ACC rape counselling backdown

ACC sex abuse claims 'badly handled'
ACC has handled the issue of counselling for sexual abuse victims badly, ACC Minister Nick Smith says. Last October ACC cut counselling for victims of rape and other sexual abuse "sensitive claims", and funding was restricted to those with a diagnosed mental injury resulting from sexual abuse or assault, sparking outrage and protests from sexual abuse groups. But yesterday it announced that from next week people with a new ACC sensitive claim, or with a new claim already in the system but awaiting a decision, would be able to access up to 16 hours with a counsellor.

Congratulations to all the amazing woman impacted by this unnecessarily cruel policy who were brave enough to stand up against this despicable decision that denied sexual assault victims any counselling because the Government offensively redefined rape as an 'acute event' as opposed to a mental illness and as such didn't require counselling. This new definition was used to turn down 90% of claims, it was a disgustingly cruel piece of policy and the Government have done the right thing by backing down and offering 16 hours counselling, this is still a weak amount of time to give sexual assault victims, but it is many times better than the system National implemented.

It is sad that National needed to put so many sexual abuse victims through this in the first place by manufacturing a crises in ACC in their attempts to privatize it.

It's a pity National can't also wake up to how offensive their denying of woman who have been raped and sexually assaulted by our 'boys in blue' is as well and do something on that front as well.

It's interesting to see that the usual Police Cheerleaders over at No Minister have been VERY quite over rape by Police Officers, I would have thought 300 woman sexually assaulted by Police would have some of them scrambling to justify the usual pro cop line, but I suppose even they find this issue a little difficult to defend (BTW No Minister, the 'intellectual vacuum' joke was one of mine used to describe John Key's leadership 6months ago, keep up kids).

Gordon posts up an interesting piece about why National hate woman so much...

On the government’s hostility towards women
Once again, the Key government has shown it doesn’t give a stuff about issues that primarily affect women. Cabinet has rejected an official recommendation to compensate the victims of a rape culture that existed within the Police It has also shown no interest in taking action to address gender pay inequities. In addition, its welfare working group has stigmatized women on the DPB despite the fact that most women are on this benefit for a relatively short time.