I’m ready to discuss my experience of rape. Someone needs to.

I am not ready to put my name on this article. But I’m ready to sit down and talk about rape, and more specifically, my experience of rape at university, because somebody needs to. Somebody needs to do more than wave around #wegetconsent banners.

It’s bad enough going through this experience in itself, but it’s made worse when the people who promise to help you, who promise they are part of a supportive university community who put student’s welfare first, and promise you won’t be left on your own, simply push you from pillar to post.

Rape is a societal issue. It’s an issue concerning violence and power over another person – whether that be rooted in gender inequality, racial inequality, sexual inequality or simply to do with the fact that people in society think it’s okay to hurt each other. However this is particularly nuanced and exemplified in universities. How otherwise are one in ten female students being raped at university? And how, with this being the case, is this something that immediate action is not being taken on?

Somebody needs to do more than wave around #wegetconsent banners

This is not to accuse Warwick of not caring at all. Every single member of staff who has been involved in my case has been caring and sensitive, wanting what’s best for me – I’ve never once been forced to go to the police in order to look after the welfare of others, because it was recognised that recovery from something that traumatic is about the individual. Survivors need to look after themselves first, and the university helped me do this – taking time off from my studies, for example, has not been the slightest issue. I get emails from my personal tutor regularly asking how I’m doing.

The problem is that they simply don’t know what to do; signposting at university has turned out to be utterly useless. The first place I got signposted was my GP and the university welfare officer; the GP got me counselling at the university counselling service. Great. A 3 month wait and that should be fine, right? The welfare officer responded to my message about support for rape survivors at the university saying, ‘hey no sorry we don’t have anything like that!’ My cry for help wasn’t acknowledged. There was no inkling that there might be a demand for this.

The university counsellor sat and listened to me for all but fifteen minutes before stopping me and apologising – ‘this service is for more general issues, I’m afraid. You’re going to have to go to a rape counsellor. We don’t have any of those here so you’ll have to go into Coventry.’ How many times have they had to say that? To one in ten students?  I just wanted someone to listen to me, not cut me off.

 I just wanted someone to listen to me, not cut me off

The problem with crisis centres and rape counselling services is that they are very location specific. I waited another year to get counselling in Coventry because of the waiting list and then struggled to utilise it properly because of being a university student – I live in two places, and the way that their counselling works is that it doesn’t accommodate for breaks. Which brings me back to the university; here, there is such a great opportunity to offer term time support. Ten week counselling sessions, weekly support groups, just anything that could offer a bit of help and can accommodate to your situation.

But this idea has been rejected. While I was waiting for CRASAC, I sent an email to the incoming president of the SU and spoke about my experience with the outgoing welfare officer. I said the university would really benefit from something specific to rape that was more than just a campaign – somewhere for survivors to go. The email I got back was kinder than the message from the welfare officer, however it simply stated that they would look into it and that their personal belief was that support groups didn’t work; they had tried them at other universities, and it was indicated that students didn’t use them or they weren’t viable within the university budget. If this is the case, then fair enough. But what have they looked into? Has anything come up in the last year other than words on a rubber band? I believe more than anyone that this issue needs to be tackled from the earliest intervention – we do need to talk more about sexual consent, but for some of us it’s too late to talk about that.

The university isn’t going to fix us. I’m not asking for it to do that, but I am asking for the means by which I can help myself recover. Perhaps the solution is to stop putting your student body under the umbrella term of general issues and start focusing on specifics. Because I can honestly tell you, rape or not, nobody’s ‘issue’ is general, and people certainly don’t deserve to be treated like they are just another victim that can be shunted off to the next person that will take them.