Rape Crisis Cape Town was founded in Cape Town in 1976. Its counselling services fulfil an essential need for all victims of sexual assault and their families. A new office has been opened in Khayalitsha township and one is to be opened on the Cape Flats at Mitchells Plein. Sadly, the needs are greater than ever for emotional support, practical help should a case go to court, and confidential advice and information.

Rape Crisis Cape Town provides education and training about rape and the law, ways of prevention and ways of coping, for school children, police reservists, women's groups and community nurses. Training courses are held for Rape Crisis Cape Town counsellors and for community workers as counsellors to victims of sexual violence and rape.

Rape Crisis Cape Town supplies comprehensive materials including training dossiers and information pamphlets and booklets at nominal cost.

Rape Crisis Cape Town has been instrumental in setting up similar centres around the country.

Rape Crisis Cape Town needs to find at least 60 000 every year to carry out its programmes of counselling, training, and public education about this most intimate form of violence. Government does not yet provide any funding.

One of Rape Crisis Cape Town's enduring successes has been its courses to train police officers, police surgeons and nurses, and public prosecutors to avoid the secondary violation of women victims during legal investigations and court room procedures.

Rape Crisis Cape Town is powerful in its advocacy of new attitudes and new social institutions to deal with issues of sexual violence. It was represented on the Attorney General of the Cape's Task Force on Rape, which led to the establishment of a unique institution: a Sexual Crimes Court, which deals only with these cases. It has been very effective in achieving a massive increase in convictions.