{"id":928669,"date":"2026-04-30T14:23:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/928669\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T14:23:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T14:23:32","slug":"merseysides-rape-crisis-service-marks-its-40-year-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/928669\/","title":{"rendered":"Merseyside\u2019s rape crisis service marks its 40 year anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merseyside\u2019s rape crisis service (RASA) was set up 40 years ago in response to the rape and murder of Diane Sindall in August 1986 in Birkenhead.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The twenty-one year old was murdered by the \u2018Beast of Birkenhead\u2019, a case which hit the headlines again last year after Peter Sullivan, who was imprisoned for the murder in 1987, was found to have been wrongly convicted.<\/p>\n

Diane\u2019s attacker has not been found, and police have recently issued fresh appeals in the hope of finding her killer.<\/p>\n

Prior to her death forty years ago, Birkenhead had been plagued with numerous reports of women being raped. Lorraine Wood, CEO of RASA said: \u201cthere was already a lot of fear in Birkenhead and women were being told not to go out at night alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DianeCredit: Alamy news. PIC REF: 3BANFPF The memorial stone for Diane Sindall on Borough Road in Birkenhead, Wirral.<\/p>\n

After Diane was killed, local women rallied around and began to take action, organising a Reclaim the Night march and starting the process of setting up a support service to help women affected by sexual assault. Lorraine explains; \u201cThree women sat around their kitchen table and then it turned into a helpline and then it became RASA.\u201d<\/p>\n

The service, originally known as the Wirral Rape Crisis Counselling Service (WRCCS) registered as a charity in September 1987 with the charitable aim: \u2018To relieve the mental and physical distress of women and girls who have suffered rape or sexual assault.\u2019<\/p>\n

Over the years RASA has expanded its services to include a children\u2019s service and a service for male survivors and has helped thousands of people recover from sexual trauma.<\/p>\n

As with many services reliant on government and other funding streams, RASA has gone through some unstable times and last year the organisation hit a funding crisis after a budget deficit of \u00a3100,000 threatened to shut down some of their services.<\/p>\n

This crisis led to an urgent public appeal in January, which garnered a huge amount of support from the community, Wood said: \u201cthe response from the public was unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Merseyside residents managed to raise the \u00a3100,000 target, with Lorraine saying: \u201cwe\u2019ve never raised anything near that amount of money before, I don\u2019t know if any rape crisis centre has.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year RASA received the necessary government funding to run the service at capacity for the next two years, giving the charity some security for now.<\/p>\n

\"RASAStaff at RASA From left to right Vicky Green (clinical lead, Lorraine Wood CEO, Lois Arch (head of education), Christine MacKenzie \u2013 volunteer, Jennifer McConville \u2013 volunteer, Amanda Bresnen (Volunteer Manager). Image copyright RASA.<\/p>\n

However, since then, the government has announced it is abolishing the Police and Crime Commissioner role (PCC) which commissions services like RASA through money from the Ministry of Justice, \u201cwe don\u2019t know what that\u2019s going to looks like, from 2028 all that money will go to the mayor,\u201d said Lorraine.<\/p>\n

However, this year, the organisation will reflect on its history and celebrate its successes with several events and activities planned, including a fundraising charity ball<\/a> on the 12th of September \u2013 tickets for the charity ball are on sale here<\/a><\/p>\n

RASA are also currently on the lookout for business sponsorship to support the charity ball, please contact 0151 5581801 if you think you can help.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Merseyside\u2019s rape crisis service (RASA) was set up 40 years ago in response to the rape and murder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":928670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8815],"tags":[30222,748,12450,229711,393,17877,4884,179,2212,16,15],"class_list":["post-928669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-liverpool","tag-anniversary","tag-britain","tag-charity","tag-charity-event","tag-england","tag-fundraiser","tag-great-britain","tag-liverpool","tag-rape","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116494114730306576","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=928669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/928670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}