Get ready to be angry

Brighton has its own Vancouver Rape Relief story

RISE (Refuge, Information, Support and Education) is a charity that has provided support for survivors of domestic or sexual abuse in Brighton & Hove and East Sussex, including offering refuge, since 1994.

For the last few years it has been working with local authorities and the police to provide women with accommodation under a contract worth £1.4 million a year called Brighton Women’s Refuge (RISE was originally called the Brighton Women’s Refuge Project).

While RISE began as a service specifically for women and children, four years ago it co-piloted an ‘LGBTQ+ refuge’, and today it does not refuse its services to any survivor, be they male or female.

As it states though, approximately 91 percent of domestic violent crimes that cause injuries are against women and, unsurprisingly, the largest proportion of people needing its services have been women, particularly women with children.

This year the Brighton Women’s Refuge contract was up for renewal and an ‘equalities impact assessment’ was carried out on RISE’s service provision.

This resulted in it losing its contract.

The assessment ‘identified the need for a broader focus on inclusive service provision that caters for the needs of people with all the protected characteristics. It highlighted the need for more support for both heterosexual and gay male survivors and the specific barriers to service experienced by the trans community, with trans survey respondents noting that the type of support they wanted was not available.’

The type of support trans people said they wanted does not appear to have been publicly detailed.

The funding will now be diverted to a new refuge provider - Stonewater - which provides accommodation for ‘people who identify as LGBTQ+ and have experienced hate crimes'.

While RISE has lost the Brighton Women’s Refuge contract, it is still allowed to run the LGBTQ+ refuge.

In short, a women’s refuge provider, which has been delivering an essential service for years, has lost its funding because, while it also catered to men, some men who identify as women said it wasn’t good enough, and the money will now go to a refuge that claims to have more expertise in providing for men, particularly ones who identify as women, even though the demand for refuges is overwhelmingly by actual women.