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How can men break the silence on sexual abuse?

We speak with Duncan Craig from We Are Survivors about how to find a path forward.

Gaydar

05 Aug 2025 — 7 min read

For our podcast, How To Date Men, we caught up with Duncan Craig - chief executive officer of We Are Survivors.

Based in Greater Manchester, We Are Survivors is a survivor-focused voluntary sector organisation that aims to create and facilitate safe spaces for male survivors of sexual abuse, rape and sexual exploitation.

In the conversation, we talk about homophobia, asking for help, and the factors contributing to rising numbers of men reporting abuse.

Listen to the episode

Let's begin with the origin story of We Are Survivors. This is an organisation you founded in 2009 - an initiative that emerged from a combination of your training as a therapist, highlighting the lack of services for men who suffer sexual abuse, but that also unlocked memories of your own trauma. Why didn't specialist services for men already exist?

I grew up in quite a rough part of Manchester where difference wasn't accepted. You had to fit in. At the very same time as the sexual abuse was happening to me, I was also in parallel discovering who I was as an individual. And so my coming out story is really marred by my sexual abuse story - the discovery of myself is really marred by my victimhood at the time.

It wasn't until I went looking for the support for the clients I was working with as a psychotherapist that I realised how little support was available for men. There was a support service in London, but you had to be in London. There was a support service in Brighton, but you had to be in Brighton. And I'm like, I come from Manchester. Why haven't we got something here?

So I was just kind of like, right, okay - I'm going to do something. I rallied some people together and started it.

Who are the men that your organisation is designed to help?

They're all men. It's really important that we say that from the outset. Our mission, our vision is around ensuring no male survivor is left behind. And I mean, all men. So we define all men as including trans, non-binary people - if non-binary people feel safe in a male survivor space, then the doors open. Cisgendered men.

Everybody is age 16 plus, although hopefully soon that's going to change. We're going to drop our age down to 13 because there's a real transitional period where I think we're not providing the right support to teenagers across the country, particularly teenage boys.

About 80% of them are white, 20% are black and minority ethnic men of colour, about 75 % of the men are heterosexual and then 25 % are either men who have sex with men, men who identify as bisexual, men who identify as gay, queer and trans men.

About 85 % of the men that we work with are men whose experience happened in the past. Generally people talk about "historic", we talk about "non-current". We talk about "current" as being the thing that happened within a year, and then anything "non-current" afterwards.

Within the non-current, it's usually adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, usually before the age of about 14 - pre-pubertal or teenagers.

For people who have experienced it more as adults, they're more likely to be members of the LGBT community, where sexual assault has happened through dating, dating apps, chemsex activity.

What are men looking for when they come to you for help?

I think fundamentally what they're asking for - they don't say this, but I think they're basically saying - please, can you help me stop feeling like this? I think that's at the core of the ask for help.

I think it boils down to just that really visceral immediacy of, I feel terrible, I'm not sleeping, I can't stop thinking about stuff. How do I move beyond this point?

At assessment point, what we're looking for is not just "tell me what happened", it's also "tell me what else is going on in life". How's your relationship? How is your work life?

Statistically speaking, what we know is that if females don't report or disclose to someone at the time of something happening, she'll take roughly about six years before seeking help - males will take in excess of 20 years.

There's usually something that has triggered them to ask for help.

I was interested in the work that the organisation's doing with people in prison settings. You're supporting people in prison who are dealing with sexual abuse, but you also support people who are perpetuating that pattern of abuse. How closely do those two things intersect? Or are they completely different programs?

They're sort of different programs.

We've always tried to fight against two ideas - that sexual abuse has something to do with homosexuality, and that sexual abuse victims will go on to abuse.

It feels obvious to say that sexual abuse and homosexuality are two completely different things, although at the moment the right of politics is bringing those old tropes back. We've got to stand up to that.

In terms of "the abused becomes the abusers" - the data doesn't stack up to it. What the data tells us is that there's about 87 % of contact offenders. So usually pedophilic contact offenders have been abused in their childhood, but only about 3% of victims will ever go on to offend - you're more likely not to offend. However, the people that are survivors that have also offended become potentially problematic people because the repeat offending is really quite high.

We work with all 15 prisons across the Northwest. Within that prison population, it's about 4% are bisexual, gay and trans. The majority of the people are survivors, but they're not necessarily survivors that will admit they're survivors. So we've got about 50-60% of the population that admit something happened to me when I was a child, or something happened to me when I've been in prison. Then there's about 30% will say no, no, no, nothing's happened to me, but I grew up in a terrible household. I was beaten, domestic abuse, et cetera. And then once they get to trust you more, then they'll make a disclosure. And then there's a small percentage then who are people who genuinely haven't experienced sexual abuse, but they've experienced some other kind of high level trauma.

As a therapist, as a survivor, I think my work with people who have committed sexual offences has been some of the richest work in my learning. I think I learned more about relationships, more about psychology, more about the interpersonal thing between people.

Why do you think that's such a rich source of learning? Just because of the intensity of what's happening?

Because there's an element of the individual that's sat in front of me in my therapy room knows that I know he has done some of the worst things possible. So they often become quite unedited. It ends up being some of the most vulnerable in-depth conversations that help people begin to move forward.

When you look at the broad scope of the organisation's work, what are the numbers looking like in terms of men coming to you looking for help? Is that increasing or decreasing?

Definitely increasing.

We're seeing about a 25-30% increase year-on-year. We now see around about two and a half thousand men every single year. We get about two or three brand new referrals from individuals that we've never met before, at least every single day, 365 days of the year.

We are also definitely seeing younger people now.

When you talk about increasing numbers, do you think that's reflecting an increasing willingness of people to speak up and ask for help, or does it reflect that more abuse is happening?

It's a bit of both.

The more we provide space in the world to talk about these issues, the more people come forward and ask for help.

It's very easy to blame apps, it's very easy to blame technology. But I think what technology has done is it's made it easier for people to meet. Mathematically speaking, if we're meeting more people, the chances are that more things are going to happen.

I don't necessarily think that the world has moved in a way that there's just more sexual violence. There is, but we have to look at the cause. And I don't think the cause is people think it's OK. I think it's just all of the other contributing factors.

If someone has been abused or wants to get some help with an experience that they're struggling with, what advice or guidance would you give them?

My first thing is to always say to people, your story is your story. No one gets to have the rights over that. I always want you to know that if you ever choose to speak out and you want to speak to someone, you can go to our website and there's loads of information on there which will help you get in touch.

We're here not to tell you what to do. We're here to walk with you. Whatever it is that you want. We sometimes have a map and sometimes we don't. Even if we're holding the map and you're heading in a direction and we don't know where you're going, we'll just carry on walking with you.

Give yourself permission to be able to access help when you want to access help. Not when someone tells you to, not when you feel like we're saying you should do, but when you're ready.