A charity is celebrating International Men’s Day tomorrow (Wednesday) with the launch of a new survey investigating attitudes towards young men in the city.

Hove-based men’s charity Mankind provides counselling and support for victims of male rape, male sexual assault and violence across Sussex.

Martyn Sullivan, of Mankind, said: “We work with men that have experienced childhood sexual abuse. And we have noticed that young men in particular, who have suffered abuse have difficulty in coming forward.

“We have been thinking about this, and we see the problem as being two-fold – not only do young men have difficulty speaking out, we as a community also have difficulty in hearing them.”

The charity said this was “not surprising” as we “tend to talk more about women and girls when discussing sexual violence and less about men and boys”.

Mr Sullivan continued: “We want to deal with the issue at a local level. We need to find out what both young men and the community need to make it easier for young men to talk about their experiences and for the community be able to respond and support them.

“Mankind are going to run a series of focus groups to generate ideas and form a number of project action groups to develop and implement local initiatives. Being a community led project, these ideas will come from and be owned by the community.”

The survey and project, called Community Squared, or C2 for short, aims to support men and boys who have suffered sexual abuse.

The Mankind C2 can be found at www.mankindcounselling.org.uk/news.php