Mary Crilly, Director of Cork's Sexual Violence Centre can only be described as the heart and soul of the Cork centre since she has stood firmly by it from it's early establishment in 1983.

Mary claims that it was a pure fluke that she got involved with the centre back in the 1980's, "I was asked by a friend to come along to a meeting with six other women who were in the process of establishing a support group for people suffering from sexual violence.

"I actually had never been involved in women's groups or anything like that before, so it was a pure fluke that I got involved. I definitely didn't think at the time that I would last more than six months being a separated mother of two kids and now, I'm here 25 years later!".

Mary says that when the centre first started out there was only around 130 cases of sexual violence been reported in any given year. This is compared to over 2,000 cases been reported last year.

"When we started off people couldn't understand what we were doing. There was a huge stigma attached to sexual violence at the time. Now there is an array of councillors and support groups in the city. So you can understand that we a hard time in trying to encourage people to come to our centre and talk".

The Sexual Violence Centre, which is based in Camden Place in Cork, recently celebrated 25 years of service provision to the people of Cork. The centre changed its name in 2004 from the Rape Crisis Centre to the Sexual Violence Centre in recognition of the changes experienced by the centre.

The centre provides free confidential counselling to victims of sexual violence. In addition, it has a telephone helpline, information and advice centre, family support service, sexual assault treatment unit and provides accompaniment and victim impact reports.

Mary claims that people make contact with the centre for many reasons. They may have been assaulted or know someone who has been assaulted.

Information, advice and support are available from the centre if someone finds themselves a victim of rape or sexual assault, for adult survivors of child sexual abuse, and those experiencing sexual harassment or domestic violence.

The Sexual Violence Centre claim there is no "typical" person who visits the centre. They may be young or old, recently assaulted, assaulted many years ago, or abused in childhood.