Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre

For nearly 40 years, Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre has offered free specialist sexual violence support services to women and girls across Cambridgeshire.

Thanks to the support of our funders and supporters, we are able to provide vital emotional, therapeutic and advocacy support for survivors of sexual violence.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, our support has become more life-saving than life-changing. Need and demand for our services is higher than we have ever seen and the intensity of support needed has increased dramatically.

Consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are having a particularly significant impact on our counselling service and the women and girls we support now and for a long time to come. This doesn't stop now lockdown has ended or post vaccine.

Demand for our counselling service has increased by 53% since the pandemic began and continues to increase. 

We need your support to help us reach more women and girls impacted by sexual violence, many of whom have been unable to access support due to the pandemic.

We can’t explain how important your support is for local women and girls as well as they can themselves. Here are a few words from one women who has received support from our counselling service:

“Having had counselling before I wasn’t sure for a long time if it was something I wanted, as I didn’t previously find it beneficial. However, I really appreciated my counselling with [CRCC] and I am glad I asked for help because I talked about things I needed to talk about…that I didn’t necessarily realise I needed to address.

But it’s had a profoundly positive effect on me as a person. I always felt believed by the members of the service and I can’t put into words what that meant to me in such a dark period.”