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If you or someone else is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services now. Refuge is not an emergency service and cannot respond straight away.

Refuge

Somewhere to say what happened

You do not have to have decided what you want to do about it. You do not have to have proof. You can write one paragraph or ten, and you can stop at any point.

What Refuge is for

Harm suffered by a faith community or one of its members — harassment and threats, being forced from home or land, detention or disappearance, violence, or a place of worship destroyed or seized. Your own case, or one you have witnessed.

What happens to your report

It is read by a small, named team. Most reports are answered within three working days. Where a case belongs with lawyers, a relief agency or a journalist, we say so and help you reach them — including where that means not going through us at all.

What Refuge is not

We are not an emergency service, a police force or a court. We cannot compel anybody to do anything, we cannot guarantee an outcome, and we will not tell you otherwise.

Confidential is not the same as anonymous

Plenty of reporting services promise anonymity and cannot deliver it. Here is exactly what we mean, in the order it will matter to you.

Confidential
Your report is read only by the Refuge team. It is stored encrypted, it is not circulated, and it is never shared with anybody outside that team without your explicit agreement.
Not anonymous
We hold what you write. A detailed account can identify you to people who were there, whatever we do with it — and if you give us a way to reach you, we hold that too. We would rather say this plainly now than have you discover it later.
No surprises
If we ever have to disclose something — because somebody is at risk, or because we are legally compelled — we tell you first, what we are disclosing, and to whom. The only exception is where telling you would itself put somebody in danger.
You can stop
You can ask us to close your case and delete what we hold at any point, and we will confirm when it is done. You never need to give a reason.

Make a report

Four things. None of them are your name, your address, or a login.

You may leave this blank if saying would identify you.

What happened, roughly when, and who was involved. Take as much space as you need — there is no right way to write this.

Choose a passphrase

We will issue you a case code. Together with this passphrase it is the only way to check on your case — we cannot reset it and we cannot look it up for you.

At least 8 characters. Three unrelated words works well.

Check an existing case

Enter the case code we issued you and the passphrase you chose.

The ten characters we issued when you lodged your report.