24-hour service offers comfort

The phone rings. The call is transferred from the receptionist to a licensed counselor. No one knows exactly what to expect from this unknown caller. The counselor must be ready to deal with any problems that might arise on the other end of the line.\n"All the calls we receive are pretty intense," Suzanne Pauwels, licensed counselor at the IU Health Center, said. \nPauwels works at the Sexual Assault Crisis Service. SACS is a division of Campus Life and offers a 24-hour crisis help line for anyone with concerns about sexual assault. \nStudents can access the help line 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 855-8900.\nThe service recently celebrated 13 years of service to the IU community. \nWorking at SACS can be a lot of hard work, employees say. The hours do not follow the typical nine-to-five work day.\n"One of us is always on call," Pauwels said.\nWorking with victims of sexual assault has an emotional impact on the lives of the counselors as well.\n"The hardest part of working at SACS is seeing how sexual assault affects people's lives in traumatic ways, as well as seeing how attitudes and behaviors of perpetrators change little over the years," Debbie Melloan-Ruiz, a licensed counselor with SACS, said.\nAlthough this job can be stressful and hard, this service is needed on campus, IU Police Department officials said.\n"Sexual assault, in general, is a problem at all university campuses," Lt. Jerry Minger of the IUPD said.\nAccording to the IUPD statistics, there were five forcible rapes reported on campus in 1999. The problem with this statistic, though, is that many of the rapes that are committed are not reported, Minger said.\n"Maybe 10 percent (of victims) report it to the police," Pauwels said.\nShe said the counselors need to try to balance their work with the rest of their lives. Counselors must unwind after answering intense calls daily.\n"It is extremely important in this line of work to take care of oneself," Pauwels said.\nCounseling is not an occupation for everyone because of stress factors and emotional impact that come along with the job, SACS employees said.\n"I think anyone who goes into counseling has to have a real desire to help others," Pauwels said.\nSACS provides free individual and group counseling to victims of sexual assault as well as their family and friends. The program also works to provide educational programs, prevention strategies, crisis counseling, advocacy, medical treatment and legal referrals according to the needs of the victim. \nAlthough providing these services can be hard work, the job is very rewarding to the staff, they said.\n"The best part of working at SACS is being able to be a part of someone's journey toward healing from sexual assault," Melloan-Ruiz said. "I get to see individuals move from being devastated by what has happened to them to regaining control and moving onto feeling good about themselves again."\nPauwels echoed her co-worker's sentiments.\n"As difficult as it is, you can see people make major positive changes," Pauwels said.