Look at almost any charity in this sector and you will find a woman’s face, a first name, and a paragraph about what happened to her. It is the standard form of the sector and it is what donors respond to.
We do not do it. Not a name, not an initial, not a photograph, not a story, not a composite, and not for a funder at any level of giving. This is why.
The reader who decides it
When an organisation de-identifies a story, it is checking whether a stranger could identify the woman. That is the wrong test.
The reader who matters is the man she left. He knows the town, the number of children, the month she went, what the injury was, where she worked, which relative helped her and what her mother said. A story stripped of every name and detail that a stranger could use is still, to him, unmistakably her.
He may also be looking. A man who has lost track of a woman who left will read the websites of the organisations that help such women, and that is not a hypothetical.
So the question is not whether the story is anonymous. It is whether it is anonymous to the one person it must be anonymous to, and the answer is almost always no.
Consent is not enough
The obvious objection is that we could simply ask permission. We think permission does not solve it, for four reasons.
It cannot be withdrawn in practice. Once something is published it is copied, screenshotted, shared and indexed. A woman who agrees at a moment of gratitude and wants it gone in three years cannot have that, and we would be promising something we cannot deliver.
The consent is not freely given. Somebody who has received help from an organisation, and may need more of it, is not in a position to refuse that organisation a favour. That is true however carefully it is asked, and the more grateful she is the less free the answer is.
She cannot assess the risk. Nobody can predict who will read something in five years, what circumstances will have changed, or which detail will turn out to matter. We cannot assess it either, which is the point.
It is asked at the wrong time. The moment somebody is most willing to tell their story is usually the moment they are least able to weigh what it costs.
What using a story does to the work
There is a second problem, separate from safety, and it is about what the practice does to an organisation.
Once stories are the fundraising instrument, the organisation needs them. The most compelling ones come from the most severe cases, so the severe cases become the useful ones. Women who are articulate, presentable and willing get asked more than once. And the pressure sits, quietly, on staff who need something for a campaign and know exactly who would say yes.
None of that requires bad intent. It follows from the incentive, and the only reliable way to avoid it is not to have the incentive.
The composite, which is worse
The usual compromise is a story assembled from several real ones, with a note saying details have been changed.
We think that is worse rather than better. It is a fiction presented as evidence, the disclaimer is not read, and it is used to make claims about outcomes that no actual case would support. And it does not solve the original problem: a composite built from four real women contains four sets of identifying details, any one of which may be recognised by somebody.
If we would not publish the real thing, inventing something close to it is not an improvement.
What we publish instead
Costs. What each programme spent, on what, in what period, with what is left. That is checkable in a way that a story is not, and the reasoning behind it is set out in full.
We also publish what we do not know. Where a figure has not been worked out, it is marked as missing rather than estimated, and where something did not work we would rather say so than replace it with a story about somebody it did work for.
If you fund a programme, you receive the record of what it paid for. You do not receive the person.
What it costs us
Real money, and we would rather say so than pretend the decision is free.
We cannot run an appeal built around a named woman. We cannot supply a case study to a funder who asks for one, and some of them do ask, and some of them go elsewhere. We lose grant applications to organisations that can. Our materials are duller than everybody else’s and our conversion is worse.
We have decided that is the correct price. An organisation that would put a frightened woman on a poster to raise money is telling you something about how it will treat her information in every other respect.
What we will do
A woman who wants to speak publicly, in her own name, on her own initiative, is entitled to do so and it is not ours to prevent. What we will not do is ask her, arrange it, or benefit from it.
If somebody comes to us wanting to tell their story, we say what we have said here, we make sure they have thought about the specific risks, and we make it clear that nothing about the help they receive depends on the answer.
For journalists, the same applies from the other direction. We will talk about the work, the law, the pattern and the gaps in provision, at any length. We will not introduce you to a woman for an interview. What we can and cannot help with is set out separately.
The underlying rule
It is the same rule that governs everything else here, which is that we hold as little as possible and give away less. What we record and why so little of it comes from exactly the same place.
A story is hers. It is the one thing she has that is entirely her own, at a point when a great deal has been taken. We are not going to ask her for it in exchange for help, and we are not going to spend it on our own fundraising.
Questions people ask
Would you publish a story if she agreed?
No. Consent cannot be withdrawn once something is published, it is not freely given by somebody who may need more help, and neither she nor we can assess a risk that depends on who reads it in five years.
What about changing the details?
The test is not whether a stranger could identify her. It is whether the man she left could, and he knows the town, the children, the month and the injury. Details that protect her from strangers do not protect her from him.
Do you use composite stories?
No, and we think they are worse. A composite is a fiction presented as evidence, and one built from four real women still contains four sets of identifying details.
How can donors know the work is real?
From the accounts. What each programme spent, on what, in what period, with gaps marked as missing rather than estimated. It is duller than a story and it can actually be checked.
What if a woman wants to speak publicly herself?
That is entirely her right and not ours to prevent. What we will not do is ask her, arrange it, or benefit from it, and nothing about the help she receives depends on her answer.
If you need help now
If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, call or send a message to +2348025170267, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.
Before you rely on anything on this page
We publish these articles so that you can understand a subject and work out what to ask for. They are written carefully and in good faith. They are still general information about how things usually work, and not advice about your situation, which we do not know.
- This is not legal advice.
- We are not a law firm. Criminal law in Nigeria is largely a state matter, the VAPP Act applies in a state only if that state adopted it, and statutory, customary and Islamic marriages are governed by different law and different courts. Two people with the same facts can have genuinely different options. Get advice from a lawyer who practises where you live — and if cost is the obstacle, ask us, because arranging that is part of what we do.
- This is not medical advice.
- Nothing here is a diagnosis and nothing here replaces being examined. Do not delay seeing a doctor, nurse or pharmacist because of something you read here, and do not start, stop or change any treatment on the strength of it. If something is time critical, go and be seen.
- This is not counselling, and it is not financial advice.
- Articles about trauma, sleep, money, debt, renting or starting a business describe what commonly helps. They are not therapy and they are not a recommendation about your own money. Speak to a counsellor, a qualified adviser or your own bank about your circumstances.
- It may be out of date, or wrong for where you are.
- Law changes, services close, numbers stop answering and practice varies by state. We correct what we find, and we cannot promise that every page is current on the day you read it. Where we do not have something confirmed, we say so rather than fill the gap.
- Reading this does not make us your lawyer or your doctor.
- No professional relationship is created by reading an article, and we cannot accept liability for decisions taken on the strength of one. What we can do is help you reach somebody who is qualified to advise you, which is what the legal and health parts of our work exist for.
- We cannot promise an outcome, and we cannot make anybody safe.
- A protection order is a piece of paper backed by an enforcement system that is inconsistent. A plan works until the day it does not. Anybody in this field promising safety is selling something, and the promise itself is dangerous because it stops people planning.
Do not let this notice stop you acting. If you are in immediate danger, call 112. If something is medically urgent, go to a hospital — you do not need a police report to be treated. And if you do not know where to start, that is a normal way to begin: use the contact page and we will take it from there.
Also worth reading:
