An ISVA is an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor. They’re basically an advocate – they can come to appointments with you, signpost you for counseling and other services etc. If you’re not going to the police, you get a set number of sessions with them, which can happen as frequently or infrequently as needed. Mine were monthly. If you decide to go to the police, your ISVA will remain a point of contact for you until the whole thing is over, no matter how long it takes. You don’t necessarily see them often, but they can liaise with the police on your behalf, accompany you to interviews (they can’t come into the room though), come to court as moral support.
My first ISVA
My first ISVA was really good. But I didn’t decide to go to the police until several months after I’d started seeing her. And then she found a different job and left. She told me that because I’d gone to the police, the organisation would allocate me a new ISVA to see me through the process.
Except apparently she didn’t write any of this in her notes – the file she handed over when she left said that I had decided not to go to the police. The organisation assumed they didn’t need to allocate me a new ISVA.
I waited and waited, but there was no word. I knew they were busy, so I didn’t want to chase.
The second ISVA
Then, one day while S was having a swimming lesson with her school at the leisure centre, I decided to go to the gym before collecting them to walk home… half way through my workout, the rapist walked in and proceeded to do exercises right next to the only exit door.
This was after I had been to the police, but before they had arrested him – he was blissfully unaware that anything was happening.
I went into a panic, dropped what I was doing and went to hide in the room where everyone does their stretching. Then I realised that if he came into that room, I had no means of escape. I went back out into the main gym, grabbed my things from my locker and waited for a man to walk past. I essentially walked on behind him, using him as a human shield between me and the rapist.
Once I was outside the main door of the leisure centre, I realised I would still have to hang around until the school swimming lesson finished… and if I did that here, directly outside the main door, I would almost certainly cross paths with the rapist again. I went back into the leisure centre, which by this point was full of parents from school, crowding around the windows to the pool to watch their children in action.
For reasons I can’t recall, S was not actually swimming on this day; they were waiting on the poolside with the teacher. So I took my shoes off, walked through the changing rooms to the pool and asked the teacher if I could take S home now because something had happened.
Clearly something about my face and general shaky demeanour rang alarm bells for the adults, because they nodded yes. They sent S off to collect their shoes and school bag and one of the teachers walked me back into the changing rooms, where I quietly told her: someone raped me and now he is in the gym just over there and I have to get out. She told me to stay put, and went to get one of the staff to open a fire exit for us so that we didn’t need to use the main door.
When we got home, I was feeling very shaky and nervous. I decided to call the ISVA service and ask if I had been allocated anyone yet. They told me they hadn’t thought I needed anyone because I wasn’t going to the police; I told them they were wrong. Within half an hour a man had called me back; he was my new ISVA.
The man was very good at calming me down in that moment. He did some breathing exercises with me and helped me to feel better.
When it came to other things, he was not so great. It was him who told me the rapist was in court submitting verdict, when in fact the case was just going through the magistrate’s court.
He was supposed to liaise with the police on my behalf so that I didn’t get calls from them. But he didn’t work full time, and often his phone was off so the police would just call me directly anyway.
One time he called me to tell me about some delay or other regarding the case. I complained, this is going on forever. His response was, You’re lucky, I’m working with people who have been waiting for years. His tone said: don’t complain.
I knew my case was moving faster than most; I didn’t need anyone to tell me that other women can wait years and years before getting to court. All I really needed was for him to say yes it’s shit isn’t it. Because it is shit.
Instead, he made me feel like I shouldn’t be complaining.
He would make appointments with me; I would write them in my diary while I was on the phone to him, and then he would miss them – and usually end up calling me on another day, at another time, when I was busy with something else and not mentally prepared to be reminded of all of this.
Eventually, he left the ISVA service too. I received an email from him saying he was leaving, but I would be allocated a new ISVA soon. Again, this didn’t happen. For months.
The third ISVA
I’d been here before. The court case was coming up, but I didn’t want to have a stranger sitting in court with me and there didn’t seem to be much for anyone to do other than that, at this late stage.
Eventually, after speaking to my counsellor about it, I decided it would be better to have someone there and not need them, than to get to court and feel like I wished they were there. So I chased the ISVA service again.
I received an email from another new ISVA saying she was sorry I’d fallen through the cracks again, and that if I wanted to know how to make a complaint she would point me in the right direction. I didn’t see much point.
We met up for a coffee a few weeks before the court case began. She seemed nice enough, but she’d only been an ISVA for a few weeks and had never been to court with a client before.
On the day we went to court, luckily my cousin came with me – so when the ISVA spent the several hours we were kept waiting talking about random nonsense like almost getting into a fist fight in a Tesco car park, my cousin could do the polite responses while I stared into space wondering what was going on.
After I’d given my evidence (and been eviscerated by the defence) we all went home, and I’ve never seen her again. She called me a couple of times, but not with anything terribly useful. She advised me to ask the charity who had provided my counseling to provide me with some post-trial counseling… but that’s actually not something that’s generally available.
On the whole, I felt like I’d been let down… but also – what did I expect? Even if I’d had the same ISVA the whole way through, I would still have had the back and forth with the police, still had a nightmarish experience in court, still have felt like my life was falling apart. They couldn’t have changed any of that.
They also didn’t really provide much support for it either.
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