Safeline's story#
Diane Shoreman, a Warwickshire social worker, started Safeline on 8 March 1994 as a small helpline run from her bedroom, funded at first by a book of survivors' poetry. It moved into premises in Warwick in 1996, added counselling in 2000 and an ISVA service for Warwickshire in 2005. In 2015 it opened the National Male Survivor Helpline, and in 2017 national phone and online counselling. It works with people of any gender from age 3, free of charge, and says it has supported more than 160,000 people since it began.
Local services and national ones#
Face-to-face counselling is for people in Coventry and Warwickshire, at centres including Coventry, Warwick, Rugby, Nuneaton and Leamington. The same goes for its independent sexual violence advisers, who can talk to employers or schools, help with housing and benefits, go with you to police interviews and court, and help with criminal injuries compensation. A children's ISVA works with ages 3 to 18.
Two services reach further. The National Male Survivor Helpline is for men, boys and anyone who identifies as male or non-binary, and for people supporting them, with no referral needed: phone calls of up to 30 minutes, live chat of up to 45, and email answered within a week. It is open only on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 10am to 3pm. Separately, adults aged 16 or over in England and Wales who experienced sexual abuse as children can refer themselves for counselling by phone or online.
Referrals for every service go through online forms, for yourself or someone else. Safeline is not a crisis service, and every page has a Leave quickly button.
Taking an old name off the internet#
Few charities publish anything as useful for the practical side of a new name as Safeline's Online Safety and Data Removal guide. It explains the rights survivors have under UK data protection law:
- Erasure: ask an organisation to delete your personal data; a short written statement naming the right is enough to start it.
- Restriction: if erasure is refused, for example because the data is needed for legal reasons, ask for its use to be limited.
- Rectification: have wrong data corrected, which the guide says includes removing an old address or name that could link you to a previous location.
It then sets out a routine: find where your details appear, including people-search sites and data brokers; ask search engines and sites to remove them; set alerts on your name; and check your credit file for unusual activity. Its media interviews page adds that survivors of sexual offences have an automatic, lifelong right to anonymity.
Using that advice with a new name#
A deed poll changes your name from the day you sign it, but it does not clean up the records that hold the old one. Safeline's routine is the part that does. Credit files can hold an old name and address together: what Experian, Equifax and TransUnion do explains how to update them, and the handbook's address privacy page deals with the electoral register and other public records. For male survivors outside Safeline's helpline hours, SurvivorsUK answers messages every day.
This page describes what Safeline publishes on its own website, read on 26 October 2026. Safeline has not reviewed it, and listing a charity here does not mean it recommends this handbook or any deed poll service.
