Wellington Rape Crisis providing training for Hell Pizza staff

Wellington Rape Crisis (WRC) was today approached by Hell Pizza with an offer of donation to support their agency, which was this week forced to cut services by 20% due to funding issues. The approach came after Hell Pizza posted a Facebook “Confessional’ that described a sexual assault.

Wellington Rape Crisis Agency Manager Natalie Gousmett says “Hell Pizza made a mistake, the confession described an illegal sexual assault and it is offensive and harmful that they posted it. We are pleased to see that they have apologised unreservedly and are taking action to ensure something similar does not occur again”.

“Hell Pizza has agreed to pay for training for its staff, to be run by the Wellington Sexual Abuse Network (of which Wellington Rape Crisis is the lead agency) in rape and sexual violence awareness and ethical bystander skills. This training programme will help change the culture of the organisation,” says Gousmett.

“They have also offered to donate $10,000 to our agency, which we have accepted as this will enable us to provide over 100 sessions of counselling or social work support and they have further offered to match dollar-for-dollar any donations made to our fundy site between today and the end of the month, up to the $55,000 we need to open our doors on a Friday again.”

“It just seems wrong that an agency like ours is put in the position of having to make decisions about whether to accept a donation like this. We provide essential and valued services to people who have been raped and sexually abused; we should be sustainably funded by Government,” Gousmett says.

www.wellingtonrapecrisis.org.nz

Text from the Hell Pizza statement just released on Facebook
Last night our Social Media Manager posted a Facebook Confessional post that was not approved by Callum or Stu the owners of the NZ brand. He normally does a great job, but in this case he got it wrong. We unreservedly apologise for this comment and have taken steps to stop it from reoccurring. Sexual assault is no joke and we would like to use the massive level of discussion on this to highlight the need of Wellington Rape Crisis (WRC). Wellington Rape Crisis provides free support and counselling to survivors of rape and sexual abuse but has this week been forced to cut its services due to funding issues. Many of you feel strongly about this so here a chance to put words into action as we are. We are making a 10k donation to WRC today and until the end of the month we will match any donation to Wellington Rape Crisis dollar for dollar to help them get to their target of 55k - so they can stay open 5 days a week!

We encourage you all to join with us in raising money and awareness for Wellington Rape Crisis. Their team will track all the donations from today until the end of the month - you can do it here http://www.fundy.co.nz/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=23&products_id=193

As part of our commitment to ensuring this doesn’t happen again we will also be putting our team and staff through a sexual violence awareness and ethical bystander training run by the Wellington Sexual Abuse Network, of which Wellington Rape Crisis is the lead agency.

ENDS

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