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Muslims within New Zealand increasingly belong to diverse class, ethnic, professional and educational backgrounds. Statistics show that in New Zealand, the Muslim population is the most rapidly growing religious group, with the Muslim population increasing six-fold between 1991 and 2006.
Today, Muslims comprise 1% of the whole country’s population (Ward, 2011) but the services that cater to this community are scarce. This report focuses on understanding sexual abuse and assault in a Muslim context and the needs of Muslim women from sexual violence crisis support services. From this information good practice recommendations for service delivery have been identified, including workforce development, to better meet the needs of this community. This qualitative study aims to provide solutions and specific guidelines that can be implemented to provide support that better caters to the needs of Muslim women. A literature review is included but is not exhaustive, as there is an abundance of international literature supporting the fact that Muslim women facing sexual and intimate partner abuse have specific issues and needs when in such a crisis situation. This report is limited to sexual abuse suffered by Muslim women, with males as perpetrators. (From the abstract). This is one of the background reports to the inclusiveness section of the main report. See the website for more information about this project and the main report (#5218). Record #5224

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