A year after the launch of Jersey Action Against Rape, Krysta Eaves speaks to the charitys chairwoman Sara McIntosh
‘I CAN still remember very, very clearly the night she told me. Our lives, all our lives, just changed.
‘It became a matter of just getting through every day. Sleepless nights and pacing the house.’
Sara McIntosh says she is still deeply affected by the moment her daughter Cassidy told her she had been raped by a man she knew following a night out with friends in 2012. Her alleged attacker was never charged.
‘Looking back now it was like this strange fug had descended. It was a deeply traumatic time that lasted a long time. Years.
‘I can remember in the early days feeling absolutely battered by it. That is me. I was not even the victim.
‘It’s three-and-a-half years since it happened. I’m beginning to feel normal again. I can recognise that I’m more of the person I used to be. I can’t speak for Cass.’
Following her ordeal, Cassidy, now 28, looked to see what support was available in the Island.
‘There was nowhere in Jersey that could offer her the expert help and advice that she needed and she was looking for,’ says Sara, who lives in Grouville, with husband Alick.
‘Not everyone looks for it straight away and some people don’t want anything but there was nothing here. She felt lonely. She felt very, very alone and that she had no-one to turn to.’
It was this lack of support that led Cassidy to use money from her out-of-court settlement paid by her alleged attacker to establish the charity, which offers counselling and a confidential helpline to those that have been raped or sexually assaulted, launching Sara into a role that she never expected she would be in.
‘It is not anything that I would have wished for at all to be in this position,’ she says.
‘But we do the best we can. I am just – we all are as a family – extraordinarily proud of Cass and the bravery that she has shown, I’m just honoured and determined to do her justice and do the best we can for JAAR.’
But with Jersey’s conservative society was it difficult to get a charity that deals with sexual assaults accepted?
‘It has not been like that at all,’ says Sara, who moved to Jersey in 2007. ‘Everyone seems ready to face the situation. There is a global force to stand up and speak out now because silence only protects the perpetrators.
‘We’ve proved in the first year that it was lacking in Jersey. We started off with small steps but the support that we’ve received and the way that we were picked up by Jersey society is amazing.
‘Our volunteers have helped drive it and have stuck with us. In the early days it was just sheer determination and learning on the hoof.’
It’s been a busy year for the charity, which now has a team of 15 counsellors who provide free counselling to victims of sex crimes, along with 60 volunteers and manager Karen Gibb.
‘In the 12 months since we have been going we have been able to provide 570 hours of free counselling,’ Sara says. ‘Our counsellors have training in specific areas of sexual assault, rape and trauma. We have experts from the UK come in to train them. We’ve had 55 clients and some are still active.’
Sara is also particularly proud of the charity’s confidential helpline, which has taken around 200 calls about historic and recent incidents, from both men and women.
But helping victims is only one part of what the JAAR was set up to do.
‘The other aim of JAAR is to raise awareness that rapes and sexual assaults do happen in our community and to try to remove the stigma and the myth that surrounds rape so that it is not the victim that is blamed,’ Sara says.
‘That is done by JAAR being out and about in the community and through fundraising.’
And with debates constantly being played out in the media about the definition of rape, Sara says it’s a part of the law that needs to be looked into.
‘What is consent? The law around consent and understanding consent is really important. We need to educate everybody.
‘The absence of “no” is not consent. Silence is not consent.
‘A short skirt does not mean that “She was asking for it”. People can change their minds – they might go back to somebody’s flat and have a kiss and a cuddle but that does not mean they have not got the right to change their mind.
‘We do the best we can. I am just – we all are as a family – extraordinarily proud of Cass and the bravery that she has shown, I’m just honoured and determined to do her justice and do the best we can for JAAR’
‘If someone passes out they cannot give consent.’
Another huge barrier to overcome is changing the perception that the ‘normal’ thing a victim would do is to try to escape her attacker.
‘A normal response to a sex threat is to freeze and flop,’ Sara says. ‘That’s the instinct reaction because you go into survival mode and think: “If I don’t move they won’t hurt me”.
‘But three days later, when your consciousness has taken control you start to think: “Why have I not fought? Why did I do that?
‘That is when the guilt, shame, remorse, horror and self-disgust kicks in. Victims start to think: “I did not do what I always said I would do. I always said I was going to fight.”
‘Cass said she could not understand why she had not fought back and why she had not done all she could have to repel that man. She thought: “It must be my fault”.
‘We want to get the message out to anybody that is a victim that it is not their fault. The perpetrator is absolutely responsible.’
The charity also wants to change the perception of what it means to be a rape victim.
Sara says: ‘There is that stigma that we have to change of: “I’m a rape victim”. People like Cass and other people who waive their anonymity show that it can happen to anybody and it is not something to be ashamed about. It can happen any time at any age. It is not about sex, it’s about power and control.’
The fact that the victim tends to know their attacker also prevents many from coming forward, Sara says.
‘About 90 per cent of rape and sexual assaults are carried out by people who are known to the victim.
‘So few are reported. Say, for example, it is your step-father then the damage it could cause within a family is so phenomenal that victims try to live with it. Who can they talk to?
‘That is why JAAR is so important.’
Sara is full of nothing but praise for the States police and says it was due to their encouragement that Cassidy pressed forward with the charity.
‘The police are really forward thinking in what they want to do to increase the number of convictions and to help victims,’ she adds.
Looking to the future, the charity has plans to launch a campaign during sexual awareness month in April and it is also planning a gala ball in March.
But what does Sara think has been the charity’s highlight in the past 12 months? She thinks for a moment before describing when the rugby team wore a special strip with the charity’s colours in a match against the Bedford Blues in October. The event raised £10,457.41 for the charity.
‘We had that wonderful day in October,’ she smiles. ‘It was an extraordinary moment – that male bastion of the rugby club linking itself to JAAR and making that very, very strong statement. It was phenomenal.’
JAAR’s helpline is 482800 and it also has an email address, help@jaar.je. For more information visit the website, jaar.je.
