LifeLine deals with approximately 100 trauma cases each month. A team of specially-trained counsellors deals with the after-effects of trauma in telephone or, more often, face-to-face sessions.
A traumatic event affects more than the victim; his or her family, neighbours, friends and colleagues also experience the shock waves of violence and may well need help in the healing process. Paramedics and policemen dealing with the results of violence, or people reading about or watching television coverage of horrific events, are all experiencing trauma to some degree, and often need counselling.
Trauma debriefing became a separate service officially five years ago, when LifeLine realised that in our violent society more and more callers were impelled to ask for help because they had experienced a traumatic event: a hijacking, armed robbery, a rape, shooting incident, abduction or the murder of a friend or family member.
People come to LifeLine for trauma debriefing either on their own or with their families, including small children, and initially each person is counselled separately, although in subsequent sessions the family may opt for joint debriefing.
In addition, corporates that have trauma debriefing contracts with LifeLine - and quite a number of companies do, many of them as part of an Employee Assistance Programme - send staff members for counselling after they have experienced traumatic events: a hijacking on the way home from work, for example, or an armed robbery at company premises. LifeLine has also been called out after bank robberies to counsel staff, and were part of the team dealing with shocked soccer fans after the Ellis Park disaster in April 2001, when a stampede left 43 people dead.
The rape counselling service was spun off from the general counselling service 12 years ago, when the rate of calls connected with rape escalated and there was only one other telephone service in Johannesburg offering help.
A rape survivor usually phones the general number first, and when it is clear that a rape - recent or past - is the problem, the counsellor takes the caller's telephone number and assures her that a member of the rape team will contact her for an appointment, for either telephone or face-to-face counselling.
There is no difference between being raped and being pushed down a flight of cement steps except that the wounds also bleed inside.
There is no difference between being raped and being run over by a truck except that afterwards men ask you if you enjoyed it.
There is no difference between being raped and being bit on the ankle by a rattlesnake except that people ask if your skirt was short and why you were out alone anyway
There is no difference between being raped and going head first through a windshield except that afterward you are afraid not of cars but half the human race
The rapist is your boyfriends brother. He sits beside you in the movies eating popcorn. Rape fattens on the fantasies of the normal male like a maggot in garbage
Fear of rape is a cold wind blowing all of the time on a woman's hunched back. Never to stroll alone on a sand road through pinewoods, never to climb a trail across a bald mountain without that aluminium in the mouth when I see a man climbing toward me.
Never to open the door to a knock without that razor just grazing the throat. The fear of the dark side of hedges, the back seat of a car, the empty house rattling keys like a snake's warning. The fear of the smiling man in whose pocket is a knife. The fear of the serious man in whose fist is locked hatred.
All it takes to cast a rapist is to be able to see your body as a jackhammer, as a blowtorch, as adding-machine-gun. All it takes is hating that body your own, your self, your muscle that softens to flab.
All it takes is to push what you hate, what you fear onto the soft alien flesh. To bucket out invincible as a tank armoured with threads without senses to possess and punish in one act, to rip up leisure, to murder those who dare live in the leafy flesh open to love.
