There are protection and help facilities as well as advice centers with different focuses. The Equal Opportunities Office of the City of Bonn will be happy to advise you on which institution can help and in what form.

You can find a collection of contact, counseling and support services in Bonn and the Rhein-Sieg district in the  victim support handbook of the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg Victim Protection Working Group.

The Equal Opportunities Office has been represented in the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg district victim protection working group since 2001. This is a broad network of around 50 institutions and professionals who work with victims of violence or are committed to their interests. The aim of the working group is to improve the support structures for victims of violence.

The working group meets three times a year. In addition to exchanging information and discussing current issues, various problem areas are discussed in specialist lectures and project presentations. The working group is led and coordinated by an organizational team and managed by the  Counselling Centre against Sexualized Violence (opens in a new tab).

The Bonn/Rhine-Sieg Victim Protection Working Group forms subgroups and working groups on various topics as required. Other topics include Witness support and witness rooms, stalking, violence against women, domestic violence, sexualized violence, victim protection reforms, trauma, child abuse and neglect.

The working group has also published a comprehensive  victim support handbook.

Victims or witnesses of violence, accidents and other traumatic experiences can find professional and human support for various concerns and problems from a number of institutions in Bonn and the Rhein-Sieg district. However, victims are often not sufficiently aware of these services. This handbook has been designed to provide victims, witnesses, relatives and professionals with a compilation of existing support services in the field of victim protection.

General contact points for victim protection and victim support are mentioned in the handbook as well as specialized help on the subject of sexualized and domestic violence, child and youth protection, human trafficking or forced prostitution.

You will also find contact points for specific target groups such as addiction counseling centers, educational counseling centers, pregnancy conflict counseling centers or counseling centers for older people who are victims of violence.

In August 2018, the "Luisa is here" campaign was also launched in Bonn on the initiative of the city's Equal Opportunities Office.

Luisa is an offer of help for women in pubs, clubs and restaurants. By asking the question "Is Luisa here?", women can approach the staff and receive immediate and discreet help. If a woman asks for Luisa, the trained bar staff will offer her a place to retreat to. The next steps are then discussed with the woman at this retreat and it depends entirely on what help the woman would like to make use of in the specific situation. For example, a cab can be called, her friends at the club can be sought out or someone can collect her things from the checkroom, etc.

Luisa not only helps in specific situations, the possibility of low-threshold help already gives women a feeling of security. By participating, the businesses also send out a signal that there is no place for assaults and violence in their premises.

The "Luisa is here" campaign was conceived in 2016 by Frauen-Notruf e.V. Münster and the materials were designed based on a campaign in England (# Ask for Angela).

The Equal Opportunities Office in Bonn, together with the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg Victim Protection Working Group, would also like to successfully establish the campaign in Bonn. You can find more information and an up-to-date overview of the participants in Bonn on the website of the Counselling Center against Sexualized Violence:

The Bonn/Rhein-Sieg Victim Protection Working Group has developed a procedure for the region that enables anonymous evidence collection after a sexual offense (ASS).

The ASS project offers victims of sexualized acts of violence an anonymous, yet court-usable method of securing and storing evidence. They can take the often stressful step of reporting a crime in peace and have up to ten years to do so without losing any important evidence of the crime. After a sexual offense, victims can have themselves examined in most clinics in Bonn and the Rhein-Sieg district. The traces are secured there with a special forensic kit and then stored at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University of Bonn. They can be retrieved there under a box number in the event of a later report.

The project not only aims to improve medical care for victims, but also criminal prosecution.

Further information, including details of the advice centers and the hospitals involved, can be found in the leaflet.

Stalking is the intentional and repeated following and harassment of a person so that their safety is threatened and/or their way of life is seriously impaired.

Stalking is a criminal offense in Germany.

The stalker's actions may concern a stranger, a person they know superficially or a person from a past relationship. The often merciless harassment can last for months, years, sometimes a lifetime.

According to a study by the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, almost twelve percent of all people in Germany are stalked at least once in their lifetime. Women are overrepresented as victims, accounting for over 80 percent, while the perpetrators are predominantly male. The physical and psychological impact on victims is often considerable and frequently leads to severe trauma.

Conflicts and group formations can occur wherever people come together. However, bullying must be distinguished from other conflict situations. Bullying is systematic harassment and intrigue by one or more people against a single person, which lasts for a long time and is directed against the person's self-image and self-esteem. The aim is to systematically ostracize, harass, disadvantage and humiliate the person concerned.

Whether bullying has occurred always depends on the circumstances of the individual case. Not every dispute or difference of opinion is bullying. Short-term conflict situations generally lack the necessary systematic approach.

Bullying in the workplace refers to hostile behavior between colleagues or between superiors and employees. The situation is characterized by the fact that the person being attacked is inferior and the attacks are carried out systematically by one or more people over a longer period of time. Here, too, not every argument, dispute or injustice is bullying - but bullying can arise from conflicts that are poorly handled or not handled at all. The transition is fluid. Workplace bullying is more common than many people think, and it can affect anyone. According to current estimates, around 1.6 million people in Germany suffer from workplace bullying.

The consequences are frightening in their extent: the victims almost always suffer considerable mental and physical complaints. Psychosomatic complaints and illnesses, depression, exhaustion, secondary illnesses due to a lack of resistance, anxiety and much more can be the result. The financial burden on organizations due to employee absences is considerable. And once word gets around that bullying is the order of the day in certain companies and administrations, the image suffers enormously.

For employees of the City of Bonn, there is a service agreement on the procedure for dealing with bullying, which was agreed with the General Staff Council. It is aimed at preventing, combating and following up on bullying and is intended to ensure that those affected and HR managers behave safely in specific cases.