THE environment is child friendly at one of the country’s leading rape support services provider.
The clinic at Medical Services Pacific (MSP) is specifically designed this way because the majority of the clients served there are underage.
Jiokapeci Baledrokadroka, senior counsellor at MSP has worked as a counsellor to victims of gender based violence for about two decades.
In the first week of October alone, Ms Baledrokadroka had already served five under-age victims.
Funded mostly by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), MSP operates by supporting the Fijian Government and has necessitated a memorandum of agreement between the organisation and several government arms.
Through that agreement, MSP hosts the child helpline (call 1325 from any telephone or cellphone) where calls come from the public and the police.
Calls are taken on the phone at MSP who then record the basic details of the concern, excluding the identification information and immediately triages the calls.
Depending on where a client’s needs lie, the MSP counsellors will notify government service providers, the Fiji Police Force, Department of Social Welfare (DSW), Ministry of Women, Ministry of Health or Ministry of Education.
In turn, the Fiji Police Force also uses 1325 to notify MSP when it has received formal police complaints of rape and or other sex crimes.
As the person most likely to receive clients referred to MSP, it is important for Ms Baledrokadroka to be at her best when the call comes in that yet another woman or girl has been raped or assaulted sexually.
“When it’s a fresh call, often they will call in the middle of the night. Maybe it’s an expatriate or a visitor to the country whereby the embassies will call to refer their cases, when it’s Sunday or in the night,” Ms Baledrokadroka said.
“So it comes in at any time. They are brought in by the police, but if the client is a child, then the Department of Social Welfare will accompany the police to MSP.”
Despite having worked for so many years helping children who have been raped, the counsellor no longer is shocked by the brutality of the crimes which manifest in her office in the form of a traumatised child.
Ms Baledrokadroka knows the first few hours and days after a sex crime has been committed are extremely important with regards to prosecution.
According to the DSW, there were 247 child sexual abuse cases between January 2016 and August 2017 alone. The stats confirm also that most of the perpetrators were from within the immediate family although the number of perpetrators who were from the community was also high.
There are some basic priorities once a client, who has reported sexual violence, comes into a facility like MSP.
First and foremost is rebuilding trust between the victim and the team who will support her, she said.
“They have to go through pre-counselling because they come here traumatised,” Ms Baledrokadroka said.
The first point of contact, the counsellor provides immediate psychological support and in doing so explains to the victim the procedures they will go through at MSP.
Often the medical procedure can prove invasive and worsen the experience for the victim and in recent cases, it’s proven to be the reason some will not go through to testify at the prosecution.
So for MSP the main immediate priority is reducing the trauma and it means the counsellor would brief the client through what happens in each process of the services offered.
“You have to provide them with relevant information about what is going to take place so they can picture what is going to happen,” Ms Baledrokadroka said.
A large part of supporting a victim of sexual violence is about empowering the victim so they know even as services are being provided to them, that they aren’t just recipients of assistance. The way in which the victims are guided pushes the message that they can help themselves.
To ensure the process is seamless and does not put the client through further hardship, MSP uses a one stop shop under one room model.
“Sometimes they are disoriented because sometimes they are given drugs and juice to drink which we don’t know what the contents are. They come in and they are lost and sometimes they can’t even interact with us,” Ms Baledrokadroka said.
Often the trauma renders the younger victims silent and that’s when MSP counsellors have to work creatively and patiently, using various types of models to allow the child to express themselves.
“It’s quite intensive, we have to go through six sessions in order to allow me to write a good report about the service provided to the client and what was the outcome,” Ms Baledrokadroka said.
In a case this year, MSP counsellors had to use dolls to help a two-year-old girl explain what was done to her.
The toddler was so affected by the court proceedings she could not respond to any other method of communicating with the counsellors. The doll therapy was held up in court.
On staff, the team at MSP includes, in addition to the counsellors, a lawyer, a doctor and a nurse with several support staff and community workers.
At the free health clinic, the doctor and nurse is guided by nationally agreed protocols and a rape kit provided by the Fiji Police Force which ensures the medical procedure conducted is careful and ensures the forensic aspect of data gathering is secure.
Whatever is discussed with the counsellor remains with her for confidentialities sake and even the person at each step of the service provided at MSP would not be privy to all information unless it is crucial to the service they provide.
If the client has come from outside of the helpline chain of communication, the lawyer will guide the victim through police procedure and let them know what their legal rights are.
Although she agrees there might be an increase in the incidences of rape, Ms Baledrokadroka said the crimes that they encounter had gotten worse over time.
While she is no stranger to some of the worst crimes against children, the veteran counsellor is concerned at the close relationship between victims and the perpetrator.
“No, I am no longer shocked. I believe I have built a lot of resilience so I am able to handle the cases I come across well and I don’t cry although I empathise with the clients,” Ms Baledrokadroka said.
Despite the horror of the crimes, she helps young girls heal from the crime.
Ms Baledrokadroka is optimistic that the answer to the problem of increased child abuse cases lies with family.
She said the approach the MSP had taken to empower would be victims and raising the awareness of the community at family level would help keep children safe.
