Up to 10,000 victims of sexual abuse are estimated to be waiting more than a year for counselling, with thousands potentially never receiving treatment, due to a funding crisis gripping specialist charities across the UK.

Dozens of support groups are facing closure within a year amid the twin pressures of funding cuts and thousands more victims seeking help as a result of high-profile sex abuse investigations.

Research by the Guardian found more than 1,600 people on the waiting lists of 17 charities, with the total figure estimated to top 10,000 for the 135 specialist support groups across the UK.

Charity leaders including Gabrielle Shaw, the chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC), are urging the government to commit more funding to the struggling charities, warning that services will close and victims will suffer if they do not receive urgent help.

Shaw said: “There is a crisis and it’s because of hugely increasing demand. The scale and the scope of child sex abuse that has happened in the past has to be recognised for what it is – absolutely massive.”



The long-awaited independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, launched by Justice Lowell Goddard in July, is expected to hugely increase the strain on small charities that already have an average of 120 people on their waiting lists. They are expecting a flood of survivors to come forward for the first time to give evidence to the inquiry, which could last five years.



According to police, there has been a rise in child sexual abuse incidents from 66,120 in 2012 to a projected 113,291 cases in 2015, which is a potential 71% increase in the overall number of cases reported to police over the last three years. Recent cases have risen by 31% and non-recent cases have risen by 165%.

Research by the Guardian also found that:



None of the 46 Rape Crisis organisations in England and Wales have secure funding beyond March 2016, despite a 50% increase since 2014 in the number of victims receiving ongoing support, to 50,000 a year. Calls to its helpline have soared to 164,000 – an average of 3,000 a week.



Britain’s biggest male rape charity, Survivors UK, is at risk of closing its counselling service by the end of the year. The London-based organisation has had to cancel its group therapy service and cut patient numbers from 55 to 30, despite a 120% increase in male victims of sexual violence in the capital last year.



Several charities have called on Theresa May to review the handling of a £4.85m Home Office fund distributed earlier this year to help them cope with the increased demand. Scores of charities missed out on five-figure sums while Missing People, which does not specialise in supporting abuse victims, was handed £170,148.



Fay Maxted OBE, the chief executive of the Survivors Trust, a national umbrella group for sexual abuse charities, said victims were being deprived of quick access to support – meaning the UK was in breach of an EU directive protecting their human rights.



At the 17 specialist charities contacted by the Guardian, waiting lists spanned from a few months to over a year. Several bosses said they feared that by the time they are able to help people on their waiting lists, it may already be too late.



Susannah Faithfull, of the Aurora Foundation, a charity for people abused in childhood, said: “We do not know if, when we finally get to contact those victims or survivors on our waiting list, they could have taken their own lives. This is not being emotive or over the top – I wish it was.”

The funding crisis is in part due to cuts in voluntary sector grants provided by local authorities, but it has been compounded by the decision to devolve the distribution of the victims’ fund from the Ministry of Justice to the 41 police and crime commissioners in England and Wales last October.

Survivors UK is on the brink of closure after its £70,000-a-year funding was ended soon after the MoJ handed its distribution to Boris Johnson’s office.

About 20 victims a month contact Survivors UK seeking help, according to Michael May, the charity’s senior manager. He said: “At the moment we’re spending our own reserves to keep the counselling service alive, but it’s not indefinite. My trustees have given me until September to fundraise. If we can’t evidence that we can keep the service alive after September, then we process the shutdown.”

Nigel O’Mara, who founded Survivors UK in 1986, now runs the East Midlands survivors group. His “shoestring operation” has relied on the generosity of strangers, who donate to the charity via a crowdfunding website, since missing out on Home Office funding earlier this year.

He said: “The Home Office phoned me and asked me to come to London and they said they would help me fill in the forms and even submit my £26,000 bid.” O’Mara said he suspects the Home Office did not submit his bid because he did not receive a rejection letter from the Norfolk police and crime commissioner, unlike other unsuccessful applicants. He said: “I wrote in June to Theresa May to complain and got a reply saying the police and crime commissioner would contact me about it – I’m still waiting for a call.”



One of Scotland’s biggest survivors’ charities, Open Secret, had all its core funding – £115,000 – taken away by Falkirk council in June. Its counsellors are treating 700 victims of sexual abuse, with a further 168 people on a waiting list who may never receive help. The charity’s chief executive, Janine Rennie, said: “The thought of turning people away just absolutely keeps me awake at night. I don’t think I’ve slept for the past year on and off because I keep thinking what do we do, where do they go?”

If Open Secret closes its doors, many of its survivors will have to rely on public health and social services to receive treatment – at huge cost to local government, according to Rennie. Experts warn that by the time survivors have languished on a waiting list for a year, they are often in a much worse psychological state than when they first came forward.

Maxted said the lengthy waits for treatment leave survivors in unbearable trauma: “It will mean people using negative coping strategies for the trauma symptoms they’ve got – whether it be nightmares or flashbacks. Post-traumatic stress, people often get into destructive relationships or destructive coping strategies with drugs and alcohol, their mental health worsens over that time.”

Karen Bradley, the minister for preventing abuse and exploitation, said Britain was at “a watershed moment in facing up to the scale of child sexual abuse”. She said: “This government has prioritised funding to support victims of child sexual abuse. We have provided £1.7m a year to enable independent sexual violence advisors to work with survivors; £4.4m a year to support 86 rape support centres; and funding for a network of young persons’ advocates working with children who have experienced sexual abuse.

“Recognising the pressure on services, we announced an additional £7m for services supporting survivors of sexual violence in 2014-15 and 2015-16, including £2m for organisations that have experienced an increase in demand due to the child sexual abuse inquiry.”