Rape crisis centre off to a shaky start

The new rape crisis centre at the National Hospital was inadequately prepared to assist in a situation of great distress.

So says a woman in her 30s, who suffered an attempted rape last weekend.

“It was glaringly obvious that they did not know what they were doing,” she says.

“The staff were pleasant and they did what they could, but they were clearly not prepared for the task of caring for rape victims.”

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She says that the staff had to borrow her husband’s phone to take photos of her bruises because they did not have the required equipment at hand.

“For example, a gynaecologist came to see me. When she was told that it wasn’t an actual rape and only an attempted rape, she asked: ‘So you were not raped? Not even anally?’,” the woman explains in a written statement to KvF.

“My impression was that the clinic was set up without any sort of preparation on how to actually deal with rape victims.”

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The National Hospital management acknowledges that mistakes were made and apologises for the inadequate care given to the woman.

Procedural changes will be implemented immediately at the clinic, including an offer of psychological counselling, which is currently not part of the response plan for rape victims.

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

More Faroese News in English.