On March 7th, GWIHR received a distress call around the late hours of the evening at about 7:46 pm through her SGBV toll-free line from a sex worker leader of a brothel named Aleruchi guest house located in Phalga LGA, Rivers State, Nigeria.
Over the phone, she expressed her deep concerns about the harrowing condition of a sex worker in her brothel whom a client sexually molested. According to her, the incident happened about an hour ago (no one knew about it until the survivor started calling for help from her room) and has led to continuous bleeding, hence why she is calling for help to save a life.
Upon receipt of this call by our GBV focal person, the GWIHR clinical team was swiftly alerted, and her mobile clinic visited the brothel. On arrival, they assessed the survivor’s condition, and it was clear that the injuries and state of her trauma condition were beyond only first aid care services, instead requiring holistic and comprehensive care services.
Based on this, they immediately recommended that the survivor be moved to GWIHR Clinic, where she was provided with stigma-free comprehensive services, including contraceptives, HIV and STIs post-exposure prophylaxis and wound attention services.
After three days of medical service provision, we recognized there was a need for essential support, especially in the aspect of mental health, because she seemed not to have outlived the experience which made us move her to our emergency safe house in Akwa Ibom state upon her consent where our trained and specialized psychologist provided her with psychosocial support and counselling services to aid her recovery process for a period of two weeks.
Today, she fully recovered and willingly volunteered to work with the organization and become a sexual violence survivor champion during our support group meetings to encourage others who are experiencing or have experienced similar cases.
This initiative was sponsored by African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) under her KASA initiative
Over the phone, she expressed her deep concerns about the harrowing condition of a sex worker in her brothel whom a client sexually molested. According to her, the incident happened about an hour ago (no one knew about it until the survivor started calling for help from her room) and has led to continuous bleeding, hence why she is calling for help to save a life.
Upon receipt of this call by our GBV focal person, the GWIHR clinical team was swiftly alerted, and her mobile clinic visited the brothel. On arrival, they assessed the survivor’s condition, and it was clear that the injuries and state of her trauma condition were beyond only first aid care services, instead requiring holistic and comprehensive care services.
Based on this, they immediately recommended that the survivor be moved to GWIHR Clinic, where she was provided with stigma-free comprehensive services, including contraceptives, HIV and STIs post-exposure prophylaxis and wound attention services.
After three days of medical service provision, we recognized there was a need for essential support, especially in the aspect of mental health, because she seemed not to have outlived the experience which made us move her to our emergency safe house in Akwa Ibom state upon her consent where our trained and specialized psychologist provided her with psychosocial support and counselling services to aid her recovery process for a period of two weeks.
Today, she fully recovered and willingly volunteered to work with the organization and become a sexual violence survivor champion during our support group meetings to encourage others who are experiencing or have experienced similar cases.
This initiative was sponsored by African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) under her KASA initiative
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Supportive Care for Survivors of Sexual Violence
Supportive Care for Survivors of Sexual Violence