Women Shining Magazine Women Shining Spring 2018 | Page 25

Interviewer: We touched on the financial costs
of helping women. So what is this costing us
emotionally as a community?
Charlene: The cost is huge, I think the reality
of being in this field for a long time is that the
trauma and impact on women is pretty evident.
It is pretty scary in many ways for women.
That level of safety is very difficult to get
back which means that emotionally, mentally
and spiritually, to be whole again, takes an
incredible amount of work - and unfairly really.
As a community I think it divides our us. I think it
is one of those things again, if you look on social
media you can see the people who have a bit of
a lens and you can see the people who do not.
When in reality less than .01
percent ever lie about actually
being sexually assaulted.
We do not talk about the 97% of offenders
who never ever have a charge or any sort of
consequences. It is always the focus on the .01%
because it justifies the behaviour.
This creates divide in our community.
But you can see the divide of the victim blaming
vs. the non victim blaming. The ideology that
women lie about this.
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