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Support groups

Lisa Vetten, manager of the Gender Unit at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in South Africa, says: 'Not all rape survivors react in the same way, so group support can be very helpful for some women, it may not necessarily be helpful for all women.

'I think recovering from something like a rape is a process, so something like this may not necessarily be appropriate in the immediate aftermath for some women; it may be something that’s more suitable further down the line but they can certainly play a role I think in firstly breaking that sense of isolation, that it’s only happened to you or that it happened to you because of something you did. I think we need to discover how often it happens to so many other women and start to see that it’s not about what you did wrong, it’s about how some men behave.’

Charlene Smith, a journalist and sexual assault survivor, spends much of her time helping the survivor’s of sexual assault, and their families, and organises regular ‘survivor lunches’ - gatherings for survivors and their families to talk about what has happened and offer each other support. It is at one of these lunches that Cathy first met Glory and her twin daughters. Over the next few years, Cathy and Glory offer each other mutual support in their attempts to get justice for those they love; in Cathy’s case her mother and in Glory’s case, her twin daughters.