Even If Employment, Bona Fide Occupational Requirement 5. Rape Relief volunteers provide victims of male violence with peer counselling, and work collectively for political change. Edith Swain, a former caller to Rape Relief, and Rape Relief's Lee Lakeman will testify in respect of the relationship between volunteer peer counsellors and callers. The relationship can be intimate, and include attending at hospital and being present during internal examinations of women who have been sexually assaulted. Rape Relief's Lee Lakeman will testify that the extent of contact between callers and Rape Relief volunteers depends on the wishes of the caller.
Some callers are satisfied after a single telephone call.
Other callers have numerous meetings with a Rape Relief volunteer or employee, and meetings may occur at the caller's home, Rape Relief's shelter, a hospital., and other places. In the course of the contact, Rape Relief volunteers discuss with callers Rape Relief' s political belief that male violence is a symptom of a sexist society in which women are oppressed by men, and that the caller should not believe that the caller either provoked or deserved the violence. Rape Relief will call the evidence of Dr. Pacey, a psychiatrist with expertise in the medical treatment of assault and sexual assault, and in peer counselling. Dr. Pacey will give evidence concerning the therapeutic needs of individuals who have grown up being treated as girls and then women and who have experienced male violence. Dr. Pacey's evidence will be that after an assault, there is typically a profound sense of the world as unpredictable and dangerous and a profound mistrust of men.