Essex charity champ awarded MBE for helping rape victims

By revans

A QUARTER of a century after starting her groundbreaking charity, this community stalwart says there's still as much to be done about the problem of sexual violence against women as ever.

Sheila started the South Essex Rape and Incest Crisis Centre (SERICC) in 1984, and this year was awarded an MBE for all the fantastic help she has given thousands of local women during her dedicated tenure.

For the last 25 years Sheila and her ever-growing team have been providing confidential, specialist support and advice for women and girls who live in Brentwood, Billericay and Wickford.

However, Sheila is far too busy for bathing in her own glory – in fact, when she spoke to the Gazette she had just returned from a trip to New York, representing the Government at the United Nations, and could not even remember when she had heard the news of her Royal recognition.

Instead of glory, Sheila says she is still constantly motivated by the lack of change she has seen in the treatment of sexual violence since she began her quest.

“25 years on and consistently the same things happen to women and girls and that's our motivation,” she said.

“We still have women who have experienced sexual assault who are not believed, who get a negative response from families, the criminal justice system and others.

“People still blame women for their own assault, perpetrators get sentences that are not adequate at all. That's the motivation – to challenge that.”

Currently the charity – which is based in Grays, but caters for women all over south Essex – has a three month waiting list for their one-on-one counselling service.

“We are working at top capacity,” she said. The need is greater than the service we can provide.”

The charity began in 1981 when what was then a women's group went on a late-night trip to the cinema.

The group became concerned about a rowdy group of males that evening and when discussing it later, they all said they felt that, had something awful happened, they would have been blamed in some way by society.

Shockingly, they also discovered that at least seven of their small number had experienced some form of sexual violence in their lifetime, from flashing to assault.

Sheila said she was astounded: “We had all known each other for a long time, and yet we didn't know these things.”

They then visited a rape crisis centre in London together and noticed there was no such service in their own home towns and decided something needed to be done.

“It was just an awareness raising issue,” said Sheila.

“There may have been issues women had and there was nowhere for them to discuss them.

“Within weeks of our opening we were inundated with phone calls.”

If you would like to speak to someone at SERICC, you can call 01375 380609 in absolute confidence between 10am and 12pm on Wednesdays, 12pm and 4pm on Thursdays and 10am and 1pm on Saturdays. There is an answerphone giving information at all other times.