An Oʻahu facility for those suffering from sex abuse is getting help from a local insurance company.
The Sex Abuse Treatment Center at the Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women & Children has received a $100,000 gift from UHA Health Insurance. The money will be used to expand technological outreach services.
SATC currently has a 24-hour crisis phone hotline for victims to report their sexual abuse and receive mental and physical care. The tech upgrade will add a webchat and text message option early next year.
Lynn Costales Matsuoka, the associate director of SATC, says this feature is critical for those living with their abusers. The pandemic created difficulties for some victims to reach out for help because they could not make calls to crisis hotlines.
Nearly 90% of sexual violence cases reported in Hawaiʻi are perpetrated by someone the victim knows.
"Unlike some areas of the mainland, we don’t see as much stranger danger cases," Matsuoka told HPR.
Nearly 1,700 survivors contacted the SATC last year. More than 600 of them called the center for the first time, and half of them were children.
