Safe haven enters fourth decade

Mayor Annette Main (right), Sandra Terewi (left), chair of the agency's governance board; board member Sue McBride; and Miriam van Dingenen, the agency's manager and clinical team leader, PHOTO/STUART MUNRO

One of Wanganui's more important social agencies quietly celebrated its 30th anniversary yesterday with a first look through what will become its new home next month.

The centre will move into the ground floor of 236 Victoria Ave (beneath the Jigsaw offices) on October 21.

It has been operating out of a property in Wanganui East since last year and before that was in Community House in the central city.

Whanganui Safe and Free was formed on September 23, 1982 as the Wanganui Sexual Abuse Centre, aimed at providing counselling and assistance to victims of sexual assault, including men, women and children.

From being a first point of contact for victims, the agency also acted as a referral centre to other support agencies in the city, as well as providing support through police, medical or legal proceedings.

Miriam van Dingenen, agency manager and clinical team leader, said in those 30 years the only changes made to its original charter document was adopting an "H" in the spelling of Whanganui and using the word "survivor" rather than "victim".

Ms van Dingenen said many Wanganui people did not understand the effects of this sort of abuse.

"We're dealing with males and females, children and adults. And generally 90 per cent of the sexual offending is done by people who are known to the person being offended against," she said.

She said statistically one in four women up to the age of 16 are likely to be offended against and very conservatively one in 10 men.

"Break that down into our population [in Wanganui] of 43,000 and you can do the math. Through the course of a lifetime we're talking about thousand of people being affected," Ms van Dingenen said.

She said importantly was the fact more people had become less tolerant to this type of offending so more was being heard about it.

Along with Ms van Dingenen, the centre has three other front-line staff including an arts therapist, a clinical psychologist and a psychotherapist. There is also a programme facilitator, who also works as a family support worker, and an administration person.

She said it was not always easy for a person to open up about the effects of sexual abuse.

But she said everyone in the agency held tremendous respect for that person's courage to have survived their experience and the steps they were taking to heal that trauma.