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Louise Nicholas has been given Government funding for a year to collect the stories of other sexual violence victims for schools, health professionals and policymakers.
She started work as a fulltime "survivor advocate" for Rape Prevention Education in Auckland on July 12, and has already spent two weeks supporting a rape victim through an Auckland court case.
Rape Prevention director Kim McGregor said the new role formalised what Mrs Nicholas had already been doing since the high-profile rape trials of former police officers Brad Shipton, Bob Schollum and Clint Rickards.
All three were acquitted, and it was revealed later that Shipton and Schollum had been convicted in 2005 of the pack rape of another woman in Mt Maunganui in 1989.
Mrs Nicholas published a best-selling book about her experience last year and was the Herald's New Zealander of the Year.
"It's almost like she's become a one-stop-shop rape crisis agency," Dr McGregor said.
"People are writing to her, emailing her, ringing her, coming up to her in the street and telling how they didn't give up because of her.
"So over the next year she is going to develop a research project around the themes that come from survivors."
Her research will feed into a taskforce on sexual violence which is to report next July on a range of issues, including how victims could be better supported in the justice system.
Dr McGregor said the costs of a salary and travel were being split equally among three Government agencies.
Justice Minister Annette King announced the position in May as "to ensure that the voices of sexual abuse survivors are given their rightful prominence in work to prevent sexual violence and abuse".
Dr McGregor said the job was advertised and several applicants were interviewed.
Mrs Nicholas was "by far the strongest candidate".
Dr McGregor herself launched a new book last night. Surviving and Moving On is a self-help guide for victims of childhood sexual abuse.
She cites surveys showing that between a fifth and a third of girls, and between an eighth and a sixth of boys, are sexually abused before the age of 16.
She said about half of all New Zealanders in the mental health system, and 80 to 90 per cent of residents in some Auckland drug treatment centres such as Odyssey House, had been sexually abused in childhood.
A third to half of sex offenders had also been sexually abused themselves, and most offenders abused members of their own families.
Mrs Nicholas said the only way to break the cycle was to educate the next generation. "You say to them, 'It's okay to say no'," she said.
"I say it to my daughters regularly - if you are unhappy with the situation you're in, but you think it's uncool to say 'I don't do that because I don't like it', well it's okay to say no.
"That's the only way we are going to get rid of it - by educating our young women, and by making it easier for them to come forward.
"We have to have the system set up for them to say 'I'm uncomfortable with the situation at home'."
Dr McGregor said parents also needed education so that they could recognise possible signs of abuse and know how to respond.
Although the money will run out next July, she hopes the Government taskforce will recommend extending education programmes nationally.
