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Communities free of sexual violence.
Sexual Violence New Brunswick began in the summer of 1975 from a Chimo Help Centre meeting. This meeting was called to deal with the concerns of local university and high school counsellors, the Fredericton Women’s Centre and other citizens to establish the need for a resource group that could respond to sexual violence.
In November of that year, a full-time director was hired on a grant to organize the service. In January 1976, the Rape Crisis Service was able to offer a 24-hour service. Volunteers offered support over the phone to survivors or other people concerned, as well as accompanying survivors to the hospital, police station or a friend’s home.
In 1979, the Rape Crisis Service separated from Chimo and opened an office at 384 Queen Street. The Fredericton Rape Crisis Centre, now an independent organization, became incorporated in February 1980.
To reflect changes in the Canadian Criminal Code, the Fredericton Rape Crisis Centre became the Fredericton Sexual Assault Crisis Centre in April 1994. In 2005, the provincial action plan “A Better World for Women – Moving Forward 2005-2010” was announced with sexual assault awareness and service delivery across the Province as a central component of this action plan. SVNB, with its decades of experience, created its Provincial Strategy on Sexual Assault Services. With leadership from its Provincial Advisory Committee, the strategy uses a community based approach to bring together service providers and stakeholders throughout the province to enhance and establish community responses to sexual assault and sexual violence in New Brunswick.
In 2015, the Fredericton Sexual Assault Crisis Centre became the Fredericton Sexual Assault Centre, with a new logo and website. In 2019, SVNB became Sexual Violence New Brunswick, in recognition of our many years as leaders of preventing and responding to sexual violence in New Brunswick.
Sexual Violence New Brunswick’s (SVNB) work takes places throughout the traditional unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Wabanaki people – the People of the Dawn. This territory is covered by a series of “Peace and Friendship” treaties which established the rules for an ongoing relationship between equal nations. As treaty people, we are all accountable to those agreements.
SVNB began as a grassroots movement which was, and is, informed and guided by those impacted by sexual violence. Our work centers the experience of survivors which informs our approach to building communities’ understanding, prevention and response to sexual violence. We cannot participate in anti-violence work without recognizing our role within oppressive systems that continue to cause and uphold violence for those most affected by systemic oppression.
Like many rape crisis centres, SVNB’s founding members were predominantly white, middle-class urban-based, cis-women who worked primarily with white survivors. In recognition of this history, we practice as an intersectional and trans-inclusive feminist organization, guided by the work of Black, Indigenous, and racialized activists as well as those within the Queer and Trans communities.
We commit to addressing the interlocking privileges and oppressions within our organization and the impacts of trauma exposed work, while also combatting oppression in society at large. This emphasizes joint accountability and shifts away from self-care to collective care. Collective care refers to seeing members’ well-being – particularly their emotional health – as a shared responsibility of the group rather than the lone task of an individual.
There is much for us to learn and many relationships for us to continue building. We are thankful for our partnerships throughout the province and we commit to taking an anti-colonial and inclusive approach to the work we do.
