Trauma unit women selflessly volunteer their time to victims

IT is true, not all heroes wear capes.

Nobody better embodies this phrase than the women who run Wentworth SAPS’ trauma unit. Day or night, if there is someone in need of counselling, they are there in a heartbeat.

Wendy Augustine, Corayne Walters, Rachel Bishop and Amelia Fynn selflessly volunteer their time, expertise and sometimes even money to ensure that a victim is safe and heard.

The team prides itself in turning nobody in need of help away. They assist with matters of abuse, domestic violence and rape.

There is even a shelter at the police station to accommodate women and children. Augustine, who has been a volunteer for 18 years, said victims of violence can also be men and that their duty is to be the help that people need.

“Some of our successes include having the community come to us instead of the actual governmental department they should go to. I think they have more faith in us than they do others because we act immediately. We don’t wait or say that there is no one on duty,” she said.

The team plays a proactive role in the community, they occasionally visit schools with the police to do bag searches for weapons and drugs.

For serious, pressing matters, they are able to do call-outs to a range of issues like hijackings, suicide, or break-ins. Through their network of connections, they were once able to return a five-year-old girl back into the country. She was being groomed for child marriage in Pakistan.

Walters, who has been a volunteer for six years, said as a former nurse, that job was not nearly as hectic as having to deal with trauma cases.

“We had to tell a six-year-old girl that her mother had committed suicide. We have to hear cases of children being abused, women tell us horrific stories about what they go through. And we don’t have debriefing sessions, we have to carry those issues with us,” she said.

As gloomy as that may sound, they all insist that the trauma unit is still their happy place. They call their work passion rather than a job and believe that it is their ministry as they were placed there by God.

Rachel Bishop, who has been with the unit for three years, said their age and life experiences are the backbone of what they do.

“The counselling we give here does not come from a book. It comes from life experiences. Who better than us at our age? We also grew up in this area, so we can give advice to people better.”

“Counselling at this stage comes naturally to us as parents and grandparents. We treat the people who come to us like family and their children as ours. We can empathise with them because the four of us have collectively gone through many things,” she said.

The trauma unit services all communities of South Durban. It is situated at the Wentworth police station on 118 Austerville Drive, Wentworth. For more information, call the station on 031 452 6207.