Launch of male sexual abuse survivors group
Thursday 3 November 2016
A group representing male victims of rape and child sexual exploitation is being officially launched at an event this week.
Shatter Boys, who hold weekly peer-to-peer support meetings for survivors at the University of Salford, is holding is official launch meeting at the Deansgate branch of Waterstones in Manchester city centre on Friday November 4.
The event, which will feature members of the group telling their stories, is aimed at encouraging victims to come forward and to demonstrate the benefits of enabling survivors to support each other.
It is also aimed at breaking the taboo which surrounds the sexual abuse of boys and men and to encourage organisations in the public and private sectors to speak about these issues.
Donna Peach, Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Salford and a long term supporter of the group, will be speaking at the event, along with Steve Long, Director For Operations at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.
New York Emmy nominated TV producer Victoria Strong, who founded the Survivors aMaze group after surviving being sexually abused by a member of the mafia, will also speak at the event along with Chris Tuck from Survivors of Abuse.
Danny Wolstencroft, one of Shatter Boys’ founders and a member of the survivor consultancy group to the inquiry, said: “We were really struggling for spaces for the group to meet and without the University we’d probably have ended up shutting down. A lot of people were suicidal before coming to us – people have got their lives back because of the group.
“This event is all about celebrating healing from childhood sexual abuse and adult male rape. Men often don’t talk about these issues and feel they don’t have a voice, but Shatter Boys is all about building a healing community in which survivors can talk to each other and empower themselves through mutual aid.”
Donna Peach, Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Salford, said: “Male survivors find it much harder to talk about their experiences and consequently this is a group of people which is often ignored.
“By providing peer to peer support, Shatter Boys have been able to break down some of the barriers and provided a safe place in which male survivors can talk to each other about these issues.
“It’s important for publicly funded organisations such as our own to play a role in helping overlooked members of the community and I’m incredibly proud of the support we’ve been able to provide to Shatter Boys, who are doing some vital work in raising the profile of male survivors.”
Visit www.facebook.com/shatterboys for more details.
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