I know three things about childhood sexual abuse and rape services.

First, there is little help out there for children and adults who have suffered rape or sexual abuse, except for charitable services like Family Matters.

It may surprise you to know that, with the exception of a few forensic examination centres for rape victims dotted around the country, there are no specialist services available on the NHS.

People have to wait until they are ill before qualifying for help. Yet we have extensive services for drugs and alcohol, obesity and even smoking.

Second, the numbers of victims of rape and childhood sexual abuse are legion. The latest research published in The Lancet (Gilbert et al: 2009) tells us that between five-10 per cent of girls and one-five per cent 1of boys suffer penetrative sexual abuse and that only 14 per cent of rapes are ever reported.

Extrapolating Kent’s rape figures this means nearly 3,000 women are raped in the county each year. 

Family Matters saw 179 rape victims last year a shocking quarter of them were under 16.

And third, Kent has only one, part-time, rape exam suite located in the Renton GUM Clinic in Darent Hospital.  Get raped anywhere else in Kent and you are likely to be seen in a converted police house by a police doctor.

To the senior managers of the KCC and NHS and to our new Chief Constable, I say, on behalf of victims, “This is not good enough and must change.”

All of our children and women folk (and some men) are at risk.  We have to share the responsibility for stopping this abuse and helping those who have suffered it. 

One certain thing I do know – it’s in our collective interests to help them as we are already paying!

Did you know, for instance, that the Dept of Health report on Women’s Mental Health (2002) stated that around 40 per cent of women accessing mental health services had been sexually abused.  How much does that cost our collective purse? Not to mention the misery that could be averted by early intervention.

So, we have a picture - doctors and nurses (at great expense) dragging drowned people out of the river and no one up stream except Family Matters and its fellow charities working to stop them jumping in. 

What do victims of rape and childhood sexual abuse need in Kent?

They need the specialist charities working with sexual abuse and rape to be funded to support them throughout Kent and provide outcome-assessed deliverables. 

This level of abuse is way too serious to be left to fundraising and the savings too great, especially to the NHS mental health and GP services, to avoid.

Rape victims need a new 24/7 Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) in the East and Coastal area of the county to run in tandem with the Renton GUM clinic SARC at Darent Hospital. 

It must be managed as a victim centered facility by a specialist rape and sexual abuse charity with victim-linked governance. 

A haven from their trauma – not a clinic for the obtaining of evidence only!   

We must move away from what the Criminal Justice System thinks it wants to an emphasis on the ‘victim’s experience’ as recommended by the Baroness Stern Enquiry into rape Investigation (2010).

As the commissioners of the NHS collectively draw up their chairs and take a breath to lecture me on pressures of competing needs, financial strictures and that the dark assassins of funding-cuts are stalking their corridors, I raise my hand and ask them to hear this.

North Kent PCT is about to commission £100,000 on helping people give up smoking. Unlike sexual abuse and rape, smoking is a lifestyle choice and people can give up smoking without help – I know I’ve done it! People who were given no choice should be your priority.

Oh, and one more thing health commissioners; should you care to listen, I can show you equally compelling links to health savings in taking preventative measures with victims of sexual abuse and rape – see your own report on Women in Mental Health above.

• Malcolm Gilbert, operations director of Gravesend-based Family Matters,  the UK’s largest specialist childhood sexual abuse and rape counselling and support charity seeing nearly 700 children and adults a year in Kent, south eats London and Surrey.