Support for survivors   

We offer free, confidential, mana-enhancing support and recovery services for Takatāpui and Rainbow survivors of sexual harm. This includes fully funded therapeutic support for survivors, partners and whānau, where our identities are treated as the taonga they are, and sexual harm is understood within our community contexts.

In-person support is available from our therapists in Hamilton, Taupō, Waikato, Tauranga, Rotorua, Napier, Wellington, Dunedin, Horowhenua, Palmerston North and Christchurch. If receiving therapy online is a better fit for you, let us know and we can advocate for this with ACC.

Confidential and private

Many Takatāpui and Rainbow survivors worry about confidentiality. People tell us they are worried they will lose their communities if the person who harmed them has social power, or they do not want to contribute to negative ideas about Takatāpui and Rainbow people.

Coming to our service is not reporting to the police, or anyone else. There is no requirement that you ever go to the police if you don’t want to. Within our organisation, only our intake team, Bex Fraser and Swathi RR, will know you are accessing the service, and they will not ask you any questions about who harmed you. This service is separate from our other functions, and your privacy will be respected. You will be able to decide what you tell your therapist.

What do I have to prove?

You don’t need to ‘prove’ anything. We know that sometimes trauma means it’s hard to remember sexual harm accurately, especially if drugs and alcohol are involved or it was a long time ago. Sexual harm is when someone has a sexual experience they don’t want, and our service is open to you whether you experienced sexual harm yesterday, or fifty years ago. We know sometimes it takes a long time to ask for help.

Our service is available for Takatāpui and Rainbow survivors, including visitors to Aotearoa, who have experienced sexual harm. We may also be able to help if you’re a New Zealand resident and have experienced sexual violence while traveling overseas.

What about discrimination?

Many of our therapists are from our communities, and all have been trained specifically to support Takatāpui and Rainbow survivors, including the unique ways in which sexual harm happens in our communities.

This is the first service in Aotearoa specifically for Takatāpui and Rainbow survivors of sexual harm. We are a survivor-led organisation, and we have developed this service after many years of supporting survivors to access support and make complaints about disrespectful services. We have also carried out community research into the needs of survivors in our communities since 2016.

Training family and sexual violence services to be Rainbow Safe is a core part of our mahi. We want this service to succeed and we offer ongoing peer support and professional development for our therapists, including in relation to cultural safety, neurodivergence, and our many and wonderful identities. Tell us what you need, and we will do our very best to make it happen.

Why would therapy help?

Sexual harm affects everyone differently. Accessing support to recover might include help with managing physical and mental health impacts, or developing interpersonal skills that may have been disrupted by the sexual harm.

It’s very common for people who sexually harm to say things to make the survivor feel like it was their fault, that what happened isn’t really sexual harm, or that if they try and tell anyone, no one will believe them and everyone will blame them. This means many survivors experience shame, and that layers over the hurt of being treated with such disrespect. Sexual harm is shocking, confusing and can make it hard to trust other people, especially if you think it might happen again.

Takatāpui and Rainbow survivors might be worried about judgments about who they are if they need to come out to talk about harm, or talk about where sexual harm happened.

Survivors can feel fear, or remember parts of the sexual harm as flashbacks, or notice some smells or places remind them of the harm. They might have anxiety and trouble sleeping, or struggle to get out of bed. Some survivors don’t want to have sex at all after sexual harm; others want to have lots of sex, so they can feel in control again.  It can be hard living with these kinds of feelings, which often lead to behaviour to try and numb the pain, through drinking, drug-taking or self-harm.

All of these reactions and more make sense when recovering from sexual harm. The good news is, therapy and other kinds of culturally effective support can really help. You don’t have to do this alone.

To heal, you need to be able to calm your nervous system, and be safe with the people around you. Therapy can help you make sense of your experiences, gain skills in managing the feelings that come up, and become better at managing anger, trust and intimacy. There’s lots of evidence that recovery after sexual harm is possible with mana-enhancing support that treats survivors with respect for all of who they are.