Abuse hotline opens Thursday 

Volunteers promise information and support 

Working out of living rooms with an anonymous $1,000 donation, about 25 volunteers are three days away from launching Waterloo Region's first support service for rape victims in 11 years.  

While they train and spread the word about the Kitchener-Waterloo Sexual Assault Centre's humble beginning, an elaborate proposal to the provincial government remains on hold.  

"All we need to be of service is a phone line," Connie Gallotti, one of the volunteer group's key organizers, said.  

Elly Danica, an incest survivor who wrote a harrowing book about her experiences, will kickstart the centre with a reading at the Kitchener Public Library.  

Calls to the line, which will open at 741-8633 immediately afterward, will be fielded by an answering service and passed on to volunteers with pagers. Organizers estimate it will take three to four minutes for callers to be contacted.  

The region has been without such a service since the three-year-old rape distress crisis line ran out of money and closed in 1978, soon after regional council turned down a $5,000 grant request.  

But counsellors, police and other professionals working in the field of sexual assault say it hasn't been for lack of need. This area is the largest in Ontario without a centre.  

The region's district health council singled out the service gap more than 18 months ago when it proposed a government-funded centre at St. Mary's Hospital in Kitchener and Cambridge Memorial Hospital.  

It was to be staffed by doctors, nurses and a social worker providing a wide range of medical, psychological and support services. It would have cost about $183,000 to set up and $166,000 a year to run.  

But Cathy Brothers, a social worker at St. Mary's who prepared the proposal, said the plan is indefinitely delayed while the province reviews models for such centres and the role its various ministries should play.  

"It's frustrating that our centre isn't getting up and going at the same time as theirs," she said. "They're probably the kind of group we'd want to work with."  

Although volunteers, many of them victims, are the heart of the new K-W centre, they got a push and guidance from the Guelph Sexual Assault Centre. Already busy in Wellington County, it couldn't handle a growing number of calls from this area. K.Linda Kivi, a coordinator with the Guelph centre, said about 10 per cent or more than 350 calls it took in the first six months or year were from women in the Twin Cities and Cambridge. 

"Considering we haven't even advertised the number it's really just the tip of the iceberg," she said. 

Waterloo regional police had laid 93 charges for sexual crimes by the end of May this year, and expect to reach last year's record high of 278.  

But the scope of the problem may be clearer at women's shelters and other community agencies. More than 50 per cent of women who use Anselma House, a 20-bed facility for battered women and children in Kitchener, are victims of incest. Most haven't had any professional help.  

And at Kitchener's Marillac Place, a nine-bed shelter for homeless women, the estimate runs as high as 80 per cent. Sexual abuse is at the root of drug and alcohol problems, low self-esteem and other troubles that Iand women there.  

"It just depletes people," director Lyn McNiffe said. "They come in with high, hard walls, but there is an emotional side buried."  

Community Justice Initiatives runs up to 20 self-help groups at a time for sexual assault victims, offenders and their families, but most deal with incest, as is the case with other agencies. 

Frustrated by gaps in the system they discovered firsthand, volunteers at the K-W centre will provide a continuum of services, provided donations get them through the first year, after which provincial grants will be available.  

In addition to crisis support by telephone, including advice to callers if they want to report an assault to police, they will:  

• Accompany the victim and her family to hospital medical examination
• Provide ongoing one-on-one support
• Accompany the victim to court if charges are laid 
• Promote public education
• Set up a referral service to therapists and counsellors