Merseyside’s rape crisis service (RASA) was set up 40 years ago in response to the rape and murder of Diane Sindall in August 1986 in Birkenhead.
The twenty-one year old was murdered by the ‘Beast of Birkenhead’, a case which hit the headlines again last year after Peter Sullivan, who was imprisoned for the murder in 1987, was found to have been wrongly convicted.
Diane’s attacker has not been found, and police have recently issued fresh appeals in the hope of finding her killer.
Prior to her death forty years ago, Birkenhead had been plagued with numerous reports of women being raped. Lorraine Wood, CEO of RASA said: “there was already a lot of fear in Birkenhead and women were being told not to go out at night alone.”
After Diane was killed, local women rallied around and began to take action, organising a Reclaim the Night march and starting the process of setting up a support service to help women affected by sexual assault. Lorraine explains; “Three women sat around their kitchen table and then it turned into a helpline and then it became RASA.”
The service, originally known as the Wirral Rape Crisis Counselling Service (WRCCS) registered as a charity in September 1987 with the charitable aim: ‘To relieve the mental and physical distress of women and girls who have suffered rape or sexual assault.’
Over the years RASA has expanded its services to include a children’s service and a service for male survivors and has helped thousands of people recover from sexual trauma.
As with many services reliant on government and other funding streams, RASA has gone through some unstable times and last year the organisation hit a funding crisis after a budget deficit of £100,000 threatened to shut down some of their services.
This crisis led to an urgent public appeal in January, which garnered a huge amount of support from the community, Wood said: “the response from the public was unbelievable.”
Merseyside residents managed to raise the £100,000 target, with Lorraine saying: “we’ve never raised anything near that amount of money before, I don’t know if any rape crisis centre has.”
This year RASA received the necessary government funding to run the service at capacity for the next two years, giving the charity some security for now.
However, since then, the government has announced it is abolishing the Police and Crime Commissioner role (PCC) which commissions services like RASA through money from the Ministry of Justice, “we don’t know what that’s going to looks like, from 2028 all that money will go to the mayor,” said Lorraine.
However, this year, the organisation will reflect on its history and celebrate its successes with several events and activities planned, including a fundraising charity ball on the 12th of September – tickets for the charity ball are on sale here
RASA are also currently on the lookout for business sponsorship to support the charity ball, please contact 0151 5581801 if you think you can help.
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