In each school visited by specialist sex educators, there are rape myths. Teenagers as young as 13 believe the way a woman dresses can cause a sexual assault; if a woman is drunk, she's "asking for it"; if she flirts, she can be partly blamed for her rape.

"Victim blaming is extremely common," says the head of Auckland's Rape Prevention Education, Kim McGregor. "There's still a widely held belief that girls need to be responsible for their own safety, rather than the onus being on the person doing the harm."

Fortunately, McGregor and her team are able to get to some of Auckland's young people before their attitudes - learned from families, friends, movies and media - are set for life.

It takes only four classroom sessions to help teenagers understand about consent through a programme that has helped some schools overcome sexual harassment, bullying and offensive behaviour. The course, Body Safe, teaches young people to respect each other. It encourages young people to talk about sexual relationships, boundaries, and the effects of alcohol on decision- making.

Similar programmes are run across the country - in Wellington the Sexual Violence Prevention Network works with schools, community groups and the hospitality sector to help workers recognise sexual assault and how to step in.

Prevention education is a well- recognised first step to address what some are calling an "epidemic" of sexual violence and the prevalence of rape culture in New Zealand. The problem is, funding seems to be a last priority.

There are around 25 groups doing rape prevention work in New Zealand. Most work out of Rape Crisis offices or similar - usually one staff member or volunteer embedded in an organisation, sometimes looking after an entire region. Prevention funding comes from an ad-hoc pool of government agencies - health, social development, ACC - and is believed to amount to around $5 million a year for prevention and frontline services.

"It's a scattergun approach," McGregor says. "There is no national funding plan. We have no formal way to organise ourselves."

The money issues began at the end of the 1980s, when funding was redirected from prevention into frontline services, and then began to dry up altogether. In 1991, the national Rape Crisis office closed. In 2005, one office on average was closing every month. At that stage, the groups banded together to form a national network called TOAH- NNEST, then in 2007 worked with government on a taskforce report that was supposed to be drafted into a national plan. In 2009, the report was released with 70 recommendations.

In 2010, Justice Minister Simon Power gave $1m over two years for sexual violence prevention programmes as a stop-gap while a national plan was drafted. However, the plan was never released.

Since then, there has been little change to funding, other than further cuts. In 2012, Hawera Rape Crisis had to close, Auckland HELP had to run a campaign to prevent closing down its 24-hour phone line and Wellington Rape Crisis was forced to close for one day a week.

Last year, Rape Prevention Education dropped two of its main programmes, one aimed at an older group and another aimed at those in alternative education, because it did not have enough money. Body Safe reaches less than 50 per cent of Auckland's 120 high schools.

A select committee inquiry into funding is under way, but the services are concerned issues will not be resolved in time so this year more organisations battle to stay open while need continues to rise.

Green MP Jan Logie says the haphazard funding structure needs to change immediately. "Every time one of the government departments changes their funding priorities then there is a ripple effect. There is no overview to ensure consistency of funding."

However, the amount of money needed is unclear because of the long-term underfunding. Comparatively, the family violence prevention services receive around $11m annually. Quitline, the smoking cessation service, was funded at $9.4m. The National Depression Initiative initially received $6.4m.

McGregor says to reach all the students in Auckland they would need $4.5m per year. She points out that each incidence of sexual violence is believed to cost the country $72,000. "Therefore we would only need to stop 60 rapes per year to make it worthwhile."

In Wellington, head of the sexual violence prevention network Fiona McNamara said a goal was to get into more schools. "If there was more funding we could do much more."

Both educators said while they knew their programmes worked well, issues like the Roastbusters case - where young men allegedly got girls drunk to rape and humiliate them - were not going to be solved without a wider look at New Zealand society and its attitudes.

"That kind of behaviour is happening," McNamara said. "Rape culture is everywhere - sexual abuse is normalised, victim blaming is an issue. We need to be looking at the behaviour of the perpetrators."

McGregor believed it was time not just for better-funded prevention services, but for a well-tested, national education programme, like the "It's Not OK" campaign.

"Sexual violence has always been in the too-hard basket, because it's talking about sex.

"But because it's human perpetrated behaviour it can be changed . . . we stopped smoking in bars, we stopped drink-driving."

She said addressing rape culture was the first step. "Sexual violence can be prevented. There is hope."

PERPETRATORS NEED HELP TOO

When Sarah* was raped by the father of her children, she turned to a sexual abuse treatment service to try to get him some help.

The couple had separated and the man had been living by himself. He became fixated on the idea of ''makeup sex'' - intercourse following an argument - and thought that if only they could sleep together again it would make everything OK. Instead, he ended up sexually assaulting her.

Though she was devastated and humiliated, Sarah didn't want her former husband to go to jail. But she also didn't want him to offend again, so decided to help him seek treatment. She couldn't find any.

While there are five services in New Zealand for child sex offenders, there are no agencies that are funded to treat men who offend against adults.

''Our contracts mean we can't take anyone who has been abused over the age of 16,'' says the chief executive of child offender treatment service WellStop, Lesley Ayland.

''It's not a lack of funding it's a lack of consideration that we would need to have treatment programmes for adults that have assaulted adults.''

The services don't like to turn people away, however. In Sarah's case, her husband was treated under the radar by an unnamed service. Most adult offenders will be dealt with in a similar way if they truly need help, but the services' contracts are strict and they don't want to push it with funding agencies - which include Child, Youth and Family and Corrections.

The only legitimate treatment for adult-on-adult offenders is in jail. If the offenders are in the community or even if they think they have a problem and are yet to offend, there is no help.

Former head of WellStop, Hamish Dixon, said it meant both prevention and treatment for those with sexual violence issues was unavailable except through private medical experts.

''Violence programmes exist. If you see someone behaving in a violent way you can say, go to get help,'' he said. ''But if they're behaving sexually inappropriately, there's nothing you can do other than go to the police.''

Dixon said the issue was that no government department wanted to take responsibility for the problem - Child, Youth and Family focused on children, the Ministry of Social Development did not believe it was in its area and Corrections would deal only with those who had been prosecuted.

He said there was a feeling that treating people in the community was a soft option ''But there needs to be options,'' Dixon said. ''A lot of men deny what they did was rape and would not want to go to treatment. But there are a group of people who would welcome having that option and that includes survivors of sexual violence as well as people who have perpetrated it.''

Ayland said ideally their service - and its co-services in Auckland and Christchurch - would work with both the courts and the survivor agencies to ensure rapists could get treatment.

''For every survivor who attends the victim agencies, there's a perpetrator,'' Ayland said. ''If we're going to stop this problem we've got to look at prevention and we've got to look at the perpetrators, as well as supporting those harmed. Just supporting the victims doesn't stop the problem.''

WHAT IS RAPE CULTURE?

Rape culture refers to an environment where sexual violence is normalised and excused. It can be perpetuated through misogynistic language, objectification of women and the glamorisation of sexual violence. It creates a society that disregards women's rights and safety.

Examples include blaming the victim, "she asked for it", or trivialising sexual assault by saying things like "boys will be boys". Sexually explicit jokes, inflation of false rape reports statistics, tolerance of sexual harassment and teaching women to avoid rape instead of teaching men not to rape are all part of rape culture.

A recent Amnesty International survey found around one-third of people thought a woman could bring rape on themselves with provocative behaviour such as getting drunk, flirting, or wearing revealing clothing. Those beliefs support rape culture.

*names have been changed