Prepare Yourself
The following material gives you some points to think about before you are taken unawares by a woman speaking about her experiences of violence. Thinking ahead will prepare you to choose your responses.

What might lead a learner to disclose?
If you recognize that women you are working with might have been abused, you will speak about issues of abuse in a way that shows you would not be surprised if any woman said she had been abused as a child, or was in an abusive relationship now. When you speak in this way you make it easier for a woman to speak out about the abuse in her life.

The trust that you build in a class, when you try to create a space where women can take risks as they learn to read, can also encourage a woman to take the risk to speak of the violence, or memories of violence, she lives with.

There are a variety of questions which, when you open them up, encourage women to think about whether they want to talk about their experiences of abuse. Many different topics could be triggers which bring these experiences to the surface. For instance: Are you planning on talking about childhood, school days or women's personal histories? Just the mention of family trees, Mother's Day or parenting could be a trigger. Are you going to read a story, a song or a poem which describes violence or neglect in a woman's or child's life? Are you going to talk about issues in society, which might lead to people speaking about violence? Are you going to talk about sexual abuse, or sexual harassment, or "family violence" or robberies, or whether the streets are safe?

My relationship with Mary began when we were talking about childhood in a women's group I was leading and she said, "Things happen to children that shouldn't." Then she called me up to apologize. I couldn't remember exactly what she had said, but I reassured her that she could say anything she wanted in our group. Then she spoke a little more about her childhood. Gradually she told me more and more. Soon it felt as if she was calling me all the time to tell me more about her life. One minute I would feel I should help and the next I would be angry and retreating. Eventually I had an inspiration that perhaps if I offered something specific, a regular time that we could talk, I could support her without struggling to respond to demands that felt much larger than I could cope with. In the end I suggested we should meet regularly and read, write and talk about the issues of abuse in her life. This began many years of working together one-to-one. We have occasionally discussed forming a group but she is still unsure whether she would want to talk in a group.

How might a learner disclose?
Whether you are working in a mixed group, a women's group or with one learner, women may refer to the violence in their lives. A woman might speak in the class about violence that is happening in her life now, or her childhood memories, but often she will want to tell you alone. She might just hang out with you, talking about other things, but checking out whether she could dare to tell you something important. She might just suggest that she has something to say and then wait for your reaction.

How will you react?
If your reaction - shock or disbelief, impatience or defensiveness - tells her that it is not okay to talk about such things, it may reinforce her feelings that the abuse is her fault, that she deserves to be beaten or hurt and that she must stay silent. But if you show her that it is okay to talk about it, you may find that you have begun a relationship where you feel a responsibility to offer support, or feel drawn into the problems in her life. Think ahead of time about what you are prepared to take on.

Do some research
Find out what resources are available in your community which you can help women access. Check whether the counsellors are available, not fully booked. Check whether support groups are ongoing and open for new members and so on.

Try to get to know some counsellors so that you can help with the referral process by being able to describe what a counselor is like and honestly report that you think she will be good.