurethattheyfeeltheyhavearighttobehere”(Worker, GalwayRape CrisisCentre)

85
Dublin Rape Crisis Centre - Therapists

Whilst lesbian women are not excluded in terms of policy they are excluded in practice.

‘‘[It] wouldnotmatter,butI’m notawareofeverhavingsomeoneherewho

was inalesbian/homosexualrelationship.Perhapsit'sanunconsciousdivision.
It’
snotaproblem, butI’m notsureasanorganisationhow we wouldfeel..
Perhapswe’veignoredit.”(HeadofCounselling,DublinRape CrisisCentre)

“Therearenogaytherapistson thestaffthatIam awareofandthenumberof

gay/lesbianclientsissmall.Isupposethatmeanswe mustbegivingamessageto
thecommunity, althoughwe wouldn’twishtodothis”(HeadofTraining,,
DublinRape CrisisCentre)

Dnhlin Rape Crisis Centre - Volunteer Group

Includes both heterosexual and lesbian women.

‘‘
Beinggaywouldnotprecludeanyone.Atleastonemember ofavolunteergroup
was lesbian’’(Therapist,DublinRape CrisisCentre)

The response by participants in the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre seemed indicative of a

willingness to be open and honest and also indicated a willingness to see this exclusion

of lesbian women as being organisationally implicit.

86
There seems to be a difference in policy recruitment for volunteers and for therapists

within the Dublin Centre. However, it is also possible that there is another reading here.

The comments from the Galway Centre indicate a clear policy and practice of inclusion.

Given the comments from the therapist from the Dublin centre, regarding policy and

practice, I find myself wondering if the comment that “at least one member o f a

volunteer” (my emphasis) does not equate to a form of tokenism. This interpretation is

offered only. As already indicated(methodological approach) my reason for quoting

extensively from participant interviews, is to allow the reader her own interpretation .

The exclusion of lesbian women from the staff of the Dublin Rape Centre is a serious

one with considerable implications for the work and for the women who avail of its

services. Lesbian women, it is argued, are often healthier than heterosexual women on a

variety of standard, psychological variables, such as self esteem , and not significantly

different on all other important ones . Not surprisingly, this literature receives little

attention for patriarchy has carefully “rendered role models for lesbian women invisible

obliging lesbian women to find authenticity through thoughtful self-

examination”.(Freeman, Oberstone & Sukoneck cited in Boston Lesbian Psychologies

Collective, 1987. p. 4)

The fact that many individual lesbian women must develop their own personal

framework for creating a sense o f identity and for maintaining self-esteem, I would

87
suggest, has the capacity to enhance their suitability for therapeutic /support work,

specifically in relation to women whose experience o f sexual violence, it is argued, leads

to loss o f identity and self-esteem. (Waterhouse,1996; Parks,1990; Bass &

Thornton,1983; Blume,1990; Fraser, 1989; Walshe & Liddy, 1989).Lesbian women

often live in hostile social environments. Women recovering from sexual violence often

do so in a hostile environment, whether through alienation/isolation following reporting

or because they are still in an on-going abusive situation, leaving them with little

support, as they build maintenance systems for themselves and for their survival. The

process of identification that is possible here has the potential to be helpful to the

therapeutic/support process. (Identification process within the therapeutic/support

relationship will be discussed below)

For the women who are lesbian, and who need the services of the centre, there are also

issues. Before addressing those, I believe it is valuable to address the work of

Starzecpzel. She argues, using Chodorow’s work on the matrisexual bond, that all

women experience love of another woman in the mother-daughter dyad, and that most

reject lesbianism because of cultural taboos and intensity of mother-daughter

relationship. She goes on to suggest that female incest survivors having lived outside the

the rules since childhood and who are psychologically distanced, through the experience

o f incest, from their mother, are freer to revert to the matrisexual bond. This is not to

suggest that all incest victims chose lesbianism or that lesbianism is a choice as a result

o f incest. However, it does raise the right to that choice and to have it validated. Foley, in
her criticisms o f the professionalisation of the treatment of rape, points out that a woman

who positively chooses lesbianism is often negatively regarded within the recovery

process, a healthy response and resolution of the crisis being linked to the return to

‘normal’ heterosexual functioning. This fails to take into account that womens’ response

to sexual violence may result in permanent changes in their attitudes, behaviours and

circumstances, and that for the women concerned they represent positive choices which

are part of the recovery process.(cited in Lupton & Gillespie, 1994. p. 44) The ‘positive’

modelling the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre argue that is offered through its therapists

being in a “stable” heterosexual relationship (discussed below) implicitly denies the

choice of lesbianism as an acceptable , healthy alternative for those women who chose

“Perhaps we've ignored it” ( taken from comments above) is part of that failing to

take into account the issues discussed above. And I would suggest more. It can also be

seen as contributing to what Adrienne Rich refers to as part of the violence done to

women through the compulsory enforcement of heterosexuality as the ‘normal’ sexual

preference of most women. (Rich, 1980) That this should occur, albeit

“unconsciously ”, in a organisation whose purpose is to help individuals recover from

sexual violence is deeply disturbing.

I want to address now some o f the implications for the women seeking support/therapy

and experiencing an agency/centre where a lesbian role model does not exist as a healthy

89
option. The process of coming out is complicated by the frequent absence of routinely

available and explicit role models that socially affirm lesbian and gay identities. (Greene

and Herek, 1994. p. 8) It is crucial that the therapeutic/support setting does not limit nor

inhibit the exploration of that option. Many individuals depend on the therapy/support

process and the individual therapist’s/supporter’s acceptance to help navigate what is

frequently an anxiety-ridden course.

“/PJerhapswe’veignoredit”. Yes. And this is consistent with clients reporting

that when they themselves raise questions about their sexual orientation in therapy,

they are often confronted with the therapist’s anxiety about the topic and subsequent

avoidance o f it. On these occasions, many clients simply drop the issue, move to

another therapist, or leave therapy altogether (Greene & Herek, 1994. p. 8)

There is an explicit absence of heterosexism in the practices of the Galway Rape Crisis

Centre and a concern to facilitate the therapeutic/support work.

“We thinkit’
simportanttobeawareofthegayclient,tomake themfeelcomfortable,to
ensurethattheyfeeltheyhavearighttobehere” ( Worker, Galway RCC)

I want to return now to the issue of client-matching mentioned above. Research has

argued that congruent matching o f the woman/client and therapist/supporter increases

the effectiveness of therapy (Rowan 1983, p. 160). A seeming sameness of sexual

identity can facilitate the entry into support/ therapy allowing an initial positive

90
transference, and an ability on the woman/client to reflect on aspects of her sexuality

that may previously have been defensively denied. The therapist/supporter , “may be

experienced as unproblematically lesbian, having many good things to offer,

inspirational ways of being and facultative of understanding. ” ( O’Connor & Ryan,

1993, p.259)

The potential influence o f the provision o f positive role models is something that the

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre is aware o f, as is clear from these remarks.

“Therearepositivebenefitsinhavingamaletherapist.[It]providesapositive
experienceaswell.(Therapist,DublinRCC)
However, it seems that the positive role models are restricted to heterosexual

relationships and the re-instatement of positive images of maleness. This raises the

question o f professional practice and also of politics. Radical feminism has argued that

because the control of women is basic to patriarchy heterosexuality must be mandatory

and enforced. Feminism gave lesbianism a female-oriented political movement and a

political understanding for the basis of their persecution.

The stigma of lesbianism can also be used to frighten or intimidate women in what

Shulamith Firestone refers to as the lesbian buffer( Firestone, 1971).Women who are

competent or assertive can always be called ‘dykes’ to intimidate them back into line

and/or to prove their heterosexuality.

“Thecentrefounditselfsubjecttopublicattacks.[We were]seenas

91
 mad dykesshoutingaboutrapesthatneverhappened. therewas aneedfor
professionalisminordertobetakenmoreseriously...”(Therapist,DublinRape
CrisisCentre)
Professionalising their service was one way the centre found to deal with this; a way to

“be taken more seriously”. However, it may also be that the stigma they experienced

has encouraged the exclusion of a lesbian presence, a form of separatism , however

unconscious the intent, in an attempt to confirm their heterosexuality and credibility.

It is important that therapists/workers acknowledge and understand the extent to which

they have internalised the dominant culture’s heterosexist attitudes. The conscious

provision of a service for and by lesbian women within an explicitly feminist political

framework in the Galway centre I suggest, is more likely to facilitate such

understanding. I offer one final example of this. The Galway Rape Crisis centre recently

produced a video to promote understanding of sexual violence. This video portrays the

experiences of two couples in order to explore a survivor’s journey, One of these is a

lesbian couple. This is both an implicit and explicit affirmation of the choice of sexual

orientation. It is also a radical confrontation of society’s usual heterosexual view of

relationships.

At the outset o f this discussion I indicated what seemed to be a willingness of the

therapists participating in this research from the Dublin centre to be both open and

reflexive in their responses in the regard to the implicit practice within the centre of

92
excluding lesbian women. Hopefully, such awareness will lead to a reconsideration and a

change policy and practice.

5.1:4 RELATIONSHIP STATUS.

Both centres state that the relationship status of candidates does not influence choice of

candidate. This includes the Volunteer Group attached to the Dublin Centre also.

However, each centre adds its own qualifications to this.

The Galway Rape Crisis Centre ask that candidates be realistic about the time

commitment involved, and ask that they look at the effects of the work on their

relationships. The question of time involved is pertinent in the case of the Galway centre

and raises one o f the difficulties of a collective. The strong emphasis on participation

does make considerable demands on all the women who work there. One of the

difficulties with collectives is that they require significant energy from their members to

create and maintain the integrity of the relationship structure to which they are

committed. (Perry,1993, Phillips, 1991)

Whilst the women working in Galway were enthusiastic and energetic, in practice as

well as in principle, in their belief in collective structure there was an awareness o f this

reality.

Ithinkthegroupwas reallyverybigandtherewasn’tenoughtimefor
everyone. Thesettlinginperiodjfornew members]was difficultandittookalot
93
 o f energy that could have been fo r the collective work"

They are aware as their project grows this can become problematic.

“there’samaximum numberyou canhavetoworkwellasacollective”

(workers, GalwayRape CrisisCentre)

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, as already mentioned above, stresses its belief

in the potential of the positive influence that the model of a stable heterosexual

relationship offers. I would refer the reader to my comments already made in this regard.

“Therearepositivebenefitsinhavingamaletherapist.[It]providesapositive
experienceaswell.” (Therapist,DublinRCC)
Implicit in this comment is a belief that the return to healthy heterosexual functioning, as

Foley argues, is consistent with resolution or recovery from the trauma of rape.(cited in

Lupton & Gillespie. 1994. P. 43)

For women living in a society where male violence is endemic, distrust of men may be

realistic and healthy. Negotiating personal safety is an everyday reality for women

living under oppression . It may make life difficult but it is what oppression means for

women .(Foley,1994, Bart 1989, Stanko 1990, cited in Lupton and Gillespie, 1994) This

reality is indeed acknowledged by the women working in the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre

themselves and spoke of how their work with rape victims was a reminder of their own

vulnerability to sexual violence.

" Thereisadifferencedealingwithrapevictims.It[rape]iscloser.Sexual
abuseseemsfurtheraway. Therearenorulesforrape.Ithappensanywhere,
anytimetoanywoman. Therearenosafepeople, nosafeplaces,’’(therapist,
94
 Dublin RCC)

"therapistsaremoreshaken when dealingwithrapevictims.Itraisestheirown

personalfears Iknowformyselfwhen Iheardofawoman who’dbeen
rapedwalkingtoherhomeafterworkIidentifiedwiththat.Ihavetowalka
distancehome. Itraisedrapeforme asan issue”

These fears are grounded in reality. The crime women are most concerned with

is rape (McCullough, 1996. p. 103). They have strong reason to be. Paul

O’Mahoney in his study of trends in Irish crime points to the a “relentless upward

climb in the incidence of recorded offences regarding rape and indecent assault.”

(O’Mahoney, 1993) And this only refers to reported incidents. Encouraging women to

trust men ( positive modelling) suggests that their distrust of men is problematic or

unreasonable. It is not. Women have only to walk down the street at night to be

reminded of their vulnerability and their lack of social power. This is not an argument

against healthy heterosexual relationships but a reminder of the reality o f womens’

lives. There is further discussion of this below in terms of male involvement in

therapeutic/ support work.

The practiceof feminist therapy/counselling requires on on-going awareness of political

and social realities, and a recognition of the “deep interconnectedness of our ‘internal’

psychological worlds with the ‘external’ social and material worlds” (Chaplin, 1988,

p.4) The holding o f such consciousness is, I believe, more likely in an environment,

such as the Galway centre, that holds both the political and the therapeutic/ supportive

elements o f the work equally. Feminist therapy evolved from a philosophical and

95
political outlook. Its survival rests in maintaining that.philosophical outlook in its

practice.

“I t ’s why I got involved in this work. I fe lt you ’re entitled to walk the
streets back to your home ” (Worker, Galway RCC)

5. 1:5. GENDER OF CANDIDATES.

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre recruits mainly female therapists, although it did in the

past have one male therapist. I found it difficult from the responses to ascertain exactly

what the centre’s policy currently is in this regard. This may be because the centre itself

is unclear.

“'[TjherearedifferentviewsintheCentreon this.
“we do not wish to create the idea that men might be excluded from working in
this area as this is not so, but we do look realistically at the problems ”

The Volunteer Group at the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre does not select male candidates

as their experience indicated that

“When our male therapist did some o f the 'phone work it frightened o ff
some women . In a crisis a woman will prefer to see a female therapist. There
can also be difficulties in group work male therapists are naturally excluded
from some work”

and further

"...[Tjhere are positive benefits in having a male therapist. [It] can help to
confront issues with men [and] provide a positive experience as well
It allows the female client some positive contact’’(Therapist, Dublin RCC)

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This is a concept that has been used in other settings. Pen Green family Centre (U.K.)

uses a man and a woman to co-lead a long term therapeutic group for women survivors

on sexual abuse. The rationale behind it, again, is that it was felt that it was important

that different male behaviour was modelled to group members who had previously often

experienced only repressive and abusive treatment from men. The male leader is

required to be gentle, non-intrusive and sensitive to women’s needs. This leadership

model has been operating for a number of years and is felt to be useful. Group members

are felt to be given the opportunity to work through their ambivalent attitudes towards

men. Whilst analysis of this relationship is said to be on-going it is also believed that the

advantages of this model outweigh its difficulties.(Perry 1993. p.. 87) A comment

offered by a woman in another conjoint therapeutic setting that she now realised that

men also disapproved of the sexual abuse of children also suggests benefit. (Douglas,

cited in Sexual & Marital Therapy Journal. Vol 4, No.2. 1989).

However, it could be argued in relation to the Pen Green Family Centre co-leadership

approach, and the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, that the type of behaviour required by the

male co-leader and, I suggest, by male therapists generally, is not typical for males in the

dominant culture and, therefore, does not represent a real working out of power issues.

Some attention to other work might be helpful in assessing the value of the above. John

Rowan argues that, if one of the main external reasons why women need therapeutic

intervention is because o f damage caused by their oppression in a male dominated

society, then the choice of a male therapist is not appropriate in that they represent a

97
problem which is very real. He cites one woman’s choice to end her therapeutic

relationship with a male therapist when “I was lucky enough to realise that my hostility

toward men was real, and was not an individual problem”(Rowan,1994.p.l41)

It’s also been argued that male therapists may quite inadvertently re-victimise incest

survivors due to their own male enculturation, and client’s lack of knowledge and skill in

setting emotional and physical boundaries with men (Cle, 1985, cited in Draucker,1992)

Armstrong, perhaps most importantly, argues that when you are looking at systematic,

system-endorsed power abuse “individualised solutions are antithetical to change.”

(Armstrong, 1990 cited in Foley 1994.p.45)

The GalwayRape CrisisCentre selection process is not open to male candidates.

However, they too say that

“Thishasbeenanareaofdifficultyforthisorganisation We havestrongfeelings
andabeliefinwhatwe do. We seethisasawomen’sorganisation.Rape Crisis
Centresgrewoutofthefeministmovement. We wantthistobeaplacefor
women, wheretheycancome, wherewomen supportwomen.”

These comments above, together with previous comments made and cited in this

research in relation to the Galway Centre’s belief in the importance of stressing

womens’ ability to support each other, are echoed in other works addressing the issue

o f women therapists.

98
Kaplan suggests that women therapists, like other women caretakers, tend to doubt the

validity o f their own work or the genuine skills expressed therein. This, she argues, is

because these complex interpersonal skills often appear to come easily to women who

forget the years that have gone into the creation of the female person taking on this task.

Such skills have often been devalued during the woman’s professional

socialisation in favour of a more androcentric, though less affective approach to therapy

that emphasises therapeutic distance and control over empathy and relatedness (Kaplan,

cited in Cantor, 1992. p.239) In consequence, women therapists often have a need to be

aware o f their own internalised sexism and devaluation of the female experience present

during personal and professional development.

The comments of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre may reflect ambivalence through

their experience o f working with male therapists , through the kind of internalised

sexism referred to above. It may also be that they lack the clear, philosophical woman-

centred stance of the Galway Rape Crisis Centre.

“we believeinwhatcan comeoutofthat(women onlysupportingwomen)...

ahugechangeforindividualwomen bybeingsupportedbyotherwomen, but
alsoachangeinthebiggerpicture...therehasbeenan injustice,this
organisationhereasagroupofwomen canmove thatforward”(Worker,
GalwayRape CrisisCentre.)

Apart from this sense of the positive modelling of the influence of collective power

through collective support, Cantor in her work highlights another aspect in relation to

99
power and women as therapists/supporters. She argues that because the socially

constructed role held by women is one in which ambiguity and the lack of control must

be tolerated, that women are better equipped as therapists to deal with this aspect of the

therapeutic work. Because they need to develop coping skills for handling rejection and

devaluation their capacity as women to handle anger, rejection and resistance from

clients is likely to be more highly developed. Thus, the need to control which is inimical

to the process of therapy when expressed by the therapist, is often less a product of the

phenomenology of relatedness. Women therapists tend to experience more ease in

sharing power with clients and complain less of experiencing power struggles in their

work. (Ibid., p.238) This is particularly important, where the stated aim of each of these

centres involves the process of empowerment.

5.1:6 SEXUAL ABUSE IN CANDIDATES BACKGROUND.

Both the Galway Centre and the Dublin Centre, including the Voluntary Group , say

that the fact that a candidate may have experienced sexual violence would not preclude

them from selection. All agree that the important factor is that they have done their own

personal work to ensure that they themselves are not re-traumatised by the experience of

doing this work. This is also to ensure that they are sufficiently well in themselves to be

available to the woman being supported in the centre. However, the Dublin centre

make some further comments that are interesting.

100
“[T]heycanbringinsightstotheirworkthatothersmay not Theycanbeseenas
thesickpeopleintheteamorasthe ‘
survivor’therapistIthinkthisisdangerous.”

Recent data does suggests that women therapists, who as women are more likely to have

survived violence or experienced anticipating and fearing it, will be more capable of

being attuned to the responses of their violated clients and more capable of validating the

intensity o f response to the trauma. This is also likely to decrease the degree to which

women therapists infer pathology in such clients since they will be able to reach into

their own experience and discover feelings that are not unlike those expressed by their

clients.(Cantor, 1992, p.237)

The comments o f the Dublin therapist reflect this but at the same time seem to suggest

that there is a danger that this is not how it will be viewed by others in the “team”

The team in this case presumably being the other therapists in the Centre. Does this

mean that some of the therapists in the centre may view the women who come for

therapy/ support as being ‘sick’ rather than as victims of sexual violence. If so this is

inconsistent with a feminist analysis of sexual violence. It may also be , that it is a

reflection of the mix o f therapeutic staff in the centre; some retaining the earlier feminist

ethos of the centre and others not. I would like to make a further observation in relation

to comments indicating that all are offered support regardless of their financial means.

“[EJveryoneistreated”This change is language suggests a shift in the definition of the

problem and consequently a difference in the philosophy behind the service. This is the

language of a medicalised model. The word ‘treatment’ suggests sickness. Seeing the

101
victims as being ‘sick’ also is as indicative of a trend towards the medical model and

thus a depoliticisation o f sexual violence. It is a move away from the very essence of

what has been at the heart of Rape Crisis Centres; the clear statement that sexual

violence and victimisation occurs because women are unentitled and unequal. They are

not sick nor in need of being ‘treated’. They are not recovering from a ‘sickness’ but

from coping with trying to live with the real experience of sexual violence which in a

feminist analysis occurs as a result of social and political inequality. If the political

project gives way to the therapeutic then this therapy reproduces the very “turnabout

which Freudian psychoanalysis performed at the beginning of the century when from

being a potential means of recognizing reality it turned it into a scientific theory in

support of the status quo by scientifically certifying feelings as psychic products and

explaining away any causes in social reality.” (Kappeler, 1995.p.87).

5,1:7 QUALIFACTIONS REQUIRED BY CANDIDATES FOR SELECTION.

One of the main differences in recruitment policy between the two centres is in the

qualifications candidates are required to hold.

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre only recruits staff who have a background in

psychology or social science, or who already have training in counselling/psychotherapy.

This training must be accredited by the appropriate professional association.

102
No qualifications are necessary for selection for the Voluntary Group attached to the

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. However, members of the Voluntary Group who wish to

join the staff of the Dublin Rape Crisis centre are only considered if such members are

professionally qualified.

The Galway Rape Crisis Centre requires no formal qualifications.

Some of the implications o f this difference in policy have already been discussed under

the section on organisational structures . I would refer the reader to that section in terms

of its discussion, specifically how it causes a shift in emphasis towards the therapeutic

with a consequent depoliticisation of sexual violence.

In this section I will return to that issue and address further issues that pertain to this

recruitment policy . These include:

• the effect o f professionalisation on the work and the workers.

• how the term ‘professional’ is defined.

• how being a professional affects workers’ and therapists’ view of the work and of the

perpetrators of sexual violence.

• whether the therapeutic/support outcome is affected by the status of the person

offering that support, i.e. whether or not she is a ‘professional’.

103
The Dublin Rape Crisis centre, as already indicated, justify their decision on the basis of

efficiency and effectiveness within their service. However, there are other

implications in their decision that need to be considered. Professionalisation strategies

tend to stress a claim to esoteric competence, which it is argued, must be maintained for

the sake of the client and society. However, the ability to acquire the label of

professional and the consequent prestige and economic benefits that attach to it depends

on the degree to which the material situation of the client allows that.

This recruitment requirement means that many women already disadvantaged by society

are further discriminated against. When working with groups of women some years ago

for another research project I asked the women participating to complete a questionnaire.

Besides asking for formal qualifications , I specifically allowed space for them to

include any courses or activities they had participated in. For many of them, they said, it

was the first time that they had been given this opportunity to name what they regarded

as significant learning and achievement activities and experiences. They also spoke of

how they often felt inadequate because they did not have formal qualifications and how

that ‘blank space’ they usually had to leave in the space opposite this term confirmed this

for them. Many of them also spoke of an improved sense of their own self-esteem when

they looked at all they had been able to list. Womens’ feelings and symptoms are often

linked to their status as second-class citizens. Exclusionary practices such as the

requirement of formal qualifications, again confirm this by discounting and invalidating

their roles , their lives, and their experiences.

104
The women who find themselves excluded to-day by the Dublin centre’s requirement of

professional / formal qualifications are , in fact, the kind of women who began the

movement which formed rape crisis centres. These are women, who, in an effort to

respect and empower the women they aided, emphasised the ability of any woman to do

this work. They developed their own expertise and drew on the professional skills of

social workers and other human service workers.

I am also reminded here how this process is similar to womens’ early experiences

in the field of psychoanalysis. Women were initially active and successful, and

indeed regarded as pioneering, as the profession struggled for recognition in post-war

Vienna. However, as the profession gained status, increasingly women found

themselves excluded. Again, this was for the same reasons that many women today find

themselves discriminated against. The profession began to look for academic

qualifications in the field of science and mathematics, for entry to training courses in

psychoanalysis. This led to the exclusion of many women whose earlier education, as

Wemeke, points out, included fewer science and mathematical courses than boys.

(Wemeke, cited in Forester, 1985) Again, whilst there are some differences it is the lack

of formal qualifications that exclude.

The Galway Centre, in choosing women to train based on personal attitudes and

attributes [political stance and personal qualities] rather than formal qualifications,

allows women who have been unable to obtain qualifications because of their particular

105
life experiences to participate in the centre’s work. In so doing, it concretely values and

affirms the worth of womens’ experience.

“thepotentialtodo theworkismore importantthanhavingit(training)already”

Implicit in this too, is the understanding that hierarchies built on division created

according to discursive categories of difference have destructive effects. . The majority

o f women who come for counselling are still white, middle-class and well-educated.

It has been argued that for many working class women the very mention of the word

therapy can be off-putting, since it is seen as “a middle class activity, irrelevant to their

lives” and further that some of this antagonism is justified, as a lot of therapy shows an

inadequate awareness of class issues and fails to address issues like cost, language and

style (Chaplin, 1988 and Perry, 1993)

The Dublin Rape Crisis centre, it would seem, is aware of the importance of image.

“attentionispaidtovoiceandaccent(ofvoluntarytelephonecounsellors). There
wassome concernaboutusbeinga ‘middle-classclub There’san important
mixinboththerapistsandcounsellorsintermsofclassbackgrounds”
(Volunteer,DublinRape CrisisCentre)

And yet the image seems to persist.

"[Theconcernthatthecentrewas middleclasscame]..from outside,andthen

peoplesaw thenames ofourBoardofDirectors.Itwassaidthattheywere
middleclass Someone who workedhereonthecrisislinesaidthatoneofthe
mostupsettingcallsshereceivedwasfromsomeonewho calledher ‘afucking
middle-classdogooder”(Volunteer,DublinRape CrisisCentre).

106
If the provision of the service to women victims and survivors must be mindful of the

practical and financial difficulties women live with, as argued earlier, then it must also

apply that to those who may become therapists and supporters If there is a serious

intention to encourage all to avail of its services then the practices and the images , of

those who provide the service, as argued earlier, are important in ensuring that the centre

does not alienate and exclude working class women who, as much as middle-class

w om en, need to use it for their survival and recovery.

Access to training and participation in the therapeutic/support process has serious

consequences for ensuring the availability of this support to all women. Participation

across class in the work of rape crisis centres, I would argue, is one of the better ways

o f increasing and ensuring availability and access to counselling services. The costs of

professional training and accreditation are high ; approximately two-thousand pounds

per annum, when costs of therapy and supervision, which are mandatory, are included.

Training periods range from 2-4 years currently. These kinds of costs make the training

inaccessible to most working class women. The practice of requiring formal

qualifications excludes and marginalises them further. It also suggests, as Gilligan

argues, that it is formal education only that produces knowledge (cited in Hekman,1995)

There is a contradiction in the rhetoric of equality when practices, such as this selection

criterion, are themselves discriminatory. Equality requires giving different voices equal

standing.

107
 “thisisaboutempoweringwomen tosupporteachother. Ifwe aretobe
thereforthe ‘
woman ’thenwe mustbethereforeachofus’’(Worker, Galway
Rape CrisisCentre)

Professionalism has been defined as specialist knowledge based on years of formal

education, unique skills and training, and service altruism and neutrality of expertise.

(McKinlay, 1973; Esland 1980 cited in Foley, 1994) I would like to address each of

these attributes of professionalism in relation to the Galway centre.

That the women in the Galway Centre possess the specialist knowledge, the training and

skills required of in the ‘professional’ is evident; I would argue this by the way they are

now regarded within the community.

“we notseennow as ‘
justhelpingwomen out’butasanestablishedpartof
societyprovidingacompetentservice"(Worker, GalwayRape CrisisCentre).

Since the establishment o f the Galway Rape Crisis Centre is 1985 there has been a

steady increase in the use of its services by women who have suffered different forms of

sexual violence. They is a growing demand for the number of educational talks given to

an ever widening range o f people. The centre accepts and makes referrals to the Western

Health Board and liaises with legal ( this includes the police) and medical professions.

All of these factors indicate that acceptance and recognition o f a ‘professional’ service

(Gralton, 1992 , p.60) Their knowledgeandexpertiseand, further, their understanding

have been built up by years of working with women . They have developed their skills
throughtraining(This is further discussed below). That it is right and appropriate for

women to claim their status and expertise gained through the reality and practical

108
experience of their work with sexual violence; and further to encourage each other to feel

confident about their knowledge and expertise has been consistently argued by feminists.

As an issue it has been strongly highlighted by women working with women in the

Norwich community affected by sexual violence. (Norwich Consultants on Sexual

Violence , Feminist Review, 1988.) Believing it imperative to make feminist expertise

visible, they formed the Norwich Consultants on Sexual Violence to ensure that they

influenced and informed discussions of any changes in professional policy and practices

in this area. The importance of this has been stressed as being even more crucial in a

climate where training is being demanded, if the complexities of the feminist analysis

and understanding o f violence is to be part of (hopefully) the process of change to come

Servicealtruism is very real for the women in the Galway Centre. The centres operates

on a mix of paid and voluntary work from each of its members. In principle, and in

practice, its intention is to pay insofar as that is possible. However it realises that for

their centre

“beingpaidorvoluntaryisabouteconomicstoo....”.
“Peoplearenothereforeconomicreasons,thisworkhasaprinciple.It’
sabout
wantingtodosomethingforwomen”(Workers, GalwayRape CrisisCentre)

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In regard to service altruism I think there are important observations. ^Specifically, the

altruistic ‘service’ offered by the professional is rewarded financially, and in terms of

prestige and social distinction. Further, the professionalisation strategy will seek for its

members the exclusive right to do work in its sphere of competence. Professional

hegemony may be as much as a result of monopoly control as merit. Armstrong

argues that the fact of survivors speaking out “instead of raising a passion for change,

raised a discourse - and a sizeable problem management industry.” (Cited in

Plummer,1995. pp.79)

*It is not intended to suggest that the motivation o f the women in the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre is driven

by financial gain. Indeed quite the opposite. I am aware that therapeutic work in this setting offers modest

financial reward and further that the women augment their own training by taking further training outside

their official working hours in the centre and also at their own expense.

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There now exist a possible 400 plus therapies. That they constitute an industry is clearly
reflected in London’s remarks that

" withsomany brandnames aroundthatnoonecanrecognise,letalone

remember, andsomany competitorsdoingpsychotherapy, itisbecomingtoo
arduoustolaunchstillanothernew brand"
He further points to the fact that one of the reasons for the trend towards interactions
among professionals o f different therapy orientations is the “invasion of non-doctoral
and non-medical counsellors” (cited in Drydren, 1992. p.3)

Certainly the women in the Galway Rape Crisis Centre are aware of this.

“counsellinghasbecomeamarkettosome extent. We wouldbecarefullyabout

this”
“Managingtakesover.[It]becomesajobinitself”(Workers, GalwayRape
CrisisCentre)
It has been argued that professional groups have sought to re-assert their control over

this area of work, and in so doing have taken on feminist areas of work but rejected the

political understandings underpinning them. (Foley 1994; Mathews, 1994; Scott, 1993)

This brings us to the notion of expertise neutrality.

The translation o f the feminist political perspective into an ameliorative concern which

individualises the problem is in itself a political stance insofar as it serves to maintain the

existing patriarchal structures by managing the outcome of rape rather than confronting

the gendered structures that create the problem.

Ill
Both centres hold the basic premise of the general oppression o f women by men and say

that mens’ sexual violence against women and children is a direct and most physical

expression of this.

It is not my intention, nor would it be fair, to the women who work in the Dublin Rape

Crisis Centre, to infer that there was any suggestion that they did not regard the

perpetrators of sexual violence as responsible.

“Iplace the blame, the guilt with the offenders. It belongs there.
“The centres philosophy is that the woman has been victimised; that no woman is
to blame ’’
“We expect volunteers to believe victims have not done something to invite this ”
(Therapists, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

However, as already argued earlier, the professionalisation of their work re-inforces the

trend away from the politicisation of violence towards a therapeutic service. This trend

is clearly reflected in the Dublin Centre in how therapists viewed their work as

therapeutic rather than political.

“I do n ’t really think they ’re separate(therapy/politics). I suppose in the sense

that the personal is political. I t ’s not huge [political aspect o f own work]. I
tend to follow the group I ’m working with [in educational work]. I f the issue
[political]comes up then we will discuss it, but the main focus o f the work is in
increasing the persons understanding o f how they can help the person in front
o f them. I do n ’t like to think it’s overtly political... ”

“People coming in are not expected to have that[feminist] political

commitment.. I t ’s more a human vision, working with people marginalised
through sexual oppression ”

That trend, it is argued, is also reflected in the tendency to médicalisé and pathologise

the view of sexual violence rather than to see it as criminal. Again, this is clear in the

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ambivalence around the view of the offenders present in the comments of the therapists

in the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre in both defining their behaviour and ascertaining their

gender.

“We had a talk from two men from M. O. V.E. (Men overcoming Violence)...
I f you had no contact then .... then you've no concept o f where they ’re coming
from. They looked normal. [T]hey talked about doing it to wield power. They say
it's a sense o f inadequacy”(Volunteer, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

“In the early eighties there was a simplistic view that all offenders were male
and they were outside the bounds o f humanity. This has shifted as our
understanding grew to a much more compassionate view ”

“To suggest that a majority(of victims)become offenders is insulting and creates

many problems fo r clients. However, it is known that many offenders who have
been convicted have themselves been abused (Therapists, Dublin Rape Crisis
Centre).

Armstrong argues that with the re-definition of sexual abuse as a sickness rather than as

criminal, political understanding has been all but obliterated, (cited in Lupton &

Gillespie, 1994.p.42) This is consistent with Polsky’s findings that therapeutic frame­

works often disguise social ills as personal trauma ( cited in Mathews, 1994). If men are

held to be sick, if they are seen as victims then the effect is to absolve the abuser of his

responsibility. And more. For it also contributes to the notion that if men are well, if

their needs are met, then families will be functional.

.“ You need to keep an open mind. When the centre opened women were not seen
as offenders or men as being abused. That's changed. We w on’t hear, i f we don’t
want to. I ’m not going against a feminist attitude, Iju st need to keep an open
m ind” (Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

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Increasing concern in the USA about the hidden incidence of sexual abuse by women led

to detailed review o f the research. This review concluded that the theory that perpetrators

were primarily men seems clearly supported and further that women in their role as

mothers do not usually collude with incestuous perpetrators ( Dobash, Camie and

Waterhouse, cited in Waterhouse, 1996) The researchers themselves then posed the

question as to why so many experts in the field were arguing that the number of female

perpetrators has been seriously underestimated. McLeod and Saraga, in a powerful and

convincing feminist critique, have argued that the feminist theory of sexual violence and

child abuse is simply too threatening an opposition in that it places at the centre of an

explanation of sexual violence and abuse the ‘problem’of masculinity(McLeod &

Saraga. Feminist Review 1988)

The women in the Galway centre are very clear that the work they undertake and the

expertise they bring to it are by no means neutral. That they see their work as offering

counselling but also as fundamentally political has already been discussed in the last

section, and is well captured and summarised in these comments.

“It’snotenoughjusttobeacounsellor [PJeople who’vedoneprofessional

courses...may notbepoliticallycommitted. ....Awoman’ spoliticsmatter”

Their view of the perpetrators reflects that political stance.

‘‘Theseareoftenindividualswho arecompetentandcapableineveryothersense
andaspectoftheirlives.Sayingtheyaresickisreallytooeasyandnotdealing
withreality"

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 “I don't really think they are sick... it’s more o f an attitude towards women and
children. They don ’t see them as equal, treat them with respect. I don’t know if
ja il is the right p la ce, hut i f they were all to be rounded up and hospitalised then
there wouldn 7 be enough beds. ”

“There’s a lot o f talk about abusers being insecure. A lot o f women are insecure
and they do n ’t abuse. They’ve picked up attitudes, [they] haven’t learned that
women are equal. ”

This view holds the focus on the offence. It is not neutral. It does not attempt to see the

perpetration of sexual violence as a result of deeper fundamental problems, such as

childhood trauma, which need to be exposed to be resolved in order to reduce the

likelihood of re-offending. This view means that the crime holds both its sexual and

gendered characteristic that is an essential feature of a feminist political analysis of

sexual violence.

The above I would argue indicate that the Galway Rape Crisis Centre has managed to

assume the more positive attributes of professionalism while rejecting the more negative

aspects commonly identified as “authoritarianism, power structures, ‘masculinist’

service philosophies and provision implicit in, for example the médicalisation and

pathologisation of rape. (Kelly 1989a cited in Lupton & Gillespie, 1994 p.22)

“[We are looking for] a grasp o f what it might mean to be sexually abused, an
ability to react.... a sense o f calmness.... a willingness to learn as well as
willingness to look at self too.
“warmth, acceptance and openness ”
“it ’s[the political] not stereotypical. The woman herself may not even regard it
as political. She might talk about how she feels about, say about, power struggles
at work.
I t ’s an awareness o f power differences an inner awareness rather than
someone who spouts jargon. It "s sometimes easy to come out with the words.

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 We ’re looking too fo r a belief in womens ’ strength (T)hat’s part o f the
awareness w e ’re looking f o r ”

Finally, under this heading I was to return to the requirement for professional

qualification for competence purposes.

The women who work in the Galway Centre describe themselves as supporters

/counsellors, although all of them have training in either psychotherapy or counselling

also.

everyone now has some sort o f training now in counselling and therapy as
well” [in addition to training given by the Centre](Worker, Galway Rape Crisis
Centre)

The women who work in the Dublin Centre are described as therapists. It is not clear

if, in addition to the required degree in psychology/social science, all of the women who

work in the centre have additional training in counselling or psychotherapy. This is

important as it is generally agreed that ‘real training for therapists takes place outside

regular-degree granting educati on’.(Kovell, J. ) (This has begun to change in Ireland in

the last three/five years with the introduction of courses in psychotherapy accredited by

the Universities.)

Counselling has been defined as a process that enables and facilitates whereas

psychotherapy is concerned with intervention, treatment and reconstruction. Theoretical

differences between the two schools or approaches (within each school), it is argued, are

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not significant in terms of successful outcome of counselling and psychotherapy and the

trend is towards integrative psychotherapy or integration of counselling approaches.

What is important in successful outcomes is the relationship between the client and the

counsellor/therapist together with the motivation for change and the willingness of the

client/woman to take responsibility for her part o f the process.(Clarkson, 1994, p. 18)

This is congruent with the view taken by both centres who see their work as being that of

empowerment and change. What is perhaps more specific to this discussion though are

the research results in terms of the factors for successful outcomes of therapy and

counselling. Roberta Russell’s research offers six main conclusions

1. Comparative studies show that the outcome does not depend on the school to which

the therapist adheres.

2. Experienced therapists are generally more effective than inexperienced therapists

and resemble each other to a greater extent than they resemble less experienced

therapists trained in the respective disciplines.

3. Paraprofessionals consistently achieve outcomes equal to or better than

professional outcomes.

4. A professional training in analysis does not appear to increase the effectiveness of

the therapist.

5. Therapists who have undergone traditional training are no more effective than

those who have not.

6. Congruent matching of therapist and patient increases the effectiveness of therapy.

(Cited in Rowan, 1983, p. 151)

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Whilst it is necessary to be cautious about what constitutes successful outcomes

Russell’s research is similar to that of Clarkson (1994) Norcross(1992), and of Kovell

who states “as with professional training in general, the kind of training a therapist has

received can only establish a certain probability of skill and integrity... nor does the lack

of established credentials rule out merit.”(Kovell,J. p.299)

Points 3 and 5 of these findings would certainly seem to confirm the appropriateness of

the approach taken by the Galway Rape Crisis Centre in relation to candidates’

suitability for work. It is also interesting to note a comment made by a therapist in the

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre to the question in relation to therapists’ view of themselves in

terms o f their role and their expertise.

“We have no reliable statistics after fifteen years working in this area. Appraisal
is subjective and tends to reflect differing philosophical approaches to the work”
(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

These comments together the evidence to date of the lack of difference in effectiveness

between professional psychotherapy and counselling approaches, and between traditional

and non traditional training on the impact of the work, make it difficult to understand

and to justify the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre’s decision to exclude candidates on the basis

of the absence formal qualifications. If feminism is inclusionary and enabling then it

does indeed seem that the Centre has, to use its own words, “lost its feminist ethos”.

With the continuing trend of the centre towards recruitment of professionals without an

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accompanying feminist political ethos lies the danger that it will not see that, hidden

beneath the professional concern for the victim, there is also a political motive that

shifts the perspective away from the processes by which sexual violence is normalised

and justified. Indeed it may collude in that process, however unintentionally.

5.2 THE STATUS OF THE VOLUNTEER GROUP ATTACHED TO THE

DUBLIN RAPE CRISIS CENTRE.

The Volunteer Group attached to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre is affected by this

requirement of formal qualification also. I would suggest that all of the reasons offered

against this practice above apply to this Group but even more so. I want to discuss this

and other issues that relate specifically to the Volunteer Group attached to the Dublin

Rape Crisis Centre. This will be discussed in terms of the nature of recognition given to

the work itself and then I will discuss the question of payment for that work.

The work, as already stated, is to staff the telephone crisis line outside of normal

working hours; calls are re-routed to their homes. The work is regarded is regarded by

the centre as being particularly difficult.

“[Being on a crisis line] they always see the dark side. They don’t have the
experience o f working through with clients.... o f watching the client get well, o f
seeing their lives come together, being deepened, enriched” (Therapist, Dublin
Rape Crisis Centre)

That it is clear there is a very real wish on the part of the volunteers to be involved

in therapeutic work and, further, that this is understood by the Dublin centre is implicit

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in the fact that over one-third of the volunteers leave to work as counsellors elsewhere

(having trained elsewhere also) and this is known to the Centre.

“Quite often they become counsellors somewhere else. They may have been
involved in outside training courses. About one-third o f the group are”
(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

As already argued, womens’ role and skills developed in that role as mothers and carers,

are consistently devalued. On their return to the labour market, if and when that

happens, they are regarded as having “missed rather than gained valuable

experience”(Coote & Campbell, 1987, p.69) The structure within the Dublin Rape

Crisis centre I would suggest is analogous to this; rather than taking account of their

experience it discounts it.

“It means a lot that there are people willing to do this work. I f they were not
we ’d have to pay people to maintain this service.... I think there’s satisfaction fo r
them in doing this work without being paid. They know they’re giving something
to the centre, their time, their effort, its their gift to the centre.......

They’re [volunteers] empathicpeople. They know how to listen well.......

we bring clients in to explain that their[volunteers] listening is an invaluable
part o f our therapy.................. [The working period] varies, up to four years,
usually two/three years. The optimum period is probably two years. You could
stretch a good group, three years would be the maximum [ It’s] unlikely that
they would move onto staff therapeutic work. We are at the stage as a Centre
where we want experienced staff. Ideally we want to recruit trained staff”
(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

Their voluntary work, it seems, is treated in the same way as women’s unpaid work in

the home and elsewhere by society, generally as being non-work .Their work and that of

the volunteers, is extolled on the one hand for its virtuousness, and yet on the other it

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counts for nothing in terms of their moving through the structure in the Dublin Rape

Crisis centre and into paid employment there, even though that work is described thus

“There are clear distinctions about the work o f the [volunteer] Group. In some
ways these lines are artificial, but had to be made quite stark.... In some ways
the same work is being done by both groups. Volunteers are not allowed to see
people face to face.. ”

One of the most significant factors influencing women’s attitudes and behaviours at

work is the opportunity structure in which they find themselves there. Where they are

constraining women do try to negotiate the limiting nature of these structures.(Watson

p .l 19) This has been the case I would suggest in the Dublin Rape Crisis centre .

“In the past we had a lot o f trouble with boundaries ... volunteers felt frustrated
at not being able to help further saw things happening, felt clients not being
looked after perhaps there were a lot o f grumblings. We’ve learned from
this...................... We now explain clearly to the volunteers the narrowness o f the
job. That they shouldn’t expect to be able to expand their counselling skills in
this Their agreement is to work as voluntarily, that’s their offer. [T]o work
as a therapist in this centre you would need professional training. There’s
better management o f the group, we understand its needs better, its frustrations
and its limits ”

The learning, it seems, did not involve interrogating their policies and practices, to see if

they were consistent with their stated philosophy (of empowerment) but, rather what was

learned was the need to avoid conflict that ensued from these practices and the need to

‘manage’ the problem better. This stance seems extraordinary for an organisation whose

philosophical view is stated as being about empowering women whose oppression

originates in unequal structures of power in society. Yet this policy seems to mirror

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cultural bias of society rather than changing it, in the meaning and the value that this

centre attaches to work roles of women in its own centre.

Their management policy has been successful insofar as the women who work as

volunteers are very aware of their position..

“There are clear boundaries around the volunteer telephone counselling job.
There isn ’t any movement from that to the paid staff. That’s made clear at the
outset. ’’(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

The following comments, by a woman who now works in the centre as a paid member

o f staff concerning how she got the job, make amply clear just how effectively these

boundaries have been introduced and implemented. She did hold the necessary

qualifications . It should be added was there no criticism on her part of this policy.

I would refer the reader, in this regard, to my comments concerning the relationship

between expectations and organisation structures .( Under Organisational Structures)

“I applied fo r it through the national newspapers. I didn’t even know until then
that there was a vacancy. ”

However, for those who remain in the volunteer group, that those rigid boundaries also

cause difficulties is also evident.

“I liked it better then. I liked the connectedness. You knew who the client was
talking about i f they mentioned the therapist It contributed to a sense o f
belonging, to being an important cog. ”

“It makes a difference when you don’t know anyone. There’s very little contact
between the group and the Centre. It would help to know where you fit into the
whole thing” (Volunteers, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

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Again, the centre are aware of these feelings and also of their root cause.

“I think this group are more distant from the staff. I suppose because o f the
boundaries that we have set up it is more difficult. It's a problem to keep them
feeling part o f the centre ”(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

I would suggest that the problem is that their feelings reflect the reality. These policies

have effectively and explicitly separated them the centre. I would refer also the reader to

the clear delineation between workers and volunteers discussed in the section on

structures entitled “ Hidden Hierarchies”. Again, there seems very little indication that

these policies will be questioned further by management. They reflect a management

decision that is in keeping with the nature of hierarchical structures which, in spite of the

attempts of the women who worked in the centre in the past to resist them , are powerful

constraints.

I want to return briefly here to the issue of the stressful nature of the work of the

volunteer group. Its particular stress arises from the particular point of intervention in

in the work, that is at the point of crisis.

“The training helps, but I had a call and I really took it on. She(the caller) was
talking about suicide. I was afraid that i f she did it would be my fa u lt”

“The worst call I got was from a woman w ho’d been raped..... (circumstances are
omitted here fo r reasons o f confidentiality). It was dreadful. It was a nightmare"
(Volunteers, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

The centre is aware of this and deals with it by attempting to support volunteers through

weekly supervision meetings with the group.

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 “We try and keep them ventilating their experiences... take care that they
discharge rather than soak it[pain] up.

However, when I enquired if they had ever evaluated the experiences or the effect of the

work on their volunteers they replied

“No, I don 7 think we ever thought o f doing that”

I would suggest that this is particularly important for this group of volunteers. Unlike

many o f groups o f workers/volunteers who staff crisis lines, this group receive the crisis

calls in their own homes, often in the middle of the night. One o f the reasons given by

the paid therapists to explain their reluctance to participate in interviews outside their

working hours in the Centre was that because of the stressful nature of the work it was

necessary that they kept clear boundaries between their work and their personal lives.

However, for the volunteers these boundaries are constantly and consistently broken .

5.3 UNPAID WORK.

The Volunteer Group’s presence in the Dublin centre raises the whole question of unpaid

volunteer work. As already indicated many of the volunteers in the Dublin Rape Crisis

centre do undertake training at their own expense . The volunteers speak of how much

they enjoyed their training provided by the centre and the work that follows.

“It was fantastic....There was affirmation. You learned a lot. They[trainers]

made us feel we could do it ”

“there’s a feeling o f having done something. No matter how desperate you feel
someone is, at least I know I was there ”

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It has been argued that care must be taken if volunteers are not to be exploited. In the

early stages volunteers find that the stimulation offered by the work is sufficient return

however, with training and experience this needs to be re-addressed. There is also the

question that those who fund their own training and undertake voluntary counselling to

gain experience and to fulfil their wish to help, can be open to organisational abuse and

misuse being used as cheap labour (Perry, 1993, p.80)

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre have as yet no plans to pay their volunteers.

“I think that the volunteer is in some way embodying a public sentiment o f

wanting to help. As the centre has grown with a larger paid staff the volunteer
group has also grown larger” (Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

And to re-state an earler comment from the above section -

I think there’s satisfaction fo r them in doing this work without being paid. They
know they ’re giving something to the centre, their time, their effort, its their gift
to the centre.

I am reminded here of an example in *Christine Delphy’s work in support of a

Materialist Feminism and would suggest that this example could be seen as analgous to

the unpaid work of the volunteers in the Dublin Centre . Delphy suggests that“[T]o see

housework as work, and conversely to see housework as work is to take an economic

angle. When approached from another angle, for example that of role-playing ,

housework is no longer work, nor was it before the women’s movement; it is a hobby, a

vocation, a p ro o f o f love, a character trait, in brief anything and everything except

ww&”(Delphy, Feminist Review, 1979.Vol. 1)

*(Delphys argument is a complex one and lengthy one. I am using this example here only as a way of

highlighting that what is being referred is work, just as housework is work)

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Can the work of the volunteers really be called a gift? Again I return to Delphy’s work

...[When women apply to their own situation a materialist analysis they are are now

saying ‘ there is no mystery, we are oppressed because we are exploited. What we go

though makes life easier for others, (ibid.,) The work of the women volunteers is just

that, work., work that makes life easier for others.

There is a need for the Dublin Centre to examine its view of non-payment for voluntary

work to ensure that the “gift” to the centre is not what has been described as womens’[all

o f those providing this gift are women] exploitation in the slave labour of ‘love’ and

care, coerced out of them through patriarchal social arrangements which allow no

alternatives; described as a virtuous attitude, in an attempt to psychologise the political

and social reality o f the lack of political rights and material opportunities. (Kappeler,

1995 p. 27)

What the centre refers to as a gift also reflects the lack of opportunity within the centre’s

structures in terms of the opportunity for volunteers to move towards therapuetic paid

work. This, as already argued above, is the implicit wish of the women who work as

volunteers. It is difficult to see in what ways the changing needs of the volunteers

(referred to above) are being addressed within the Dublin Centre. If their needs are not

being addressed are they then being exploited?

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By contrast as the Galway Rape Crisis Centre has grown there has been an attempt to

share paid work.

"Working arrangements are three days paid work per week, plus voluntary
work...weekly meeting, training and fund-raising. Historically, paid work was on
a rotation basis - now there is more paid work available and workers are given a
fo u r year contract with a two year review. This means more stability in the
centre. It also means experience can be kept within the centre and o f course it
means better worker conditions. One year experience as a volunteer is required.
I f there is a job vacancy all members o f the collective are eligible. ’’(Worker,
Galway Rape Crisis Centre ”)

Voluntary and paid work are integrated in the Galway Centre. There is a belief in the

need for and the entitlement to paid work for all those who work in the centre.

“there’s a need to be rewarded(financially) as well”.

This argument is not intended to suggest that only paid work is valuable work, nor to

subscribe to the notion of the commodification of all services to an ‘other’. Nor is it

intended to be confused with volunteer activism. Feminist activists working as

volunteers in womens’ health centres and refuges which took the shape of subsidised

voluntary agencies were often using the only means by which they, as women, could

have any role in shaping state policy of the use of public funds. (Radtke & Stain, 1994,

p.153)

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5.4 TRAINING

I want to discuss now training practices within each centre. I will deal firstly with

training offered within the centres to its workers/therapists and then look at the

implications o f this for the work itself. I will deal with training offered in both centres

separately.

5 4:1 DUBLIN RAPE CRISIS CENTRE.

There appear to be some contradictions and confusion in the training offered

in the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. It is my intention, in an attempt to be as fair as

possible, to restrict my own comments, and offer instead those made by the staff in the

Centre itself to the reader. This may not offer completeness, but then at the outset I

stated this study did not offer completeness and that my intention would be to make as

vivid as possible the experiences of the women in the centre. These comments are made

by the Head o f Training, Head of Counselling and Education Officer and the Supervisor

o f the Volunteer Group. In addition to these functions as department heads, these people

are also therapists. The Education Officer is responsible for the provision of training

courses within the centre and to outside groups and with the provision of ‘talks’ or

workshops to groups. Definition of role was given by the Education Officer.

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Post-Selection Training For Therapists

"The centre now recruits therapists whose background includes experience

dealing with sexual abuse. Nowadays that’s much easier; many professionals
come across sexual abuse. Initially, they receive individual supervision... where
difficulties with the work will come out. There is also Group supervision and a
weekly counselling meeting. They attend the first-four day training course run by
the centre on sexual abuse They are given specific help with the legal and
medical information they need fo r dealing with rape crisis victims ”

I was somewhat surprised by the fact that information,rather than counselling/

therapeutic training was given specifically, in relation to rape victims and suggested that

it seemed like therapists then were in a sense given a ‘ baptism of fire in this regard’.

The therapist agreed, and went on to say:

“ Victims are often in shock and need to be medically looked after. The initial
sessions tend to be about information giving, legal and medical, not so much
about the rape itself” (Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

I would remind the reader at this point that the staff recruited by the centre are required

to have a background in social science/psychology. Neither necessarily equip the

individual with therapeutic or counselling skills. I would refer again to the fact that

training for therapy/counselling usually takes place outside regular degree granting

education.

This o f course does not apply to those staff who are recruited with a qualification in

counselling/psychotherapy.

"The centre has been remiss in the past in terms o f staff training. [It is] now
addressing that issue. On-going training is part o f a professional responsibility
in psychotherapy We do put ourselves out as having expertise in sexual
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 abuse work and feel all here should work within a broadly similar framework.
We ensure this by building in an on-going training component. There are
management difficulties with this The Director feels that therapists are
hired as trained counsellors, so why then do they need extra training. That’s
putting it in simplistic terms. ”

This fact may explain this comment:

" Fundingfor this (on-going involvement in training) comes from therapists’

personal resources. "(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

“The training given [to the staff] is offered to the public also so therapists from
the centre are trained with others. We are ju st about to begin a two year part-
time diploma course in dealing with sexual abuse. This will force us to tighten up
our own approach and also to improve staff training. It also means, though, that
we would be offering a model which although used here, is not used by all our
therapists. ”

The following comments were offered in response to my question as to what the specific

training offered for dealing with rape victims was. I was pursuing this because, as

already stated, I was surprised at the comments offered above.

“There’s no form al training as such, but fo r example fo r one halfday a week the
therapist will work on the crisis telephone line. They are given all the
information they need to do this, legal and medical. Usually a half-day is spent
on giving this information. To say that this is centre policy would be too strong,
i t ’s more like a trend. There should be more training. I suppose, there was a
belief here that therapists were able to deal with crisis counselling, but that’s not
the case. We didn ‘t recognise that therapists often fin d it more difficult to deal
with rape crisis cases. In the past we had all been involved as volunteers, so we
had the experience. That’s not the case now. ..............................
[Rjeally, I suppose our training is really dreadful fo r staff. It tends to be informal
only. As fa r as myths and attitudes around rape [are concerned] we used to
encourage sta ff to do the voluntary training course, even those who wouldn’t be
involved in counselling. This course does look at these issues. I don’t know why
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 new people are not encouraged [to do this now]. ” (Therapist,, Dublin Rape
Crisis Centre)

“Training also includes self-awareness work. This is facilitated in groups. The

aim is to explore issues around sexual abuse.... the rationale behind this, is that
to facilitate clients working with sexual abuse it is necessary to understand [our]
own experiences. Having said that, a small number o f our staff here do not
consider it necessary. Supervision can address this, by pointing out patterns
emerging with clients and suggest a need to look at this. However, we can only
suggest. There seems no point in insisting someone goes into therapy. You cannot
force someone to use the process even i f they attend therapy. ”.

“Our training focuses on sexual abuse work. It has struck me though that we
could perhaps put on a course that deals more specifically with rape” (
Education Officer, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.)

Those involved in training are now required to also be involved in therapeutic work.

“In the past this was not the case but that has changed. ”

5. 4:2 TRAINING FOR VOLUNTEER GROUP. DUBLIN RCC.

This training is for telephone crisis-line work which does not involve face-to-face

counselling.

“I t ’s spread over two week-ends. We look at the nature o f the work, the dark side,
dealing with crisis all the time. We use role-plays, develop listening skills, stress
i t ’s about listening. Explain that they will come into the centre weekly to talk
about calls. This is called supervision, but in reality it’s to ventilate, to allow
them to deal with practical questions. We look at the reality o f getting calls in the
middle o f the night. There’s discussion about who is suitable fo r service....... We
increase their understanding o f the effects o f rape and sexual abuse. . We look at
the differences between the rape victim and the sexual abuse victim.................. As
regards rape we look at the effects on an adult, give information about the
medical and police procedures, pregnancy issues They have to ask
themselves ‘will this be too hard, too invasive fo r me? ’ The caller has to know
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 that this woman can hear her. We ’re dealing with issues that we turn away from
in everyday life, details o f rape, o f sexual abuse. ”

5. 4:3 GALWAY RAPE CRISIS CENTRE.

Training offered after selection. For consistency I will allow the comments from the

members to describe the training procedures. This will not be as concise as the above

description, as responsibility for delivery o f training is held collectively.

Training takes place over two week-ends; ten weekly evening sessions of two and a half

hours approximately and three/four full days. If necessary extra time is added.

This occurs if issues are not as well dealt with as trainers feel they need to be.

“We use videos, role-plays, discussion we talk about the use o f personal
material, that it should be measured introduce basic counselling skills, body
language, creating safety, reflecting back. we work with the counselling
process sexuality confidentiality. We cover legal issues, police
procedures (includes all the ways in which workers will be involved and ways in
which they could help process)... court procedures the law in relation to
women and the law in relation to violence Womens ’ Studies issues o f
feminism. We now consider this a basic part o f training....forensic and medical
issues, crisis pregnancies. Community care.... particularly in relation to child
sexual abuse telephone counselling the day to day running o f the centre,
general office procedures, we stress that everyone is involved in this.
... with child sexual abuse with look at the stages o f counselling and the healing
process. Skills are given then fo r ways o f working. (Worker, Rape Crisis Centre,
Galway)

"Originally, our work was more about support..... now there’s more long term
work there’s a move towards therapy. I t ’s evolved. ’’(Worker, Galway Rape
Crisis Centre)

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 "Gradually in our training we use therapeutic methods. These are now valued
and accepted in the centre ” (Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

To allow comparison I raised the question of whether there was a specific input in

training in relation to dealing with rape. Not all the comments refer to training, but are

included because the practices in the centre mean that all workers are involved in

training and hence their views are likely to be incorporated in that training.

“We look at how to checkfo r the woman’s physical safety now.... how to
establish what, if any further threat she might be under. We go through dealing
with legal, medical and practical issues, the need perhaps fo r a medical
examination with rape we tend to focus on the present trauma. For some
women though going to court in itself is a 'recovery’. I t ’s like confrontation. We
do some work in training around the woman’s expectations o f the court. We
look at the need fo r the woman to contact her feelings. The fear can last fo r days
or fo r months, or fo r longer. Some women will come just as long as women who
have been abused as children We look at the feelings that typically come up
fo r women (who have been raped) Feelings o f being dirty, o f being to blame in
some way. We look at the issues that come up afterwards. Relationships with
other people, the blame they feel themselves fo r what has happened and the sense
o f being blamed by others "(Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

"The Galway Rape Crisis centre supports women who have been raped. This
does not require some sophisticated counselling model. With victims o f child
sexual abuse more in-depth counselling is necessary the demands o f dealing
with sexual abuse means doing various forms o f training. ” (Worker, Galway
Rape Crisis Centre)

"with rape they need more immediate support. I t ’s crisis care. That can be
intensive being with them ’’(Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

Personal therapy and on-going training are also part of the training process.

“We do our own personal work, that’s very important, and w e’re moving
towards making this obligatory. Up to now w e’ve had peer support, but w e’ve
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 decided now on supervision from outside. Group relationships can be quite
complicated. We ’re employees/employers, colleagues, friends. There’s good
support but we feel someone coming in from outside might be challenging fo r
us.” (This has since been put in place and supervision is now provided outside of
the centres’ members)

“There is an expectation that people will train, will do their work on themselves.
There’s an allowance fo r extra training, it’s not a lot, whatever can be afforded"
(Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

The responsibility for the delivery for training is shared in the centre.

“[A] 11 are involved in training... Those who are here the longest do the planning
and preparation and carry out the majority o f the work. The newer members get
experience by having a smaller input”

5. 4:4. ISSUES PERTINENT TO COMMENTS MADE BY THERAPIST.

DUBLIN RAPE CRISIS CENTRE..

The above comments seem to highlight a number of issues within the Dublin Rape

Crisis Centre.

In spite o f its requirement for trained professionals there are serious gaps in the delivery

of training within the centre, specifically in relation to dealing with rape.

There is both contradiction and conflict in terms of the centre’s stated belief that on­

going training is a professional responsibility in psychotherapy. The centre’s

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management being unwilling to facilitate this requirement in practice, therapists who

apparently have a very real commitment to it, fund it out of their own personal resources,

and presumably in their own time.

Whilst stating training and work in this area require personal therapeutic work, there

seem to be no practices to work this through with professional therapists who are

unwilling to engage in this process.

5. 4:5. ISSUES PERTINENT TO COMMENTS MADE BY THE GALWAY RAPE

CRISIS WORKERS.

Training deals specifically with both rape and sexual abuse. However comments from

the Galway Rape Crisis Centre also suggest some differences in the training or working

with women who have experienced adult rape, as opposed to child sexual abuse. These

differences, however, are not so clear cut as in the Dublin Centre.

Whilst not requiring professional training, the centre nurtures professional standards

through commitment to on-going training , funding its workers to continue such training,

even though financial resources are scarce. Its commitment to personal work for its own

workers is reflected in the move in this centre towards making personal work obligatory.

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The need for therapists and supporters to work on their own personal material is widely

accepted (Clarkson, 1993;Storr,1990;Casement,1985;Cantor,1992;Egan, 1994, Dryden,

1992) In feminist therapy it is perhaps even more crucial to “continue the process of

questioning her own meanings and ferreting out the indeterminate observer who will be

hiding in them as well as in those of her client”. The ‘indeterminate observer’ here is

male, for this is the “multiple perspective familiar to so many women in oedipal society,

here used for women’s own sake” (Kaschak, 1992. p.212) Seeing her experience of

sexual violence through her own ‘woman’ eyes rather than through the societal lens,

with its male filter, is essential for recovery. If the therapist is to enable this returning of

vision then her own sight must be clear also.

Both centres state that the majority of the therapeutic/support work being done is with

victims o f sexual abuse rather than victims of adult rape. I would suggest that it is

possible that the way training is structured to deal with rape, particularly in the Dublin

Rape Crisis Centre, contributes to this. This will be discussed now in dealing with the

emphasis o f the work on the treatment o f survivors of sexual abuse.

5.5 EMPHASIS OF WORK ON TREATMENT ON SURVIVIORS OF SEXUAL

ABUSE.

There are a number factors, I suggest, that influence the balance of the work o f each

centre and these are discussed below.

• Societal attitudes towards victims of adult sexual violence.

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• Workers/Therapists own fears in relation to rape/sexual violence

• Lack o f clarity on the effects and recovery from the trauma of rape and adult

sexual violence and therapists/supporters.

Both centres say that most of the work involves working with adults who have been

sexually abused as children; approximately two thirds of those who come for support/

therapy are in this category. Workers and therapists said that this was because of

societal attitudes which interrogates them and makes them, rather than perpetrators,

culpable.

“I think [though[ that women feel it ’s their fault., they want to bury it.... I ’ve
talked to women who have said they went home and burned their clothes,
pretended it didn’t happen. We see very few recent rapes ” (Worker, Galway
Rape Crisis Centre)

",..[T]hey don ’tw ant to think about it. It gets hidden away. ... especially i f there
are no physical marks, it’s hard to prove there’s been force. Perhaps it’s that
rape happens maybe once, it ’s not on-going like sexual abuse [There is]
guilt that maybe they were wearing a short skirt. They say things like 7 knew
him ’....[They] feel guilty because they’ve invited him in fo r coffee ” ( Workers,
Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

“I t ’s not so much the profile o f the centre as the nature o f the crime. I t ’s about
shame and secrecy. Women try and get on with i t . They’d have to admit they
were raped if they come” (Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

These comments reflect what have been referred to as techniques of neutralisation -

verbalisation that allows people to engage in culturally prescribed behaviour without

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feeling guilty for having done so. Where rape is concerned these verbalisations allow

men to condemn rape but also free them to engage in it by providing socially accepted

legitimate excuses for it. A set of, as it were, rape supportive attitudes. (Loss of control

due to drink, contributory negligence of the victim in ‘leading the man on’, belief that

the raped woman was not a ‘real’ victim because of her style or demeanour) are deeply

embedded in cultural attitudes o f women and men.

This comment from a therapist in the Dublin centre shows just how deeply these views

are embedded

“I think we all have a more feared scenario. For me, it ’s a woman whose partner
or husband is away. She’s in her own home with her children perhaps. Someone
breaks in and sh e’s raped. She’s broken no rules and still. ”

Even though this woman understands at conscious level there are no rules,

unconsciously there’s still a sense that if ‘all the rules are kept’ then a woman should be

safe. That this persists even when working daily with the reality and truth of sexual

violence, highlights the crucial importance of workers in this area attending to their

own personal work in order to ensure the on-going attention to that which is

unconsciously carried within.

As discussed earlier dealing with rape creates an awareness in supporters and therapists

regarding their own vulnerability. This is the case in both centres.

‘‘There would be a concern fo r the woman and also fo r yourself. It brings up

different feelings. This is the town you live in, the fear is more immediate with

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 rape there a sense that this could be me, now at this stage in my life "(Worker,
Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

There is also less clarity it seems for workers in both centres regarding the effects and

recovery from the trauma of rape.

“I f the woman shares it maybe the effects are not as long term, maybe it's easier
to get back to some kind o f normality.... With rape ten or twelve sessions might be
enough. With abuse, ten or twelve sessions and you 're only beginning "(Worker,
Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

“Generally, rape victims are here fo r a shorter period. whereas a child who
has been abused develops coping patterns which become destructive, it's much
more deep rooted. Rape victims often have fa r greater personal
resources "(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

“Ife e l very strongly about rape I t ’s not that rape is less complex although it
might seem so initially., rape victims might need help at the practical level in the
short term, but they often seek help again later. Different issues in life bring it up
again and yet it seems that they can only deal with it in that particular way at
that time ” (Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

‘‘[The] fear can last fo r days or fo r months, or longer. Some women come fo r
ju st as long as women who have been abused as children. Some women will come
back when the perpetrator is about to be released. This brings up feelings fo r
them again "(Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

Research would suggest that victims of rape and adult sexual violence in fact do not

recover quickly.

• 94% o f victims meet the symptomatic criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

• 47% still suffer from the disorder three months after the assault

• 57% of victims had a lifetime prevalence of PSTD in a large scale research sample

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• 44% of victims had suicidal ideation

• 19% had made suicide attempts.

(Rothbauml992;Kilpatrick,1987;Kilpatrick,1985, cited in Journal of Sexual & Marital

Therapy, Vol. 1, 1996)

It may be as one therapist suggested that there is an unconscious desire of the part of

therapists and workers to believe this because of their realisation of the own vulnerability

in relation to rape.

“there’s no pathology here. You can get over it quickly maybe wanting to
believe this because rape can happen to you ”(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis
Centre)

The fact that training also places less emphasis on therapy/support for rape victims may

serve unintentionally to prioritise sexual abuse work and may offer partial explanation

for the fact that most o f those who avail of the services in both centres are victims of

childhood sexual abuse. This seems more evident in case of the Dublin Rape Crisis

Centre in their comments above specifically in relation to training.

In the absence of an interrogation of the pattern developing within each centre, the

expectation that women will not need long term therapeutic support may also contribute

to that becoming a reality,

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 “This group [support group fo r victims o f rape] keeps falling down. We don’t
know why. The women say they would like to talk to other women, but then they
don't continue ” (Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

“Sometimes women don’t seem to need a lot o f on-going support. We do fin d

that, but still, sometimes they ring up two or three years later and come in and
talk, it ’s still part o f their lives’’(Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

If both the woman and her therapist/supporter wish, albeit unconsciously, to believe that

this trauma is something that can be recovered from quickly then what may happen is a

process by which the therapist/supporter may develop a style within this frame which is

more a matter of telling rather than finding out with the client. Or it may result in an

unconscious collusion between the woman’s search for this and the

therapist’s/supporter’s stance appearing to offer it. (This form of unconscious interaction

between client and therapist is described by Casement.1985,. p217)

My observations here are not in any way meant to minimise the effect of societal

attitudes in terms of silencing women. Rather the comments of the women who work in

each o f the centres and their realisation of their own vulnerability is congruent with,

and highlights the view that rape is a process of intimidation that keeps all women wary

o f all men and thus has a political function which is the maintenance of power of men

over women. (Brownmiller, 1975)

I want to refer to a comment in made by a therapist at the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre

in terms of a wish to focus the centre on the treatment o f rape.

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 “With child sexual abuse other agencies are appropriately developing skills in
that area. Rape is the rape crisis centre’s particularity. I believe we have a
unique role and a unique expertise More and more, our work should be
towards rape crisis counselling” (Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.

There are I believe two important issues to be raised here. Firstly, in relation to sexual

abuse work becoming part of any welfare agency there is a danger that the specificity

of feminist knowledge will be lost in this process. This is a move that is often justified

on the basis that male and female children are abused and thus this is not a feminist

issue.

What the feminist political analysis highlights is not only the damage that sexual

violence causes to women and children but crucially it also critiques the family, the

construction o f gendered sexualities and the ‘normality’ of sexual abuse.

This comment by a worker in the Galway Rape Crisis Centre affirms their awareness of

this

“The work is with the survivors but I think it should be preventative also. [The]
therapeutic is the aftermath but there is a need to achieve a society where no
sexual violence exists. Perhaps this will never happen, but we have to keep
challenging the political system to try and make this happen - it’s the only
way. ’’(Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre).

It is unlikely that welfare agencies would hold such a political view of the nature of

abuse.(I would refer the reader to my comments under organisation structures in this

regard.)

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Secondly, in attempting to define discrete categories of sexual violence and discrete

categories of expertise of response, there is a danger that the understanding of sexual

abuse as one part o f a spectrum o f male sexual violence against women and children

will be lost. With this too the victim of adult rape/sexual violence is likely to be further

isolated and silenced, as the clarity of responsibility when dealing with children becomes

blurred by the set o f rape supportive myths referred to above come into effect when

dealing with adult victims.

There is further danger in the separation of categories of colluding with those attitudes

that would want to make invisible the reality o f sexual violence and its political

underpinnings. That this process is sometimes subtle does not make it less effective.

“I think the volunteer is in some way embodying a public sentiment o f wanting to

help................ I think the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre has been really successful.
[The] centre is very well thought o f by people in Dublin.... i t ’s reflected in
fu n d raising appeals. It has a high profile in this city "(Therapist, Dublin Rape
Crisis Centre)

Is there then a paradox that in a city embodying such ‘good-will’, that sexual violence

as a crime, as already argued is on a relentless upward trend, or is this in fact good-will?

I would suggest the following comments are a more accurate interpretation of such ‘good

will’.

“I think i t ’s society ghettoising us. There’s a safety in keeping rape ‘in there'
away from society In a sense the public give us money to keep it in
‘there ’..It’s about fear, not acknowledging the reality that it’s all them and us.
I t ’s much bigger than the Rape Crisis Centre. It happens to men as well as

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 women, to mothers, sisters, daughters, babies. It threatens all o f those ”
(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.).

Whilst it may indeed be about fear (particularly for women) I would suggest that this

comment from a member of the Galway collective is a clearer analysis of the reality of

that fear and that wish to keep rape ‘in there’.

"It’s a lot safer to talk about child sexual abuse than rape.... [CJhild sexual
abuse is looked at in a therapeutic way, i t ‘s not political. I think with rape and
sexual assault you really have to challenge society...{To ask] why is this
happening? "(Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

My comments here are not intended to suggest that all sexual abuse work should be done

by rape crisis centres nor that they should not focus that work more towards rape but to

highlight the dangers inherent if all of the work is not informed by a political analysis of

sexual violence.

5.6 THERAPEUTIC MODEL

The therapeutic/support model used when working with women is similar in both

centres. Both stress the importance of building a relationship of trust between the

supporter/therapist and the woman/client in the early stages of the work. Both Centres

uses a three-stage model in their work. Both centres say that while the model has three

stages tasks are not sequential. Both use similar therapeutic methods, such as Gestalt,

inner child work and art therapy in the course of therapy/counselling.

“This stage is also about developing a relationship o f trust.... to move on to the

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 second phase The first stage is about telling the story remembering........
the second stage is about making an emotional connection to what has
happened..... the third stage is integrative, drawing together. integration
happens from the beginning o f therapy but [isjmore outward at the end”
(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

“This would be when trust is built..... at the early stage....The first task is to get
her to tell her story., what she remembers.... when trust is established later we
move to feelings, we try and get the woman to focus on her feelings, to stay with
them then we look at feelings connected to the abuse and to who she is now...
PJt's also about how it affected her life.... this begins in the first session and
goes on over several sessions. The tasks are not chronological. (Worker, Galway
Rape Crisis Centre)

Their differences then seem to lie in how they view the implementation o f that

support/therapy. As already discussed the women in the Galway Centre see the political

aspect to the work as being crucial to supporting women, whereas the therapists who

work in the Dublin Centre see their work as mainly therapeutic with feminist

political commitment no longer being a requirement. As already seen, the trend in their

view o f the service in Dublin is increasingly towards treatment focused on the

individual. How does this impact on the individual woman coming for support/

counselling, or does it matter at all?

The process of recovery within feminist therapy for victims of sexual violence has been

particularly successful. This Walker suggests is because the rules that govern feminist

therapist- client relationships make it a comfortable therapeutic process for those who

have been damaged by significant relationships. These rules/tenets have grown out of a

feminist philosophy and include:

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• Egalitarian relationships between therapist and client as a model for women to take

individual responsibility to develop egalitarian relationships with others instead of

the more traditional passive, dependent female role.

• Power in relationships and independence for women. Women are taught to look for

ways of gaining and using power and control in relationships and the consequences.

• Enhancement of women’s strength rather than remediation of their weaknesses,

encouraging women to look at their role in supporting others’ strengths while

ignoring their own.

• Non-pathology oriented and non-victim-blaming, rejecting the medical model

commonly used in other therapies such as psychodynamic theories. Victims of men’s

violence are not considered mentally unhealthy; rather their behaviours are

understood as part o f the coping process necessary to survive that violence.

• Education, as a way to change some of the cognitions that are detrimental to

enhancement o f women’s strengths. Women are encouraged to learn more about the

condition of women, and bibliotherapy is frequently an adjunct to psychotherapy.

Although a healing model is advocated, it is often an educational rather than

ameliorative and reparative model.

“The therapy helps them look at what happened, how it happened. How it
stopped or how it can be stopped... reporting. It raises consciousness around
these issues and this comes out. The women make changes in their lives that
reflects this. They have a consciousness o f their own value, their own
importance, a right and the right to value themselves and to act according to
that”. (Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

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Again, it is useful to re-state the aim of the work of both these centres is empowerment.

The emphasis of the empowerment of clients as an explicit goal of psychotherapy

emerged most cl early from feminist therapy, a system of psychotherapy developed

almost entirely by women.(Cantor, 199.p.238) Feminist therapy itself was a reflection

o f new feminist politics The systematic study o f the trauma of sexual and domestic life,

it has been argued, was only possible when there was a political movement strong

enough to legitimate an alliance between those investigating it and its victims, that

would counteract the ordinary social process of silence and denial. In the absence of a

political movement, the process of bearing witness inevitably gives way to the practice

of forgetting(Herman, 1992). I would suggest here an analogy to the practice o f feminist

therapy. Without its feminist political underpinnings its practice will become the

practice of eclectic and integrated psychotherapy, whose roots lie in masculinist

epistemologies which reproduce power differentials between men and women.

(Kaschak, 1992).

The practice of family therapy from a feminist perspective offers an example of this.

The traditional explanation of a dysfunctional family as one where the surface action of

the family does not satisfy the underlying needs of the family members is often used to

argue that sexual abuse is a symptom of what is wrong. That is to say that abuse may be

seen as a symptom in the sense that it is a sexualisation of what should be nurturant

physical contact. Thus sexual abuse is a symptom and even solution to what is wrong

within the family. Feminist practitioners of family therapy argue that feminism and

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family therapy need not be incompatible. By distinguishing between the explanation

given for the abuse happening and the therapeutic models adopted which may allow the

secret in the family to be disclosed. However, in a feminist framework the explanation

for the ‘dysfunction’ sees the incestuous assault as the cause rather than the symptom.

(MacLeod and Saraga, Feminist Review, 1988) It is worth noting that the majority of

students on counselling courses are women.(Perry. J. 1993.P.6). The potential for

changes within theoretical therapeutic frameworks is significant if women practitioners

bring the reality of the experiences and lived herstories to bear on and to critique those

theories in their practice.. It is not enough that therapy’s content be adjusted

feministically with the ideological theory and the political structure of therapy remaining

unchanged. .To deny the political realities which shape , form and maintain the self has

the same potential to corrupt the work of the therapist as has the denial of the content

and context of her familial herstory.

It is within the feminist context and its critique of the family and societal attitudes

to sexual abuse, to children and to sexuality that the “abused becomes the survivor”

(Bell, 1993, p. 104)

“Our way o f thinking is reflected into the work........[Having a political feminist

view is to have]., a sense o f what happened to her, kept her trapped. Having a
sense that i t ’s about empowerment issues. [That] it’s not as simple as ‘this is
your stuff. This is your stuff and it’s more. ” (Worker, Galway, Rape Crisis
Centre)

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The truth of human life lies not in abstraction from relationships but rather is constituted

by them (Gilligan, cited in Hekman, 1995. p. 132) Traditional therapeutic methods for

recovery often require that the woman rewrite her history. The rationale for this lies in

the belief that this is necessary in order to achieve a meaning other than self-blame and

hate which, it is suggested, block the individual’s capacity to use the therapeutic process.

However, as McLeod and Saraga argue, consciousness-raising offers a most effective

way o f challenging internalised ideologies.(cited in Feminist Review, Spring, 1988) The

process o f recovery requires that we do not ‘forget’ what made us what we are.

5.7 CHARGES FOR SERVICES.

The Dublin and the Galway Rape Crisis Centres operate different policies in relation to

to making a charge to the women who use the centres services.

The Galway Rape Crisis Centre makes no charges for its services.

"It is the hallmark o f R C C ’s that there is no charge and we feel this strongly.... It
is this centre’s view that these women have been punished enough, making them
pay is another punishment. It can put women o ff too, i f they feel they can’t afford
it. A lot o f the women who come here are in very poor circumstances.

"In fa ct often the [centre] need to help women with travelling expenses, baby­
sitting and ‘emergency ’ money. (Workers, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

That women do worry about the cost of this service is indicated in comments below.

It seems likely that if womens’ feelings are linked to their sense of being ‘second-class

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citizens’ (earlier discussed) then the inability to pay may indeed re-inforce that feeling.

The view taken by the Galway Centre in making no charge is consistent with their view

of womens’ experience of violence.

“[Sjexual violence is never your [woman] fault. ”

“We see a woman coming here trying to do her best to recover... there has been
an injustice”(Workers, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

The Dublin Centres policy is that no charge is made for the first six sessions, but,

thereafter, each session is paid for according to the means and circumstances of each

woman. The centre further points out that

“No one is, however, is ever turned away because o f money, everyone is treated.
In the case o f rape, if the victim is still distressed we will not raise the issue after
six sessions ”

Within the centre itself there are differing views in relation to this policy as is evident in

the comments below

“After the first six sessions yes, in all cases clients are asked to pay
something. It may be as little as fifty pence or a pound. I have enormous
difficulty with this personally. I think by the time a client has come through the
door they have paid enough already”

For the women who use the service these seems to be concern regarding this charge.

“Women are often very concerned when ‘p honing about the cost”
“[Sjome do[ask about the cost when they phone] They wonder if there will be a
problem. I f they can afford i t ”

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There appears to be two reasons behind this policy in the Dublin Centre in the light of

these following comments. The first concerns how the client values and uses the service

and the second is focused on funding.

"Research suggests that where clients pay for/towards the service they take more
benefit from the service, they use it more and they question it more ”,.....
"it puts a value on the service [A] cost that is affordable is agreed, as little as
two/three pounds and more typically five/ten pounds per session ”

"As well as other funding it does being funding to the centre through clients

It is difficult to assess the claim that those engaging in the therapeutic process are

enabled by making a payment for this service. Such research generally refers to those

who chose therapeutic/counselling process as a way of working through difficult life

issues. It does not generally refer to those individuals who are victims o f sexual

violence. The idea that more value is put on the service because there is a monetary

exchange is I believe dangerous, particularly for women, who traditionally have not been

valued precisely because there is, generally, no monetary exchange for their roles as

carers and nurturers.

The amounts indicated in the comments above regarding payment would suggest that

many o f the women who need and use this service are not financially secure in their own

right and indeed have scarce resources. Finding the amounts concerned may indeed

indicate an important willingness to name themselves as a priority in their own lives and

within the scarce resources that they have at their disposal. However, I believe the

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 They also reflect a care ethic based on the understanding of the narrative of social

relations. What Gilligan argues is that there is another “different” moral voice - the

care voice - that the hegemonic has effectively silenced Kohlberg incorporates the

care voice as another implicitly inferior moral realm. Gilligan in her work insists on

the equality of the two voices in order to counter hierarchalisation and marginalisation

that characterises modem moralist theory and to develop a dialectical moral theory of

justice and care.

5.9 CENTRES ORIENTATION TOWAR PS JUDICIAL SYSTEM FOR

WOMEN WHO USE THEIR SERVICES.

H alf of the offences reported to the Garda never reach the courts (McCullough, 1996,

p. 114). This may relate to a judgement by the prosecutor on the quality of evidence

or it may relate to an assessment of the ability of the victim to sustain detailed and

potentially devastating cross-examinations.

"Sometimes the woman is encouraged by the Gardai not to report. They talk about

her fam ily being involved. Perhaps they think that sh e’s not strong enough ’’(Worker,

Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

This may relate to judgement o f prosecutors on quality of evidence or an assessment

o f the ability o f the victim to sustain detailed and potentially devastating cross-

examinations It is the experience o f the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre that if the defense

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counsel asks for leave to bring up the complainant’s previous sexual history in their

experience it is rarely refused .(Shanahan,1992.) Techniques of neutralisation

discussed earlier are also used by the judicial system to serve as ‘mitigating factors’ in

cases of rape.(McCullough,1995)

The harshness of experience within the legal practices of the judicial system felt by

victims o f sexual violence is so widespread that it is now described as the secondary

victimisation of the rape complainants.

“You know the judiciary systems still support a system that oppresses women. Look at

the sentencing policies. The way they make women be witnesses o f the State. All o f

this makes it very difficult fo r women to come forward. Most sexual violence is

perpetrated by men, and men still largely control the systems o f power”

“You know even going to court with rape is dis empowering. I can think o f two cases;

in one there was a suspended sentence, it was appealed. The Criminal Injuries Board

awarded a sum o f money, but you know the State didn’t care. ” (Workers, Galway

Rape Crisis Centre).

“The client has no voice in the system. The woman is the focus o f the court case but is

totally silenced by the system. She has to hang around waiting, brushing shoulders

with the offenders fa m ily” (Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

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question lies in the ethics and morality of requiring victims of a crime to contribute to

the support and help they need in any manner whatsoever.

If a woman have been run over on the street would she be better able to recover if she

were to pay her own medical bills. It may be that she would feel better able query the

medical attention received within a society which tiers medical treatment on the basis

the ability to pay. But this is not a service offered within that philosophy. If the centre’s

philosophy is that

"the woman has been victimised, that no woman is to blame..and that she must
be allowed to be the best judge o f what is right fo r her’’(Therapist,Dublin Rape
Crisis Centre)

then how can it ask her to pay for the therapy/support she requires to recover from what

is a crime perpetrated against her.

Plummer argues that empowerment means enabling the woman see

• that she is in no way responsible for the rape and to see herself as a victim, thus

escaping the blame she was once given

• herself as a person with control over her responses to the victimisation - to enter a

survivor identity, more determining that determined

and further points out that one of the most immediate and positive responses of the Rape

Crisis Movement has been to provide help and support to victims to highlight that a

“woman has a right to chose what happens to her(Plummer,1995)

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That she has a right to query the nature of that support; and that she is encouraged to see

such questioning as an indication of recovery in that it implicates her in her own process

o f recovery is I would argue also part of the empowerment process.

The appropriate funding is from the perpetrators of such crimes, or through

unconditional state funding that recognises where the guilt and innocence belong. In

the U.S. survivors have instigated court proceedings to pay their therapy bills. In

addition, each state has a Victim’s compensation fund which gives money to victims of

violent crime. (Bass & Davis 1988.) The right to skilled counselling should not

be“dependant on free or low cost therapy”(ibid.,)

Funding is indicated as being a factor in the reasons behind charging for this service.

It is not clear how significant this is, however, it does highlight the commercial

relationship between client and therapist that is associated with hierarchical structures.

5.8 MANDATORY REPORTING OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

The Dublin and Galway Rape Crisis centres have different policies in relation to the

proposed introduction o f mandatory reporting of child sexual violence to the

authorities. The Dublin centre have endorsed this decision The Galway centre have

decided that they will not, at least in the short term.

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This decision is a moral one and one which is difficult. I believe it would be helpful

to refer briefly here to the work of modem moral theory. The tradition of Western

moral philosophy has been masculinist. One of its most influential theorists in terms

of a theory of moral development has been Kohlberg. (1981) Kohlberg’s studies

concluded that women clustered at an inferior stage of moral development; few

women attained what he described as the highest stage of moral development.

Kohlberg argued : “that moral judgements unlike judgements ofpmdence or

aesthetics, tend to be universal, inclusive, consistent and grounded on objective,

impersonal or ideal grounds”(cited in Hekman,1995,p.28). Hekman argues that the

epistemology that informs this moral theory assumes a disembodied knower that

constitutes abstract, universal truth removed from the relationships and

connectedness o f everyday life that, in this view, distort moral judgements.(ibid.,) She

points to Gilligan’s revolutionary work which challenges modem moral theory, and

which has effectively deconstructed this moral knower and his abstract moral

knowledge The epistemology in her work replaces the disembodied self with the

relational self. The moral knowledge constituted by this relational self is connected, a

product of discourses that constitute forms of life, it is plural rather than singular.

That society possesses a hegemonic moral discourse seems indisputable; that this

discourse is the ‘justice ‘ voice is also clear. Gilligan’s intention is to criticise the

abstraction of the ‘justice’ voice and to argue for the validity and tmth in the

connected, hermeneutical, located moral voice of women.(ibib.,)

Following Kohlberg’s(1981) work in relation to moral theory it has been suggested

that as women move into ‘professional’ roles they, too, will adopt the[male] justice

perspective thereby erasing the clear gendered distinction between justice and

care[female] (Walker, 1984; Stocker 1987; Baumrind,1986 cited inHekman,1995).

I would suggest that the stance taken by the Dublin Rape Crisis centre reflects that

abstraction of the ‘justice’ voice referred to above

“Indeed w e ’ve taken the lead here [in relation to mandatory reporting]. We’ve been

ahead o f the health boards. We’ve been very clear on this. It is about stopping

offenders ” (Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre) Stopping the offenders is certainly

just but what of the victims? Hekman argues that Gilligan work succeeds in

articulating “women’s moral self representation, their beliefs, their self-

representations and their self-interpretations that women bring to their moral

dilemmas” (ibid.,p.24) The comments made by the Galway Rape Crisis Centre I

would suggest reflect that moral self representation of women.

“I can see both sides o f it[mandatory reporting], I think it cuts o ff a lot ofpeople. I

have worked with women in a continuing abuse situation. What would happen to

them? A number ofpeople w on’t come i f this is seen as part o f the process. I think

that the negative effects outweigh the possible gains. That could change, it depends

on what might be put in place to protect people. Just now I can’t see it

working”(Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre)

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"Her history, her underwear, i t ’s all up fo r grabs. It may be at the judges discretion,

but the barrister always somehow gets to it” (Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

"We give information but try not to sway the woman. Each has to try and gauge the

effect it will have on her own life. [It should not be] at the expense o f the womans

well being. I t ’s not an option fo r all women, so we don’t put forward our preference ”

(Worker, Galway Rape Crisis Centre).

However, a voluntary organisation working with victims of domestic and general

violence have now stated that they

"have a policy o f not referring victims to the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre

because o f the pressure a significant number o f those victims stated they felt from this

Centre to take their case to the courts ”. (Personal communication).

,..[W]e advocate [prosecution] but don’t push it’s something we can put to them

but they make up their own mind .(Volunteer, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

I would suggest that these comments imply a more partial stance than is

acknowledged by the centre. This may, in part, be explained by the Dublin Rape

Crisis Centre’s commitment to making changes within the judicial system. “We’ve

made enormous changes and it ’s taken hard work”(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis

Centre.) However, it does raise serious and disturbing questions in relation to the

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actual practice stated policy of the Centre to allow each woman to decide what is

right for her.

Both centres regard the procedures of the judicial system as being hostile towards

women who use it. Both share a belief that it is unlikely that women will be well

treated within that system and it would seem that both centres to differing degrees

allow the women to make their own decision in regard to taking a case to the courts.

I would like to raise here two different trends emerging in feminism in regard to the

law as a useful instrument.. The first is ‘institutional’ and allegedly endorsed mainly

by women active in institutions - political parties, parliament, trade unions, local

government - who consider the terrain of legal reforms as the privileged terrain of

struggle, and the law itself as an instrument of further emancipation and/or protection,

and which has to some degree been successful in bringing about legislative change.

The second contends that women’s freedom has little to do with (more) law on two

different, though connected grounds: political subjectivity, they say can neither be

reflected within the law nor be constructed through struggles aimed to change or gain

laws. Too much law can be shown to be detrimental rather than helpful in the

development o f women’s individual and collective autonomy (which here, regains the

meaning o f self production of norms), and reinforces the idea of women’s constant

secondariness and weakness. This refers to the notion that the oppression paradigm

has given way to the victim paradigm and to the construction of women as always and

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inevitably victims and in need of protection.(Pitch cited in Rafter &

Heidensohn,1995) In reality these two trends are not so clearly separated and cannot

be distinguished on the basis of working or not working within institutions. The

existence o f women’s institutions and practices that exhibit flexibility in their use of

laws and in their relationships with state institutions must be noted. So too, though

must the experiences o f women within what is a hostile and often punitive legal

system and the experiences of whose who attempt to change that system.

“[WJith the judicial system you wonder what relevance, what impact [o f changes we

have made]. Is it[judicial system] ever going to change. Objectively, you know there

have been changes but in there at the coal face it’s hard to see those changes. I t ’s the

thing that makes me most frustrated and the thing that most likely would make me

stop the work, coming up against this system ’’(Therapist, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre)

The value in separating the two trends within feminism in regard to the law is that it

allows them to become visible and in so doing shows the need for both intensified

reflection and action in this area.

Pitch argues that the feminist self-reflection has produced an interesting course of

action within the Italian legal system. This involved what is called the ‘practice of

entrustment’. In the context of criminal justice this came to mean the construction of

‘meaningful relationships’ between women clients, women lawyers and women

judges. The symbolic appearance of female subjectivity within criminal justice was

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thus entrusted to this practice, and to its consequences in court, rather than to projects

designed to change legal norms and procedures. In essence, this practice inverts the

hierarchy o f relevance at the level of legal theory at least. The symbolic potential of

criminal justice can be assessed not just at the point where the norms are produced but

where they are enacted. The appearance of an explicitly gendered subject on this

scene is potentially very innovative in that a sexual difference discourse opens up

avenues for rethinking both the way criminal law constructs its standard subject and

the way in which criminal justice concretely operates, differentiating between

formally equal subjects by taking account of differences only as what undermine

one’s freedom. It introduces a standard subject who is neither neutral nor abstract and

whose ‘freedom’ should be derived from, rather than being undermined by what, he

or she is.(ibid.,)

I want also to look to at a Rape Crisis centre whose actions reflected their belief that

the criminal justice system reflected the biases of the dominant culture and did not

offer a viable answer to sexual assault. In its opposition to providing ‘mere’ social

services they focused on public awareness and consciousness-raising and participated

in demonstrations. However, they augmented these conventional tactics with direct

confrontations with rapists and publicising descriptions of rapists. Confrontations

never took place without the consent of the woman who had been assaulted.

Description lists were developed to respond to the fact that many women did not want

to go to the police, yet wanted to protect and warn other women about dangerous

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men. The centre argued that confrontations and description lists were significant for

three reasons. F irst, they challenged dominant ideologies about women’s passivity

and weakness by confronting and exposing offenders. Women were empowered by

the actions and realised their existence was not defined by victimisation.(The women

who had been assaulted often participated in these confrontations) Secondly, these

tactics offered an alternative to the judicial system. Thirdly they constituted a tactical

innovation in the movement. They were new forms of women’s resistance^ This

course o f action is described by Ellen Scott Kaye in Journal of Social Problems,

1993)

Both these examples reflect the potential for and the potential of different responses

to the judicial system.

I would argue that here that the experiences of women recounted by the workers in

Dublin and Galway Rape Crisis Centres and documented extensively elsewhere in

relation to the practices of the judicial system and the view of workers/therapists in each

centre o f the judicial system together urgently call for both centres to re examine their

current policies o f participation (through the support they offer the women who engage

in the judicial process) in such practices and consider the potential for alternatives either

within or outside o f the judicial system.

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 6. CONCLUSIONS.

This study set out to investigate and to understand the perspectives of the women working in

each centre in relation to sexual violence and in relation to their work in this area and to

understand what they thought and felt shaped their work with the women who had been

sexually violated. As the research work continued it became clear that the structures within

which these women worked was of fundamental importance in their experiences of

themselves in their work.

The Galway collective structure extends its ideology of empowering women explicitly to the

way in which they work together as women. Its structure reflects feminism’s concern with

structures that are both democratic and enabling and stresses clearly the relationship between

the means and the ends. Recognising the existence of structural oppression, their

organisational style is part o f their radical critique and challenge of the existing social

paradigm. The comments of the women in the Galway centre are indicative of their belief in

themselves as being credible and effective in their work. Their sense of efficacy is

facilitated by the centre’s collective structure. The centre encourages equal participation; all

share in the decision making processes of the centre collective, and further there is an

equality in the kind o f work that each woman participates in. Each of its workers participate

in and are held responsible for all of the tasks involved in running the centre. Within the

structure there is both space and willingness to work through difficulties that arise and cause

conflict. Equal respect is asked for and given to each member of the collective. Within this

centre the women deploy their social knowledge in a way that is local, concrete and

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i
contextual. The women believe themselves to be competent and politically effective. Their

comments reflect a belief and a firm commitment to their work in the Centre as being

fundamentally political. This political belief is clearly feminist in its focus. Their analysis of

sexual violence is feminist. Their supportive/therapeutic stance is firmly based in a feminist

philosophical and political outlook which is clearly held in the both the principles and

practice o f the work within the centre. There is no charge for the service offered and there is

an awareness o f the practical and financial difficulties women live with and an attempt to

ensure equal access to the service for as many as possible.

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre is a traditional hierarchical management structure.

Originally a collective, it moved from that structure to the present hierarchical one in the

interests of efficiency and credibility. The comments of the women in relation to their

experience working within this management structure indicate less comfort with it than their

counterparts in the collective structure of the Galway Rape Crisis Centre. Their comments

highlight a reduction in their autonomy in terms of the overall decision making process and

also in relation to their individual work with clients. There is an increase in the potential for

and in the reality of conflict between the women who work in the centre and those who

manage it as the women working in the hierarchical structure adjust and defend their

interests and themselves in their work. Unlike the collectivist structure the hierarchical

structure did not seem to offer the women either a vehicle or the time to work through and

resolve conflicts.

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Another aspect o f the hierarchical structure of the Dublin Centre that became clear in this

research was its exclusionary potential, particularly in relation to its treatment of the

Volunteer Group attached to the Centre. Their work, is treated in the same way as women’s

unpaid work in the home, lauded and dismissed. The boundaries held as necessary for the

well-being of the therapists in the Dublin Centre seemed easily crossed in relation to the

work of the Volunteer Group. The changing needs of the members of this group were, I

would suggest, inadequately addressed.

The structure the Dublin Centre in essence reproduces and maintains relationships of

inequality. This seems deeply incongruent with the stated intention of the work of the centre

o f enabling survivors to re-establish a sense of their own power and responsibility.

Paradoxically whilst stating an intention to empower survivors of sexual violence the

Centre’s own workers are disempowered. Political equality is inconsistent with

working/social arrangements that deprive the individual of a chance to make decisions. The

view that those who work in hierarchies with decisions taken over their heads attach least

weight to political involvement was borne out in the ambivalence in the comments of the

women in the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre regarding the political aspect of their work. The

women in this centre see their work now as mainly therapeutic with a feminist political

commitment no longer being a necessary requirement of the work. While both these centres

offer the ‘same’ service in content the political form has changed. The Dublin Rape Crisis

Centre is now clearly less politically feminist in its focus than is the Galway Rape Crisis

Centre. It is not enough that therapy’s content be adjust feministically. Therapeutic trends

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and practices must be interrogated. The ideology and political structures underpinning

therapy must also change.

The therapeutic service offered by the Dublin Centre to the women carries a charge. There

are, it seems, differences of opinion within the centre as to the ethics of this decision.

However, it seems consistent with the trend within the centre away from the political in that

it reflects the move to a commercial relationship between client and therapist.

This research found that both centres choices of action were characterised by their

organisational structures. The Galway Rape Crisis Centre, again, in keeping with the base

value o f their work, select women on the basis of their politics, their beliefs and on their

personal qualities rather than on qualifications. Expertise and authority do not, for this

centre, reflect the ability to engage in this work. Paid work is shared reflecting a belief in

the need for and entitlement to paid work for all those who work in the centre.

In contrast, the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre have a selection policy of only recruiting those

with professional qualifications to their staff. Credibility and efficiency are again the

arguments used to justify this decision. The logic and the outcome of the Dublin centre’s

hierarchical traditional management structure’s decision to recruit in the traditional way,

experts and professionals, with less emphasis on the political dimension is to move the

centre away from its original identity and political orientation. What is now offered is a

therapeutic service, without its political underpinnings, thus narrowing the focus of the work

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to the therapeutic management of the victims of sexual violence in the aftermath of that

violence without the focus on the need to change the social arrangements in order to prevent

rape. This diminishment of the political nature of a centre is a recognised trend in other

Rape Crisis Centres and social movements where hierarchical structures have been

introduced. The recruitment of social welfare professionals in Dublin and in other centres

contributes to this trend because of the service nature of their experience and because they

often lack a critical stance towards the state.

This trend away from the political is also reflected in the comments of the women in the

Dublin centre’s tendency to médicalisé and pathologise the view of sexual violence rather

than to see it as criminal. Again, the comments of the women in the Galway Centre were

much clearer in their rejection of the médicalisation and pathologisation of sexual violence.

Whilst attending to supportive/therapeutic interventions the political project is at all times

held by the Galway Centre. This is an imperative in a feminist analysis of sexual violence in

that it holds the causes of sexual violence in their social reality.

Both centres were aware of the implications for their autonomy and work direction in

relation to reliance on and connection to state funding. The comments of the women in the

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre bear out the finding that rape crisis centres that adopted

hierarchical structures and rely on outside funding sources often modify or see a decline in

their original political motivation becoming more like social service agencies. The

comments of women in the Galway Rape Crisis centre by contrast indicated a willingness to

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forego funding if that funding were to place restrictions on its service or asked for a change

in its structures. This is the essence of empowerment; a willingness to engage radically in

order to change and belief in the ability to survive and succeed in that engagement.

The Galway Rape Crisis Centres engagement with the state is both radicalising and

participatory. Its view of state action maintains a critical stance. It provides both a service

and a political perspective addressing itself to changing the nature of relationships rather

than just managing the outcome o f those relationships. It is a concrete model o f women

multiplying the contexts in which they can control their lives.

In both centres the majority o f the therapeutic/support work being done is with the victims

of past sexual abuse rather than recent victims of adult rape. I would suggest that this is in

part due to the fact that training prioritises this work and also

because, as one therapist suggested, that there is in fact an unconscious desire on the part of

the therapists and workers to believe that victims recover more quickly from rape. In fact the

research indicates that they do not. The wish to believe that rape victims recover more

quickly may be rooted in the workers awareness of their own vulnerability in relation to

rape.

Both centres regard and have experienced the procedures of the judicial system as being

hostile towards women who use it. The centres share a belief that it is unlikely that

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women will be well treated within that system yet both centres participate through the

support o f the women in theses abusive legal procedures.

I would suggest that both centres need to look at their stance here. Lobbying for change

within the legal system again is political action focused on managing the aftermath of sexual

violence focusing as it does on the treatment of the victims/survivors within the legal

system. Is this the appropriate policy towards perpetrators and sexually violated women? In

what way does it change or address the normal standards of male sexual behaviour?

I find it difficult to conclude. My intention was to make vivid the experiences of the women

who participated in this research. My hope was that this would enable a move towards a

more complete understanding of the work of these and other Rape Crisis Centres. My

comments are offered in criticism and in support o f this work. I am reminded of the words of

Rohini Hensman on the lives o f women who in different ways all aspire to

“ do something beautiful. Some succeed against heavy odds, but others are

destroyed in the effort. They support they give to each other is crucial; without it

each one is defeated in her isolation ” (Rohini Hensman, 1990)

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APPENDIX I

QUESTIONS ASKED OF WORKERS/THERAPISTS/SUPPORTERS IN

DUBLIN AND C.AI WAY RAPE CRISIS CENTRES.

This list includes all questions that were common to the interviews. They were used

to facilitate consistency only . It does not include those questions which arose

following a particular response by an individual participant. Questions are divided

here into four categories;

• general questions addressed to all participants;

• questions regarding selection and training(in the case of the Dublin centre

addressed to individuals with responsibility for those areas)

• questions regarding educational work

• questions that were specific to Volunteer Group at the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre

addressed to volunteers and to the individual with responsibility for supervision of

that group.

QUESTIONS ADDRESSED TO ALL PARTICIPANTS

Why do you think you were selected for this work?

How do you see your work?

How did you get involved with the Galway/Dublin Rape Crisis Centre?

Why do you think the centre deals mainly with victims of child sexual abuse rather than

with recent victims o f rape and sexual abuse?

How do you view the centre ? What sort of place do you see it as?
How does that affect your work?

How would you describe your work here?

Is there a political dimension in the work o f counselling in the centre?

W h at, if any, interest do you take in the perpetrators of sexual abuse/violence?

What is your view o f the perpetrator?

Do you think rape is inevitable in our society?

What do you regard as the most important dimension of the therapeutic/support

relationship with the client/woman?

Does the process differ for you when dealing with victims of adult rape and with victims

o f child sexual abuse?

What is your most common feeling when working with a client/woman?

Do you feel more equipped to deal with adult victims rape or with victims of sexual

abuse?

How would you describe a woman’s view of herself when she first comes here?

How is this different when she leaves?

Is there a charge for your service to the client?

QUESTIONS ADDRESSED TO PARTICIPANTS IN RELATION TO

SELECTION PROCESS

How do you select?

From what pool?

Is there self-selection?

Can you describe the current selection process?

Are candidates female/male?

Is there an upper/lower age limit?

What, if any, is the relevance o f relationship status?

Is sexual orientation an issue?

Would the existence of sexual abuse in the candidate’s own background encourage/rule

out selection?

Are candidates required to have a background in counselling/therapy?

Do all o f the candidates selected complete training?

How does candidates view of sexual violence affect selection?

Do you speak about a political dimension to work during selection process?

If so, what do you look for in a candidate in this regard?

QUESTIONS ADDRESSED TO PARTICIPANTS IN RELATION TO TRAINING

Who does the training work for the centre?

What do you cover in training?

Can you outline the training process?

What kind of specific input do you have in relation to dealing with a woman

who has been recently raped?

Do you present a model in training - a process that trainees can follow?

During training are there particular/different inputs in relation to rape and to sexual

abuse?
During training do you offer or take a view in regard to perpetrators ?

Is there on-going training given by centre to staff ?

Does training look at therapists/supporters view of self in this process - limits and

boundaries o f their role, their expertise, their competence?

The centre operates as a collective. How does this affect training?

How has the movement from collective to hierarchical structure affected the work in

training?

Does training address gender issues?.

Is there a political input during training ?

QUESTIONS REGARDING EDUCATIONAL WORK UNDERTAKEN

BY CENTRE WITH OUTSIDE GROUPS/INDIVIDUALS

What is typically the content o f these courses?

Do you distinguish between adult rape and sexual abuse on these courses?

Do you talk about the offender?

What is the main focus o f the educational work undertaken by the centre?

What kind o f awareness do you think the public have of the services of the Centre?

Is there a political aspect to your educational work?

Are these courses in relation to working with sexual abuse or rape?

QUESTIONS SPECIFIC TO VOLUNTEER GROUP

DUBLIN RAPE CRISIS CENTRE

Questions addressed to Supervisor of Volunteer Group.

Do volunteers express a wish to work with clients as members of staff?

What is the length o f time that volunteers stay with centre?

What, if any, reasons are given for leaving?

Why do you think volunteers undertake this work?

What is the relationship between volunteers and staff?

How do you think volunteers see their work?

Do many of the volunteers move on to become members of staff?

Why does the centre not pay volunteers for their work?

Do you think it would make a difference to volunteers if they were paid?

Has the centre evaluated the experience or the effect of the work on the volunteers?

Questions addressed to members of Volunteer Group

What kind of connection do you have as volunteers with the Centre?

What kind o f effect to you think this work has on your life generally?

How many hours do you work ?

How important do you feel you are to the woman on the phone?

Do the women on the ‘phone ask about what the service will cost?

Would you prefer, if it were possible, to move from being voluntary to being paid staff?

If the centre could afford to pay you would you like to be paid?

What kind of support do you get from the Centre in your work?
APPENDIX 2.

DIFFICULTIES TN THE RESEARCH IN THE DUBLIN RAPE CRISIS CENTRE.

The Dublin Rape Crisis was approached by Dublin City University with a view to

developing a joint proposal for research covered by a grant from an undisclosed benefactor.

The Centre declined on the grounds of lack o f personnel but agreed to fully facilitate

research done by any student/researchers the University would nominate. As the nominated

researcher I approached the Centre and arranged the first of what was to be a series of

interviews. This interview was with their Head of Counselling and took place on

29th, November, 1994. At the end of that interview it was agreed that the Head of

Counselling would discuss with the therapists in the centre my meeting with each of them

for the purposes o f the research. I followed this up in my letter o f January, 8th, 1995

(attached) proposing to do this at the end of March/early April. In the meantime I

interviewed their Head of Training (two interviews - 1st, 8th February, 1995), Supervisor of

the Volunteer Group (two interviews - February/March, 1995) and, Education Officer, (4th

April, 1995).

In April, I made a number of unsuccessful attempts to contact the Head of Counselling with

a view to interviewing therapists. Eventually in June it was agreed that I could meet with the

Therapist Group. (See interview notes attached) It emerged from this meeting that a

combination of the pressure o f work and the holiday period was making it difficult to find

time for interviews with therapists. In view of this I suggested I would wait until after the
holiday period (See letters of 4th July and 7th September, 1995 attached). Having received

no response to my letter of 7th September I contacted the Head of Counselling by phone

and was informed that she was no longer in a position to deal with this issue and I was

referred to Grace O ’Malley who was now dealing with the matter on behalf of the centre.

She in turn informed me that it would not be possible for the centre to agree to my

interviewing any of the therapists; they could not justify the use of therapists’ time in this

way. I then found it necessary to ascertain what level of co-operation the Centre was

agreeable to. On my behalf the University contacted the Director of the Centre who said that

she was unaware o f the research project. It was agreed that I would contact the Director by

telephone and outline the nature of the research.

During this conversation it was agreed that the Centre would co-operate with me. It was also

agreed that I would submit my research proposal in writing. (See letter 3rd October, 1985).

Permission was finally given to interview one therapist. This therapist was named as Grace

O ’Malley. The interview took place on 10th November, 1995. At the end of this interview I

was asked to recall the circumstances of my initial contact with the Centre. This she

indicated was because she “realised there had been some confusion and the centre was

anxious to ensure that this would not happen again” (see attached summary)

It will be noted from the above summary that I had requested (again) a meeting with one of

the volunteers. She had indicated that the existing group was being disbanded and a new

group were being trained. This would take approximately one month more to complete.

She suggested that at that point I could submit my request to the Centre. I sent a written

request on 2nd April, 1996 ( letter attached). This letter was not replied to and a number of
attempts to make contact by phone were unsuccessful. Finally, I was informed that

M s.O’Malley was on holidays. At this point I asked to speak to the Director. I was dealt

with by the Director’s secretary who asked that I fax a copy of my letter of 2nd April.

Subsequent to this I received a phone call from Ms. O’Malley who indicated that in order to

consider my request it would be necessary for me to forward re-submit (yet again) my

research proposal and further to outline the areas I wished to discuss with the volunteers. On

receipt o f this my request would then be considered. I complied with these requirements (see

letter 6 th June, 1996 attached). On 25th June I received a letter from the Centre agreeing to

an interview with two volunteers. (See attached letter). This interview took place on 8th

July, 1996.

In July, 1996 I phoned the Director’s secretary indicating that my research was almost

complete and that it seemed appropriate that I might meet with the Centre’s Director in

relation to the research and by way of courtesy. In mid-August I was informed that the

Director was “very busy” and that I should go ahead and close my research.

SUMMARY OF POST INTERVIEW DISCUSSION WITH GRACE O’MALLEY

ON 10TH NOVEMBER. 1995.

Ms. O’Malley asked me to recall my first contact with the Centre. She said that she realised

that there had been some confusion and they were anxious to ensure that this would not
happen again. I explained that I could add nothing further than had been discussed between

Dr. Gibbon and Olive Braiden. She wondered if I had simply gotten a name from the

receptionist and if the first interview had begun in this way. I said I thought not - it might

have been through their research department but I could not recall at this stage.

I went on to say how disappointed I was not to talk to the therapists as this was important to

the research. She asked if I had been told I could speak to the therapists at the outset of the

research. I said not specifically. My understanding was that the Centre were willing to co­

operate with the research. It was not my understanding that this would exclude the therapists

or that there were conditions to the research co-operation. If this had been so I would have

taken it into account.

She asked for the focus of the research and I reminded here that I had sent this to Olive

Braiden - 1 added that if she had not already seen it then, simply put, I was interested in the

therapists’ perspective or indeed the institution’s. She enquired as to when the research

would be completed. I replied by explaining that it had been delayed by the difficulties with

interviewing therapists. I then went on to ask if I were prepared to further delay my research

whether there would be a possibility of seeing, say one therapist for one hour per month over

the next four/five months. In this way it might be possible to interview half of the therapists

at the centre. I added that I felt that what had marked previous interviews in the centre was

the open and reflective nature of the responses. Ms. O’Malley’s response was that this would

not be possible. I then wondered if there was another way - suggesting a questionnaire to be
completed by therapists. Ms.O’Malley responded by saying that I could submit it and the

therapists could look at it. It would depend too on how much time would be needed to

complete this.

I then reminded Ms.O’Malley of my requested to meet with one of the volunteers from the

Volunteer Group in the Centre. I had made this a month ago to Ms.O’Malley. She said that

this was not possible. When I asked why she replied that a new group was being trained. I

asked how many Volunteers to made up the old group. She replied twenty and I asked if I

could see one of them. She said no .. that there had begun to leave. I then asked how long it

would take to get the new group trained. She said a month.... I suggested that I wait a month

and interview one o f the new group. She said that I could at that point submit that request

and it would be considered then.

I came back to the possibility o f finding a way around the difficulty with interviewing

therapists. I suggested the difficulties the centre had with allocation of therapists’ time and

the therapists’ wish that the boundary lines between their personal world and the centre work

be clearly kept, could be overcome if those who were in private practice were paid for a

clinical hour. M s.O’Malley’s response was that as far as she was away the therapists at the

centre were not in private practice.

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