The Canberra Rape Crisis Centre will seek extra funding from the ACT government after a record number of local residents sought help last year.
Staff have been stretched with the number of emergency counselling sessions doubling in the past two years and more than 1000 more calls to the 24-hour crisis line in 2011.
But chief executive Chrystina Stanford said it still took many people decades to seek help after being abused.
''For women it is on average seven years from the time of an assault until disclosure, for men it can be a staggering 20 years before they feel able to tell,'' Ms Stanford said.
According to the crisis centre, one in three girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18. But the sooner they seek help, the better the outcome.
''The research says if people disclose earlier about sexual assault and get a good response it goes a long way to getting their life back on track quicker,'' she said.
''So if people have a terrible response or wait 30 years they often have all these other impacts of trauma - they have drug and alcohol issues, mental health issues by that point.
''They can have brushes with the law. Many have been incarcerated or homeless.''
The centre employed 18 staff and according to its annual report last financial year, the centre received $1.1million of recurrent funding from the ACT Government.
Increased demand already strained the service and if it continued the centre would need to increase staff.
''Otherwise what we will see is a longer and longer waiting list for people who are in crisis who absolutely need to get access to counselling,'' Ms Stanford said.
''As a community service we always struggle and we fight to get resources - it's always a struggle and what we're seeing now is more and more generations of people coming forward, we have clients from the age of three to 80.''
She said shame and fear often kept people silent.
''The saddest effect of this is the length of time people are living with the impacts of trauma before they feel able to seek help,'' she said. ''This would not occur if our community was better able to respond.''
But Ms Stanford said a rise in reporting rates did not mean more assaults were occurring.
''Our increasing statistics may reflect an increase in reporting to the police as well as an increase in people seeking help rather than an increase in the rates of sexual assault in our community,'' she said.
''Sexual assault costs our community millions of dollars each year in health and medical services and has an enormous cost to the individual. On every level it is worth our attempts to respond to this issue more effectively.''
Canberra Rape Crisis Centre is available 24-hours, seven-days-a-week for counselling, support, information or advocacy on 6247 2525.
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