News

RASASH Reaffirms Support for Survivors Amid Rising Anti-Migrant Rhetoric

The Rape and Sexual Abuse Service Highland (RASASH) is concerned by some of the responses to the UK Government’s plans to house asylum seeking people at the Cameron Barracks in Inverness, namely the perception that migrants pose a greater risk to women and girls’ safety.

RASASH, which provides free and confidential support to survivors of sexual violence across Highland, is troubled by narratives that attempt to link the risk of sexual violence with people seeking asylum. In particular, the deliberate attempts of some groups to weaponise women and girls’ safety to justify hostility toward migrants.

This rhetoric not only spreads unfounded fear but also undermines genuine efforts to address violence against women and girls. It further reinforces the damaging myth that the greatest risk of gender-based violence comes from strangers, when evidence consistently shows otherwise. Key facts about sexual violence in the UK include:

• More than 90% of perpetrators of rape and sexual assault are known to their victims.
• One in two rapes against women are carried out by a partner or ex-partner.
• One in three adult survivors are raped in their own home.

(Figures from the National Office for Statistics, 2025)

“It is an uncomfortable reality that sexual violence is committed overwhelmingly by the men already in women’s and girls’ lives. The Highlands are unfortunately no exception,” states Eileen Stuart, RASASH Board Chair.

“We are aware that anti-migrant protests nationally have invoked concerns for women’s and girls’ safety based on the misguided belief that asylum seekers pose a greater risk. Sexual violence is rooted in misogyny, inequality, and power – not immigration status or nationality.”

RASASH unequivocally condemns all violence against women and girls and the profound harm it causes to individuals, families, and communities. We urge everyone to reject fear-mongering and misinformation that detract from meaningful efforts to end sexual violence. If we are serious about keeping women and girls safe, we must focus collectively on addressing the root causes of sexual violence: power, control, and inequality.

RASASH provides support to anyone aged 13+ affected by sexual violence—regardless of gender—as well as to non-abusing partners, friends, and family members. If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual violence, please contact our confidential support line.

Contact Information for Confidential Support? 

Call us for support on 03330 066909 
Text us on 07451 288080
Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri 1-5pm

Rape Crisis Scotland helpline 08088 010302
Daily 5pm-midnight? 

Christmas and New Year closure

RASASH will be closing down for the festive period. We will be closing on the Friday 19th of December at 5pm and re-opening on the Monday 5th of January at 9.30am. 

The advocacy and support line services will be closing earlier this year:

• Advocacy: closing for new referrals on the Tuesday 16th of December and re-opening on the Tuesday 6th of January.
• Support Line: closing on the Wednesday 17th of December at 5pm and re-opening on the Monday 5th of January at 1pm. 

If you have pre-existing appointments, these will still take place as scheduled. 

If you need support during the festive period, the Rape Crisis Scotland Helpline will be open from 5pm until midnight: Rape Crisis Scotland Helpline

Big Give Women and Girls Campaign is Live: Support Survivors Today

We’re excited to share that RASASH’s Big Give Women and Girls fundraising campaign is now live! This is your chance to help us continue providing vital support to survivors of sexual violence in Highland, in particular to young women and girls in our community. 

Around 32% of the survivors we worked with last year were aged 13-21, and over 80% of the survivors we support are women and girls. These statistics show how critical it is to offer specialised services like ours. It costs over £2,500 a day to operate our services, which we provide completely free to those who need them. And we rely on fundraising and donations to continue delivering our lifechanging work. 

Your donation will go directly toward helping survivors reclaim their lives and feel empowered again.

Here’s how your support can make a real difference:

• £50 could keep our support line staffed, providing crucial responses to calls, texts, and emails.
• £75 could fund a prevention session for young people across Highland, helping to stop sexual violence before it happens.
• £100 could go towards an outreach support session, bringing life-changing services to survivors in rural areas.

Thanks to match funding through the Big Give, every pound you donate will be doubled! Together, we can ensure that survivors receive the support they need.

How You Can Help:

1. Donate Now – Visit our Big Give campaign page here to make a donation.
2. Spread the Word – Share the campaign link with your network and encourage others to get involved.
3. Get Involved – Want to do more? Host your own fundraiser or visit this page for more ways to support.

Your support is vital in helping survivors move forward. Together, we can make a lasting impact!

LGBTQ+ Access and Inclusion at RASASH

As part of LGBT History Month in February, we are keen to highlight some of our engagement work with LGBTQ+ communities in Highland who have generously shared their thoughts, ideas and experiences with us to help ensure we are as inclusive a service as we can be.

Sexual violence is everywhere: often, it is hidden, but it is out there. Even in the smallest of villages and remotest of communities in Highland where people insist things ‘like that don’t happen here’. As the Highlands’ only specialist support service for survivors of sexual violence, at RASASH we know this mindset all too well: the denial that there is a problem in this area of Scotland with ‘that sort of thing’.

Such refusal, disbelief and silencing within smaller, rural communities will often add another layer of challenge for those who’ve experienced sexual violence: how to speak out and disclose what’s happened when you’re embedded within a culture that you fear will not stand by you and at worst, may well ostracize you? These fears are well-founded, with the end result being that many survivors opt never to disclose what’s happened to them, often holding trauma for years, and sometimes, decades.

The challenges for survivors in remote and/or rural communities who also belong to marginalized communities, such as LGBTQ+ survivors, are further compounded. As part of RASASH’s ongoing work to ensure our service is as accessible and inclusive as possible across the region, we have heard from a range of LGBTQ+ individuals who have generously and courageously voiced their experiences and views on what it is to navigate life as a member of the community in Highland and what it means for a service to be truly inclusive and accessible.

The learnings from this work are far-reaching and have read-across for services across the board, beyond the Third Sector. Recurring themes which have arisen throughout our engagement with the LGBTQ+ community include:

• The need to be explicit about a service’s inclusivity: when this comes to RASASH, this means emphasizing in our external communications and materials that we support anyone of any gender or sexuality age 13+: sexual violence can and does happen to anyone, but those in the LGBTQ+ community are disproportionately affected.

In the current climate, services can and must do more in particular to promote trans inclusion.

• Gestures from organizations such as displaying Pride or Progress flags are good, but must not be tokenistic or just once a year; they must be backed up with concrete actions year-round. Specifically, rigorous staff training around diversity and inclusion was highlighted as an absolute baseline necessity for any service aiming to be welcoming to the LGBTQ+ population.
• Confidentiality: this is a concern for any sexual violence survivor when disclosing. For LGBTQ+ individuals it is especially important, particularly for those who are not ‘out’ in their communities. Services must be transparent and upfront about their privacy and confidentiality policies and under which circumstances information may need to be shared on to a third party. Being mindful of power dynamics at all times when working with survivors is of paramount importance: bearing in mind that sexual violence is an abuse of power, workers must endeavour to minimize replicating any imbalance of power in their relationships with service users, and this applies to holding information confidentially.

• There is no ‘universal’ experience of being an LBGTQ+ person. As one participant astutely highlighted, ‘if you’ve met one trans person, then you’ve met one trans person’. There can be a tendency for LGBTQ+ people to be viewed as a homogenous entity when it comes to service design, but as this participant emphasized, ‘one size fits none’. Instead, working from a truly person-centered standpoint entails meeting individuals exactly as that: individuals. This approach must be built into the ethos of the organization for it to not only meet users’ needs, but also for it to be truly equitable in its provision.

There is more work to be done to ensure that RASASH is working for all survivors, and we are have an ongoing commitment to this as an intersectional feminist organization. What we know is that there is always more to learn and reflect on: doing things better is never a tick-box exercise. We are incredibly grateful to the range of LGBTQ+ individuals we have spoken with in recent months whose openness and strength in sharing their experiences and thoughts has been not only hugely informative, but truly powerful to bear witness to. Thank you.