Development of Services - 1970's

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The first Rape Crisis Centre in Victoria started in September 1974 formed by one of the women's liberation groups, Women Against Rape. This service provided access to medical examinations and counselling for recent adult women victims of sexual assault. The Centre operated out of the health service in Collingwood that was run by the Victorian Women's Health Collective. The health service was staffed by volunteers and operated free of cost to all women.

The Whitlam Government made federal funding, administered through the States, available in 1975 for the establishment of rape crisis centres across Australia. Centres were quickly set up in Adelaide and Sydney. However, the Victorian Government withheld funding from the Rape Crisis Centre due to a disagreement about management and organisational structures. This service ceased operating in December 1975.

The Women Against Rape collective continued to operate out of the Women's Liberation Centre in Little Lonsdale Street until the end of the 1970's. The Collective offered support to recent rape victims with reporting to the Police, medicals and accommodation if necessary. The Collective also engaged in social activism attempting to lay wreaths for women raped in war at the Anzac Day marches, lobbying for rape law reform and being involved in the Reclaim the Night Marches which commenced in Melbourne in 1979.

The Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL), which had formed in February 1971 as an a political, non party lobby also continually lobbied the Victorian Government in relation to rape law reform. Pressure by WEL led to the establishment of the Victorian Rape Study Committee in 1977 within the Department of the Premier. The catalyst for the establishment of this Committee was the refusal of a large public hospital to provide a recent rape victim with treatment. The membership of the Rape Study Committee included representatives from the Police, the public prosecutor, medical practitioners, bureaucrats, Women Against Rape, WEL, and others well placed to influence key organisations responses to rape victims. Also, in 1977 the newly appointed Police Surgeon, Peter Bush, approached the Queen Victoria Medical Centre for permission to examine rape victims in their Emergency Department believing that this would provide a better service for women than the Russell Street Police Station. Peter Bush also asked the hospital if counselling services could be provided on a referral basis to women who had been raped. The challenge to provide counselling services was accepted by Pat Farrant, the senior social worker in the Department of Psychiatry on behalf of her staff and on 8th August 1977 the social work staff in the Department of Psychiatry started to provide an unfunded counselling service for victims of sexual assault. At the same time gynecological staff at the Queen Victoria Medical Centre began providing medical services for rape victims.

As a result of the work of the Rape Study Committee, chaired by Yolanda Klempfner, the advisor on women's issues to the Liberal Premier Dick Hamer, the state government provided funding to the Queen Victoria Medical Centre to provide a 24 hour counselling service to victims of sexual assault. This ultimately led to the establishment of first Government funded Sexual Assault Centre. In 1979 the Queen Victoria Medical Centre received government funding to establish a room in Casualty for the examination of rape victims with nursing and social work support provided by the hospital. There was also funding for a Coordinator of the developing Sexual Assault Centre. The establishment of a service in a major public hospital caused considerable debate and concern amongst the women's health groups, which had been fighting hard to challenge what was seen as a destructive medical model, which perceived women who had been raped to be "hysterics". These groups were concerned that a sexual assault service operating from a hospital would reinforce existing myths about women as rape victims that they were working to challenge. In fact the social workers who staffed the service, understood, as a result of their professional training the social context of rape. The service developed within a feminist value framework. A major role of the early social workers in the Sexual Assault Centre was to undertake community and professional education around the then dominant understanding of rape.

In 1978 Women Against Rape, Geelong was formed by a group of Geelong women following a woman being treated extremely badly after a rape. This group changed their name to Geelong Rape Crisis Centre and ran as an unfunded collective until 1982. Initially the collective offered a telephone based counselling and advice service.

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