Sexual assault is any sexual act that you haven’t consented to or is forced upon you. This can include groping, forced kissing, upskirting, sexual comments and sexual bribery (the promise of something you need in return for a sexual act).

Rape is sex without consent. Whether you were drunk, asleep, or under the influence of alcohol or drugs, if you haven’t consented to sex, then you may have been raped. This is regardless of whether it is with your long-term partner, spouse or a one-off encounter.

No. Many people come to us to understand what happened to them a long time ago.

Just because the incident isn’t recent, doesn’t make it any less damaging.

No. Freezing, or being unable to react is a very common response to intense trauma. Your body shuts down as a way of protecting you, it does not mean you consented to what happened.

To find out more about rape myths and understanding consent, visit our rape myths page.

These are all very normal reactions to intense trauma. We have some self-help resources on our website that can help you deal with some of the issues you are facing. There are also lots of useful resources on The Survivors Trust resources website.

Medical appointments that require a physical examination can be particularlty hard for survivors of sexual abuse. 

You can download and carry our Healthcare Card to let your healthcare professional know how best to support you. You can also call up beforehand and ask for the procedure to be explained to you, or visit the practice and have them show you the equipment they will use.

For more information and tips to help you cope with intimate examinations, Visit our coping with medical appointments page 

The Survivors Trust website lists national rape and sexual abuse support services. Please check here for services in your area.

You can make a donation to support our vital work, we are grateful for all donations, however big or small.

You can also sign up to take part in one of our events, or join our team of volunteers. View our current volunteer opportunities here, and scroll to the bottom to see our FAQs about taking part in an event for RASASC.

If you have been a client of RASASC and you wish to volunteer for us, please ensure you read our former client volunteer policy beforehand.

We’re sorry If the service you have received from us has not been to our expected standard. 

Please contact us on admin@rasasc-guildford.org, or call 01483 568000 (Monday to Friday 9am-4.30pm) to let us know and we will do our best to resolve any issues for you.

If after this you feel your issue hasn’t been resolved, you can view our complaints policy here.

You can access the information on our website in different languges by changing the dropdown option in the top bar underneath the main menu. The website is available to view in Romanian, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish and Ukrainian.

There is also an accessibility button on the top right of the website. This will give a series of options for changing how information on the website is presented such as dyslexia-friendly fonts, larger text, hiding images and changing the colour and saturation to assist those with visual impairments.

If you have additional accesibility or language needs, please let us know by contacting us on: admin@rasasc-guildford.org

Our helpline and live chat are listening services for survivors of rape or sexual abuse, and those supporting a survivor. Our specially trained advisors can also signpost callers to other, suitable services.

Our counselling service offers three options, adult counselling, youth counselling (age 13-19) and family support. Counselling gives you the opportunity to talk to someone about what you have experienced and how it has affected you. Counselling aims to give you coping mechanisms to help you come to terms with what has happened.

Our ISVAs provide emotional and practical advice and support for people who have experienced rape, sexual abuse or any other type of sexual violence. They can help explain your options, support you with reporting to the police if you decide to do so, attend court with you, liaise with your workplace or provide any other emotional or practical support you may need. 

No. The exception to this is in the case of a young person (aged 13-17). In this instance we have a duty of care to inform Children’s Services that we are working with a young person on a sexual abuse allegation, but we would not inform anyone else.

No. This is entirely your choice, we will support you whether you wish to report the offence(s) or not.

Supporting young people under the age of 13 is a very specialist area, and there are services such as the Sexual Trauma Assessment Recovery and Support (STARS) that work with younger survivors.

If you, or someone you know, is under the age of 13 and need support, please contact STARS.

Yes. This would only change if we felt there was a risk to yourself or others. In this instance, we would look to discuss the need to break confidentiality and our reasons for doing this with you first, if possible.

Yes, we support all survivors  regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or disability,  over the age of 13 from across Surrey, who have been raped, sexually abused or have had an unwanted sexual experience.

You can refer into adult counselling through our website. The referral form is at the top of the adult counselling page, linked by an orange button. If you can't see a form, that means the service has closed for that month.

Our adult counselling service is our most popular service and we have a substantial waiting list.  In order to allow us focus our limited resources we accept 15 new referrals for adult counselling each month. Once we have reached 15 referrals, we  cannot accept any more new referrals for that month, and you will be unable to access the referral form. 

We re-open for new referrals on the first working day of each month at 10am.

This can depend on the counselling service you wish to access (adult counselling, youth counselling or family support).

Our adult counselling service is the most popular, and we do operate a waiting list for this service,
but we can advise on the wait and discuss individual needs with you when you make a referral. Our family and youth support services normally have less of a waiting list. 

Once you have contacted us, you then have an initial virtual assessment with one of our counsellors. This assessment is to establish whether counselling would be helpful to you, and the length of support needed.

Following assessment, you will be invited to attend one of our introductory groups. In these groups you will be able to learn some techniques to help you cope, and how to plan some positive changes.

If, after this, you feel some further individual counselling would be beneficial, you will remain on our waiting list for one-to-one counselling.

For more information on our counselling service, visit our counselling pages. 

Group counselling can help with the sense of isolation that many people feel after experiencing sexual violence. 

Group support can help with:

• understanding the impact of trauma, specifically from sexual violence
• managinging nightmares, flashbacks, intense emotions and poor sleep
• Dealing with relationships and intimacy
• Planning for the future

We offer both single-sex and mixed groups, at different times of the day across the year.

You will need to have self-referred into our counselling service to access  group support.  

For more information, have a look at the FAQs on our Group Support page. 

Once you have referred into our counselling service, we will discuss with you the length of counselling you may need and the service which best meet your needs.

This could be the stabilisation group, therapy group, one-to-one counselling or a mixture of the support we offer.

The helpline is for anyone over the age of 13 who has been affected by rape, sexual abuse or an unwanted sexual experience. 

This is not just limited to survivors, their friends and family can call too, as can agencies, professionals and anyone with concerns around someone who may have been raped or sexually abused.

The helpline is open every Monday to Thursday evening from 7.30pm - 9.30pm (excluding bank holidays)

The helpline exists to give support to survivors and their families, and callers may need to make more than one call. Our helpline volunteers can signpost callers to suitable services which can help them further, and due to this, we would expect there to be a natural time when you don’t need the helpline service anymore.

Our helpline is not intended to be a befriending service, If you are looking for a befriending service, please visit the Surrey Information Point website, where there are details of services across the borough. 

No. Our trained helpline vounteers can support you and offer advice, or just listen if you need them to, but they won't expect you to tell them what happened to you if you aren't ready, or don't want to.

Anyone can call our helpline for advice, including friends and family.

No, the helpline is totally anonymous and confidential, and we will not ask you for any personal details. 

This would only change if we felt there was a risk to you, and in this case we would discuss our concerns with you.

No. We are unable to connect you to a specific helpline volunteer. 

Our helpline is manned by specially trained female volunteers aged 23 and above. (This is a genuine occupational requirement)

All of our helpline volunteers undergo an extensive training programme and are supported by regular supervision and ongoing training. 

If you'd like to find out more about what is involved in volunteering on our helpline, please visit our helpline volunteer page. We will advertise when we are recruting for new volunteers on here.

If you have been a client of RASASC, you will need to be two years clear of using our services to be able to volunteer. Please read our former client volunteering policy for more information

The live chat is a text based chat service that you can access via your phone, tablet or PC. We only use real volunteers, so you will be always be chatting with a real person, not a bot. 

The live chat is for anyone over the age of 13 who has been affected by rape, sexual abuse or an unwanted sexual experience. This is regardless of whether the incident happened recently or a long time ago.

The live chat is available on Mondays and Wednesdays from 7.30pm - 9.30pm. You can access it by clicking the orange speech bubble on the bottom right of the screen. 

If it’s not available, you may wish to contact our telephone helpline on 01483 546400 (open Mon-Thurs, 7.30pm-9.30pm) or view our self help resources 

Not always, we are a small team and you may have to wait to be connected to an available volunteer. 

We are also trialling the live chat as a new way of getting in touch with us, so if it proves popular, we will look to train more volunteers to be able to offer more availability.

No, the live chat is totally anonymous, and we will not ask you for any details. This would only change if we felt there was a risk to you, and in this case we would discuss our concerns with you.

View our live chat privacy policy to find out more

All of our live chat volunteers are female, and they have all been specially trained to deal with intense trauma and the effects of rape and sexual abuse.

No, we are unable to connect you to a specific live chat volunteer.

No. The live chat is only available in English. You can however, access the information on our website in Polish, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian by changing the dropdown language in the top banner

No. You will not have to say anything you don’t want to. The chat will be led by you, and whatever you need to talk about

Yes you can, although operators cannot retrieve previous conversations so if you contact us again, you may have to repeat your story. 

We look to offer support and information that will allow you to move forward, so there should be a natural time when you don’t need support from the live chat anymore. 

Copies of the chat transcripts are deleted after the chat has closed. 

To read more about how we use your data, please view our live chat privacy policy page

You need to complete the referral form on our website and email it to isva@rasasc-guildford.org. One of our ISVAs will contact you within five working days of us receiving your form.

No. We only do home visits in exceptional circumstances. It's more beneficial for both you and the ISVA to meet in a neutral location away from your home where you can speak freely. Your ISVA will discuss an appropriate place to meet with you.

Your ISVA will support you for as long as you need. Once you both feel ready to move forward, they will discuss with you a plan for reducing support.

Your ISVA is there to explain the options available to you. They will not force you to do anything, you are in control of your own decisions – including whether you would like to report to the police or not - they will simply advise you on your options and support you where you need it.

RASASC take part a number of official events each year, and details of these and how to get involved, will be on the events page of our website.

You can also organise your own event such as a bake sale, a fitness challenge or absolutely anything you can get sponsored for, and we will provide you with materials and support to help you on your way! 

If you want to take part in one of our official events, or are interested in setting up your own event, email us at: events@rasasc-guildford.org to get started!

All participants that enter an official event on RASASC’s behalf, will be asked to sign our event T&Cs. These help clarify the amount you’re pledging to raise for RASASC, whether you’re happy for us to promote your efforts on social media, and whether you are happy to join our fundraising database. The T&Cs also clarify what to do if you can no longer take part in your event. 

Each individual event will have its own fundraising target for participants, so please see the questions for each event for clarification on what that is.

We set a fundraising target for each official event, as RASASC buys places in these events at a cost as well as materials (such as running vests etc), so it helps us recoup this cost, as well as giving us the opportunity to raise money for our services and the chance to raise awareness of who we are and what we do with the general public.

We would ask that you try as hard as possible to meet the fundraising target, and all money raised will go directly towards our work supporting survivors of rape and sexual abuse across Surrey.

There is no fundrasing target if you set up your own event, just have a go and see what you can raise!

For the cost of places for each individual event, please see the questions relating to that event.

If you are taking part in an official running event, we will provide you with a RASASC branded technical t-shirt to wear for your event. We endeavour to get this out to you as soon as we can before the event to allow you time to train in it. 

We will also give you help and support – whether this is to help you set up your fundraising page, a downloadable sponsorship form or materials to support a fundraising event, you can contact us at: events@rasasc-guildford.org with all your enquiries.

As a small charity that is mindful of funds, we won’t have an official cheer station on the day, but we do sometimes have RASASC volunteers and staff members that go along of their own accord to support our participants, so do look out for them!

If you set up a fundraising page for your event through our secure page on JustGiving, then any money raised will automatically be transferred to us after your event. 

If you have downloaded our sponsorship form for your event, then you can pay in any donations through our website as one-off donation, or if you prefer, you can transfer funds via bank transfer using the following details: 

CAF Bank, 25 Kings Hill Avenue, Kings Hill, West Malling, Kent ME19 4JQ. 

Account number: 00009436 Sort Code 40-52-40

For the London Landmarks Half Marathon in April 2024 we had ten places. We have now completed our team for this event.

RASASC paid £140 for each place, and we are asking participants to pledge to raise £300.

This helps to cover the costs of  marketing and materials such as running t-shirts and vests, as well as raising funds for our vital work.