Sexualized Violence
Our Objectives at the Specialist Counseling Center for Sexualized Violence
- Sexual abuse and other forms of sexualized violence usually have a severe impact on survivors. We want to prevent additional stress by providing easily accessible, professional and individual support for survivors and their friends and families. Our aim is to help survivors process the experience and help them recover from it as quickly and sustainably as possible. In that way, we want to reduce the risk of trauma.realted disorders.
- We offer client-centered and professional help for survivors of sexualized violence. Our staff also includes professionals who are trained in recovery from trauma. They can inform survivors, their friends and family as well as other professionals on trauma and its impact and consequences.
- At our specialist counseling center we also provide victim support services throughout criminal proceedings. In that way we hope to encourage more survivors to report their experience to the police.
- Our objective is also to increase the visibility and strenghten existing support structures as well as improve networking amongst them. This will improve the access to them for survivors, their friends and families as well as professionals and multipliers. Naming structural violence, standing up for survivors‘ needs and acting in solidarity with them also raises public awareness on sexualized violence.
We define sexualized violence as any act that forces another person into sexual activities. This includes: rape, sexual coercion, sexual harassment and sexual abuse. Organized sexualized abuse and ritual abuse are other types of sexualized violence. They are characterized by manipulation, coercion, persuasion, psychological and physical violence.
We use the term sexualized violence as the motive for these actions is not sexuality, but power. The abusers instrumentalize sexuality in order to humiliate and oppress the other person with the ultimate goal of experiencing power.