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Disclaimer: This post refers to DSM and ICD diagnostic classifications mostly unquestioningly, not because of a lack of personal engagement with critical discussions on this topic, but simply for pragmatic reasons, since I am trying to explain something which is currently affecting and debilitating for me. CW: includes descriptions of severe, complex and childhood sexual, trauma. Severe bullying. I haven’t written for a while. I haven’t had the cognitive energy, nor has my mind possessed a state of functioning that would allow me to get the words down in print. Every survivor living with complex dissociative forms of post-traumatic stress knows the exhaustion of living with the inner chaos that accompanies survival - no matter our attempts to bring ourselves closer to thriving, closer to being more than the sum of what happened to us. This year, I got a lion tattooed on my upper arm. It is a motif that has been with me since I was only three years old; the first time I can recall sitting alone on my bedroom floor, trying to figure out how to stretch my mouth wide enough to roar. I remember my father walking in to find me and asking what on earth I was doing, his only response being to laugh at my attempt and to tell me something else I could do with my mouth for him instead. There was nothing I could do, so the lion withdrew, but he stayed with me. He resurfaced again - as far as I can recall - only at two specific moments in my life, possibly two of the worst, in different ways, when my consciousness was so overwhelmed by the horror of what was happening that it likely would have shattered into pieces if he hadn’t stepped in. The first of these moments was just two years later. I was only five years old, already living in circumstances unbearable enough to produce a variety of delusional experiences which functioned to keep my little mind going: talking trees, talking teddy bears, and spirits from the world unknown beyond - each of whom became compassionate witnesses to the pain I was enduring. This memory originally returned to me through a recurring nightmare. At the time, I rationalised it away as symbolic, for I could not then bring myself to admit that the scene I was remembering had been literal. That my mother had in fact stood by and watched as my father r****d me on the floor in plain sight. It wasn’t a symbolic representation for how it felt to be living in a house where one caregiver abused me and the other pretended she knew nothing about it. My mother had witnessed it happening, and then walked right away. I fought with myself and defended against this interpretation in my therapy sessions, not wanting the wall of denial that was protecting the innocent version of my mother to break. It was one I had constructed to survive and maintain a relationship with her, and if it broke, I knew I would be even more alone than I already was. Unfortunately, as more and more details resurfaced, enabling me to piece together in full what really happened that day, my mind and body only had more heartbreak to prepare for. The fullness of my being wanted the fragile love of at least one of my negligent parents to have been real, albeit even if insufficient. But my parts? They knew the truth. At least, some of them did. Some of them knew the terror of what it felt like to be abused and degraded, and treated with a total lack of empathy by those who were meant to protect them. Some of them knew that the testimonies given by each of my parents would never be credible. In order to explain what I mean by that, I am going to have to tell you about one book I have managed to slowly begin making my way through over the last couple of weeks - if only by listening to the audio version, going over and over the same paragraphs multiple times in attempt to process at least some of the information. It is called The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and The Treatment of Chronic Traumatization, by Onno Van der Hart et al. It has been helping me (finally) to make some actual sense out of the bewildering symptoms I’ve been experiencing for some time, and the often-unsettling experiences I encountered during Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy towards the end of last year. How to escape when you cannot For those who are not familiar with IFS or structural dissociation, there are two things I should first make clear: IFS is a model of therapy which focuses on working collaboratively with various ‘parts’ within each person, which the theory explains have developed through the internalisation of certain specific roles and functions in childhood in response to family dynamics (these are known as firefighters, exiles, and managers). In contrast, the clinical literature on structural dissociation outlines what happens to the personalities of those exposed to chronic and prolonged trauma in the developmental period: how it effectively fragments into component parts to survive, instead of becoming whole. The authors of the book define the personality as ‘a system comprised of various psychobiological states or subsystems that function in a coordinated manner’, which in healthy subjects function together cohesively: ‘An integrated personality is a developmental achievement’, not a given, the authors helpfully note. In cases of structural dissociation, however, what happens is that instead of developing towards integration, these subsystems become adaptively organized around the traumatic environment in such a way that a division occurs between two categories of subsystems: Those which support the individual in efforts to adapt to daily life Those built for detection of, and defense from, threats These are the action-systems which characterise an individual’s interoceptive (awareness of internal bodily signals) and exteroceptive (awareness of external) worlds, comprising their propensity to act in accordance with certain types of basic motivations. They are always shaped in order to best adaptively respond to their environment. Effectively, the more that prolonged exposure to trauma makes integration between the various goal-directed actions (i.e., those oriented toward exploration, caretaking, and attachment, vs. those oriented towards defence, hypervigilance, and fight/flight responses) unfeasible, the more rigidified and hardened these subsystems can become, leading to the emergence of dissociative ‘parts’. These parts are not like those postulated by IFS, though their functions can overlap: “Dissociative parts together constitute the whole personality, yet are self-conscious, have rudimentary senses of self, and are more complex than a single psychobiological state.” These parts can possess varying degrees of elaboration - referring to how differentiated and distinct they are with regard to characteristics such as names, age, gender, etc - and emancipation - referring to how much separation and autonomy they have from the trauma itself. This variation depends significantly upon the severity and complexity of trauma, and how chronic it is. Most people are aware of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In cases of PTSD, structural dissociation exists, but it is not as complex as those seen in cases where secondary, or even tertiary forms are present. The key difference between them has to do with the presence of one or more of different types of parts: Apparently Normal Parts (ANP’s): which are dominated by the action systems which are oriented towards exploration, caretaking and attachment and Emotional Parts (EP’s): which are dominated by defence systems These parts are not reducible to these action-systems, but they are mediated by them. This is why a person can consist of parts which are in conflict with one another. For example, an emotional part can contain the raw sensory trauma and all its accompanying feelings of fear, shame, and guilt, while another ‘apparently normal’ part goes about its business of focusing on the avoidance of those feelings through engagements in various activities which compensate for them and bring them esteem; not just because the raw feeling is in itself overwhelming - the authors refer to these emotions as ‘vehement’ because of just how overwhelming they can be, and how they can lead to maladaptive coping mechanisms when the person lacks the resources to cope effectively - but also because those action-systems we outlined are structured around meeting our need for attachment to others, and regulating our social position. If the vehement emotions the trauma instilled feel like they pose a threat to our most significant relationships, or even our social standing, EP’s are forced to contain them, and often banished from vision - both others and our own. In cases of primary dissociation, like PTSD, it has only been adaptively necessary for a single ANP and a single EP to develop. In secondary dissociation, as is often seen in cases of C-PTSD and those which more frequently invite the diagnosis of ‘borderline personality disorder’ (don’t get me started on that), further fragmentation has led to the development of multiple EP’s, each containing different fragments of the traumatic experience: moments of terror, raw emotions, and a variety of defensive responses. Tertiary dissociation is where things get really complicated. Most people are broadly aware of something known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) - inaccurately popularised as ‘split personality disorder’ - mostly as a result of horribly stigmatising portrayals in the media. In reality, DID is itself far more complicated, and individual experiences far more varying, than is commonly thought. The key thing which differentiates it from the other dissociative disorders already mentioned is that there is evidence for tertiary structural dissociation: which not only involves multiple EP’s, but also more than one ANP. Contrary to belief, however, these ANP’s do not necessarily possess the most extreme degrees of elaboration and emancipation. It is not always the case that a person can be seen to shift between completely distinct identities whose ages, memories and personalities are themselves entirely different. There are a range of Other and unspecified Dissociative Disorders (OSDD) listed in the DSM-5 - whatever you think of its validity - which point to these variations. For me personally, this has manifested differently at different times in my life. Let’s go back to the memory I started describing, when the lion motif first tried to reappear, to unpack some of them. The first of the worst I was just five years old and something awful was happening to me. Not only was the act itself something so painful, so gut-wrenchingly horrifying it could traumatise even an adult, but it was being perpetrated by one primary caregiver while the other stood by and did nothing. This is a profound form of betrayal and neglect, and ultimately, abandonment. In that moment, my dependence on my caregivers to survive meant that I had limited options to process what was happening to me if I wanted to live. On the one hand, I could accept that neither of my parents were capable of providing me with the care and nurture I needed. I could accept that no one was coming to save me, that no one was going to defend me from either of them, but then I would have to face a reality with no hope of ever being safe, or being loved, or being protected. Not only was I smaller than small - let’s be clear, I was tiny - there was no chance in hell I was ever going to muster up the strength to protect myself. I just didn’t have it. I don’t quite know how to clinically describe what happened in my consciousness after that. It wasn’t the dramatic dissociative break that came seven years later when the lion reappeared once again (more on that later) - it was subtler than that. I simply gathered whatever crumbs of evidence I could to construct a narrative in which help would be coming in the end. And if it didn’t? Then I would become something that could defend and protect itself instead. After my mother walked away from me, somehow, I dragged myself up from the floor and went running in the direction I saw straight ahead: to the closed door of my brother’s bedroom. I burst in unannounced and declared my new reality to him: “Name Everything is going to be okay.” I said. Whatever had just happened didn’t matter. The fact that I had not even felt it didn’t matter to me either; that part of me had already been buried while another took over through numbness and desensitization. If my body had been burned, I had left it. My father of course followed me into the room and wasn’t having any of it. He told me to back away from his son, referring to me again as a little slut, having only moments before branded both my mother and I filthy whores. But my body didn’t shake. “I was just telling him that everything is going to be okay.” I repeated. In that moment, whichever part of my father had been incensed to violate me so grossly immediately left him, I saw the flicker in his eyes. “What?” He asked gently, half-smiling. “What are you saying, my dear? What do you mean everything is going to be okay? Why wouldn’t it be okay?” He laughed again. As he lowered himself to me to pick me up onto his lap, I continued. “Everything is going to be okay because I know that it isn’t my fault when you get angry with me” I elaborated plainly. Actually, I had told myself that everything was going to be okay because I thought the look in my mother’s eyes when she stared blankly into the distance had told me that what she was seeing was enough to finally shift her into leaving him - which she eventually did. “Have I been angry with you today?” He asked. I rolled my eyes and decided to change the conversation. “I’m going to be a lion when I grow up.” I explained proudly to him. But of course, he just laughed. “You’re not a lion! You’re a little girl, a ballerina…” I continued to educate him on imposing limitations on what I could be. I’m well aware that there is something in this very real sequence of events which sounds almost artificial. How does a child of five years endure such trauma, only to emerge as if untarnished, even heroic, just a few seconds after? That is dissociation. Instead of shattering under the weight of cruel circumstances, my psyche reached for two things to keep itself alive instead: 1. A rationalisation which meant that the abandonment and betrayal I had just experienced wasn’t really abandonment at all: “Mummy knows now. Now, she knows how bad it is for me, and she is going to do something about it.” 2. An identification with a future-promise of transcendence from my own limitations “I am going to be a lion one day.” Not only did I need to hold onto the attachment I still had to my mother, I needed something to gestate within myself that could one day be birthed to contain, and even transmute, the experience of absolute vulnerability. While the part of me that held all the pain got pushed further down into a space I could not access, not even if I wanted, another stood tall in its place, clinging to its own source of esteem. The truth was that my mother had already known before this how bad the abuse was for me already. She had seen the blood-stained sheets in the aftermath of r*** and complained about having to clean them, this was no revelation. The reason I thought that she had not understood was because of what had been happening moments earlier, before my father had entered the room to see it, and become violently enraged. The descent into… Instead of taking you back to those moments, I want to take you forwards in time, to the second reappearance of the lion. This was a far more dramatic occurrence than the first, when the lion became somewhat real for me, not just an idea. Around seven years had passed, and in that time my mother had left my father, taking my older brother and I with her. By then, the court investigation had concluded that my father was innocent of the allegations made against him. Some of these allegations had been my own, but the original witness allegations were made by a friend of my brother’s about what he had seen for himself my father was doing to him. “I couldn’t understand why she didn’t leave him immediately” a distant aunt of mine explained to me recently, over the phone. “She kept saying innocent until proven guilty, I kept telling her children don’t lie about these things”. This aunt had grown up with my father - though she was fifteen years younger than him - and it seems had known very well that he was capable of real darkness. She and her sibling - my uncle, my father’s half-brother - had seen how he was controlling and manipulative. They had witnessed him go from the disgrace of living in absolute poverty as an immigrant child to a high-achiever in elite universities and official church positions. She knew the tell-tale signs of my father’s deflection from painstaking questions. I don’t quite know how or why it is that she eventually lost contact with my mother, living all the way over in the States was obviously a part of it, but I do know that she didn’t hesitate to drop him immediately out of her own life when she heard about how he was refusing to cooperate with the process, or talk honestly about things. My aunt saw my father’s darkness and used the light of truth and discernment to deal with it. Meanwhile, my mother stared his darkness right in the face and adorned it with grace. The other aunts on my mother’s side of the family were instructed to stay out of the situation; not to attempt to even talk to us about it, not to risk contamination. My American aunt told me that my uncle, had he still been alive, would have handled things differently. “He’d have been on the first plane over there to beat it out of him.” My aunt lovingly explained to me. “He was that sort of man.” Somehow, I myself had understood that about him from the few times we had visited him in America, before he passed away. Whether real or hallucinatory like the other experiences I was having, I had been experiencing visitations from his spirit ever since I had learned of his death. I spoke to him - and my teddy bears - about everything that was happening to me. They became my closest friends. It was the involvement of social services that eventually triggered my mother to leave almost a year after that, probably sometime soon after they explained to her that if my father was eventually found to be guilty, she could herself potentially be found to have been complicit as well. Again, the truth contradicts my mother’s claims about how this all went. Her version conveniently forgets the many times I tried to speak up on my own for myself before she finally allowed me to say the minimal things that I did, at eight years of age. My brother stayed silent throughout, choked by the fear of what would happen if he dare betray his kin. The outcome of all of this was that I was forced into contact with my father throughout the investigation with varying degrees of supervision, and thereafter none. This meant that every other week, I was to be collected by him from school, in full view of the public. This might not have been so bad had my father’s name not been printed in the papers, or televised on the local news for all to see, and given that his name was Polish and therefore very uncommon, the dots were not hard to connect. We had been moved by the council to a relatively deprived area, none of the other mother’s spoke or behaved in the way my own mother did, and all of them knew each other. Gossip easily spread. Having dropped down the social ladder already in the move from my town of birth - the time spent at the women’s refuge and the school we attended there being particularly difficult - I had already become accustomed to bullying. But the cruelty I experienced from older children who knew about my father took things to a whole new level. Sadism is apparently more common than we would like to admit. One girl in particular went out of her way to make my life a misery. “It’s no wonder you’re daddy rapes you” she used to tell me plainly as she towered over me. “You’re the vilest thing I’ve ever seen.” I have no doubt that this particular bully was going through the worst of it herself in her own home looking back on it now, the conditions were right for it, but that didn’t make it easier. And the actions of her peers - whose disgust towards me paralleled her own - unfortunately went further in their bullying. By the time I reached twelve, I had already experienced repeated sexual assaults and abuses from other lads in the area who knew about my vulnerability and ‘openness to experience’. Some of these incidents were sadly the result of my own active propositioning - or at least, a specific dissociative part of myself who applied all the lessons she had learned about how to appease males (more on that another day). I had been reminded over and over again by the aforementioned group of bullies that my dad was a paedophile. I knew very well that I was dirty, gross, not okay. What I had not yet experienced was the humiliation of being targeted specifically because of the abuse, like I was some sort of prey. The second worst memory A predator does not hunt immediately; first, he surveys. If I wanted to give the lads I mentioned the benefit of the doubt - to show them their own grace - I’d spend these next few lines telling you all about how that dissociative part acted like a little slut, how she got herself into it, and how their ignorance about my history of abuse was its own kind of bliss. They didn’t really know about daddy, I’d tell you, they thought I was just sexually mature for my tiny little age. They didn’t know about his friends. Actually, in their own words - thanks to how daddy’s friends had trained me to act - they thought I ‘must have been born gagging for it’. So who can really blame them? These bullies were different. They might not have known about the full extent of sexual exploitation my father had put me through in those earliest years, but they knew about him. And for years they had seen that I was helpless, without a defender, even after I’d escaped living with him. My older brother, they also knew very well, was himself his own target. Everyone knew who he was and considered him a freak. Perhaps they even knew that without another person to unleash his anger onto about everything, even that came spilling out onto me. Either way, they knew that they could cross him in the street and make jokes about these encounters - without so much as risking a punch in the face. “Oi oi, I know your sister, wink wink.” By this point, thanks to the extent of my dissociative capacities, these people knew far more than I did. I didn’t know about the girl that came out in the night when nobody was watching, or about all the things that had never really happened, because that’s what they kept saying. “That sounds like an awful nightmare” my godmother (an enabler) once told me. “I wouldn’t say that to anybody else if I were you, they might think worse of you than me.” They did think worse of me. When I retracted my allegations, I had been forced - even convinced - to tell them that it had all been a lie: the product of imagination. That’s what my father told me, that I was just sick in the head. “I’m sorry for causing all the problems and telling lies mummy”, I wrote to her in a card that year. This was my ANP running full-steam ahead, taking the lead in the show, keeping it all stitched together. As long as it could do well enough to cover up the many little cracks; the other parts holding all the trauma, including the gaslighting, could fade into the distance. “Whose going to believe you?” Is what my mother herself had actually said to me, the time I finally threatened to speak out about her own abuse. “You and whose army?” She continued. “Everyone knows you’re the girl who cried wolf. It will be unfortunate if one day you really are in trouble, no one will be coming to save you.” My bullies knew this well. They had seen me through primary and, now, I was beneath them in secondary. It would not surprise me if they had heard rumours from the other lads in their year and above about all the other incidents. They certainly knew that I was fair game, and that the secrets which passed quietly between them would never be allowed to reach a soul who would step in and do something. I guess they followed me home one time to determine the exact house that I lived in, because one evening, late in the night, one of them came to pay me a visit. It was another girl I had known since primary, who hung out with the group of older boys who used to watch me as I walked away from school with my father - throwing pebbles in our direction as they chanted over and over again ‘PAEDO’. This wasn’t the one who had towered over me those times to tell me I was vile. It was another who had punched me in the face when I was only eight or nine. She fractured my nose, or at least seriously bruised it - I can’t tell you the real damage, although my septum is still deviated; my mother refused to take me to the doctors to have it examined. She just laughed at me instead and told me about how she had been bullied for her appearance when she was a kid, so I should get over it. But it wasn’t my appearance this girl was targeting me for, at least not that I could tell. Whatever the reason, I knew that she wasn’t my friend. So when she pulled up to my house on her bike and called up to me in the window asking me to ‘come out’, I didn’t exactly smile. “Why?” I asked. “To have some fun!” she said. We exchanged various arguments for and against my trusting her sudden display of kindness. “You’re not my friend, you’re never nice to me in school!” I barked. Eventually she managed to coax me out. I can’t tell you why a young girl in my position would be so foolishly easy to manipulate, except what is already obvious: these relationships had quite literally shaped my entire life, and my nervous system. They were the food to my existence. Those action-systems I mentioned? The push-pull threads which weaved together my longing for safety and belonging - well, they were twisted to fuck. When the girl gave me reason to think I had a chance to impress her, to have a little fun, to ‘have a laugh’; the little girl in me choked up. I sat on the back of her bike and we rode into the dark. By the time we reached the park, my consciousness had already been flickering in and out of the moment - going back to times lived before which mimicked the power dynamic I was suddenly frozen in: the taking of my hand by an older person leading me into a situation I had no control in, the promises of ‘games’ we were going to play, the trust that was about to be broken. The lads themselves were already drunk and more than willing to do it. What followed begs not to be spoken. All I can repeat for you now are the words that continued to ring in my ear as I collapsed on the floor that night, soon after I got home: “Isn’t she gross?” “Isn’t she vile?” “Oh my god, the sick little bitch - do you think that she actually liked it?” The last question was of course referring to the act of being r***d by my father. In their own sick little fantasies - the very ones which I had been accused of having by my father myself - they envisioned me actually enjoying being assaulted in childhood. Together, they mocked me in sync as they groaned, and they moaned, and they yelled: “Yeah daddy. F*ck me harder.” I can’t tell you exactly what happened. The moment the older girl turned her face from me and left me alone - apparently shocked at the scene that was unfolding precisely as they told her it was going to, convinced that they must have been joking - this was the moment I blacked out of consciousness completely and saw the lion take over. While my body was most likely limp and unable to move, something in me escaped. This makes sense in the context of structural dissociation. The full scale of betrayal and abandonment - across communities, institutions, families, entire systems - should have been enough to break me altogether. I don’t know how to make sense of what I experienced in that moment: all I know is that if my body could not fight its way to freedom, then some part of my psyche had to try. Had to find some kind of strength. When I first accessed this memory, the image I saw I can only describe as a spirit rising out from my body in the shape of a lion, this time roaring; set free from everything which bound him and cast him down as prey, without dignity or respect. The rest is mostly black. I don’t know if I screamed, I don’t know if I attempted to fight back, or if my mind simply vanished, leaving my face looking empty, blank. Perhaps I never will. All I know is that the apparently normal part of me banished it from memory, until I was ready to remember. A reckoning Unfortunately, this wasn’t the last time my sexual abuse history was weaponised by males as a pretext to take what they wanted. This memory was brought forward intentionally, along with others, by my parts during a session of trauma-informed hypnosis. The night before the session I went to bed in extreme agony, feeling like the pain I knew I was going to be forced to face the next day might actually be enough to kill me. Remembering what I did in that session went against everything the script my therapist was reading to me was meant to evoke: it was a standard protocol, the first of six sessions. Everything in it had been about calming my mind and evoking a sense of complete safety; it was setting the scene for my parts to come forward to release all the emotions and dysfunctional behaviours they were still clinging to, which supposedly kept holding the adult part of me back from moving forward from the past, and into a better future. I knew for myself that this wasn’t what my parts had in mind: that they had new information to share with me. Crucial information they refused to leave hidden in the dark, in any thinly-veiled attempt at ‘recovery’. There was no way they were going to allow me to move forward without reaching this part of my consciousness. But why is that? My parts know that what happened to them happens to others. While much of my abuse was experienced in isolation, it involved witnessing the abuse of other children, not only my brother - who these parts felt abandon them for years as he defaulted to identifying with and defending my parents, instead of joining hands with them to fight back - but also other children. And just as they held onto the truth of what happened so that I did not have to hold it myself, these parts watched as other ‘Apparently Normal Parts’ took over in other children just the same, to keep them alive. Both of my parents relied upon my brother’s silence to isolate me. While they abused him in their own way, they made perfectly sure he had a vested interest in playing their game, in taking their sides. Not only did my brother have parts of himself split off to keep him functioning, parts which knew the truth for themselves and had their own memories of deep pain inflicted by my parents, but he also had parts of himself that just wanted to belong, to have some power, to feel safe. Beyond the bullying he faced, the abuse we both witnessed involving other children had happened across multiple contexts: in the teddy-bears picnics my father held, organised through his role as a vicar and enabled by church members who owned significant land and wealth; and then again in his position as a vicar overseeing young children’s first communions, which allowed him to have access to them without the presence of their parents, for twelve whole private sessions. Eventually, my brother found a way to become more like the big friendly giant my uncle had been. He put aside the misogynistic, homophobic and other-phobic bullshit he’d internalised to defend against his shame. But for a long time, in both childhood and adolescence, my brother had learned that nowhere else could bring him that safety. And he had learned that there was always someone beneath him he could redirect his anger and violence about it onto, without facing accountability. There are other things which happened in other contexts we were exposed to, some of which only further inflamed my mother’s own capacity to abuse, knowing that no one spoke up about these things when they themselves witnessed them. The more my mother saw others turn a blind eye and herself got away with it, the more she slipped from passive victim into enabler, and perpetrator. The details I will not go into here, and I admit my theory about her own process here is somewhat speculation. I have no way of knowing if my mother had abused what little power she had managed to hold over other children before in her relatively low-status occupations. The important point is that my parts know very well what it means to be powerless and small in a system that is built on coercion in the place of autonomy, on oppression, and on exploitation. They know that where accountability fails, evil thrives, and that dwindling reserves of empathy can bring out the worst in everyone. They know the darkness of shadows cast by people parading as the light; and they know the pain of being marginalised by a system that centres might as right. And what about me? I know that none of this is inevitable. Thanks to the higher-functioning parts of me who got me through higher education, I know that men aren’t born rapists and children aren’t born into cruelty. I know that hierarchies are not fixed in nature, and that neither is patriarchy. But that’s for another essay. I also know that (unfortunately) I am not a lion, nor will I ever be. But the archetypal traits that humans associate with them are ones which we, too, can possess: leadership, courage, protection, the instinct to defend. I got the lion tattooed on my arm to remind me of this. That those parts of myself whose raw and primal urges were suppressed could be harnessed again. The parts which tried to fight back, which said no, which protested. The parts which often tried to protect vulnerable others, even at their own expense. This, too, is part of our mammalian legacy. Part of our DNA. There is another part of me which was exiled for quite some time, banished into its own hiding. It was a part who had wanted to know for itself why the abusers were doing what they did: a part who tried to re-enact what she had witnessed to try to make sense of it, but only traumatised itself. She had learned that that was what people did: took turns in taking the baton, and going crazy wielding it, as soon as they had the opportunity. But for every part which fawned and folded itself into whatever they wanted - the good girl, the slut, the follower - there was a part who fought to preserve dignity, empathy, and truth, parts which always threatened them. None of my parts want me to forget or let go of the past. They want healing, they want witnesses. In fact, more than that, they want a collective reckoning. They also want to hear that their abusers were wrong when they drilled it into them that no one would ever believe them. As the person now sitting in the driver’s seat, in charge of this system - it is my job to get those younger parts what they are telling me they need. At least, to finally try.

when i was 5 my family came from Nigeria and as soon as they came my uncle which is just 4 years older than me kept touching me he would say things like lets play mums and dads and then will hump me and say that's what mum and dads do or will slap my bum and kiss on my neck it was quite odd to me everytime they visited this will happen he will say stuff to me like we play vampire game to rub on my private parts and kiss my neck and chest when I was 9 or 10 I travelled with them to another country but he just got worse he nearly even tried having s*x with me he would rub his penis on my private parts and kiss and slap my bum his sister who was younger than me also tried doing the same i recently found out she did it with my sister and cousin . this made me very hyper sexual at a young age and I would constantly use my body to get what I wanted it affects me a lot he texted me a few weeks ago and said he was a child and I should respect him because he's older than me and forgive and forget this is seriously ruining my life as my mum doesn't believe me and because I got caught doing things with my body she believes I initiated it or liked it...

I went out with friends but left early as I was drunk and tired and I asked someone for directions to find my Uber when another guy asked if I was going to uni and said I was pretty which was fine but he then asked if he could have a kiss. I didn't know what to do so I stepped towards him and then he put his arm round me and I felt like I had to kiss him but I didn't want to. I tried to face away from him hoping he would just kiss my cheek but he didn't so I turned my head and he kissed me and I feel gross and want to throw up every time I think of it.

When I was 7, I started being sexually abused. This wasn’t by a family member, it was my grans second husband. It all stopped when I was 12, when we moved a few miles away and he didn’t visit as much. When I was 17, I was having therapy for other things, it eventually came out then. They helped me decide how I was going to tell my mum. They also said I should prepare for family members to not believe me. I thought, you don’t know my family. They all stick up for each other. Well so I thought. My mum never wanted to talk about it. I understand now that was due to guilt, she had her own mental illnesses to deal with. My sister, well she turned against me for a few years. Saying I was lying, I tried to ruin my grans marriage with my lies, threatening to beat me up. My sister even tried to prove I was lying buy having him watch her new born baby whilst she went and done his food shop. When this man died, it got worse. My sister and aunt said they can’t grieve over him cause of the lies I said about him. Saying I’m evil and not wanting me near her child incase I do stuff to her. I had cousins asking “what exactly is it he did to you? My gran saying “he’s not a pedophile”. All this almost destroyed me. It was worse than the sexual abuse I had went through as a child. I decided I wanted away from my family. So I enrolled in college at 23, at 27 I was qualified and got straight into a job, I had been saving through college, so managed to move onto my own place pretty quickly. Now 33 years old and looking back I often think, did all that really happen. I’ve since moved further away from my family, Doing this has helped me stay away from their drama and only visit on occasions. They’re a lot better now, but I’d still rather keep my distance. I’m in a good place mentally. I’ve got great friends and built a good life for myself. My advice to anyone going thought it. Prepare yourself for family not to believe you. Only talk about it to people you trust and only when you want to talk about it. Don’t feel you need to explain yourself to anyone. The best thing my therapist said, no matter what you did or didn’t do, it wasn’t your fault. You were only a child.

Firstly I want to thank ourwave for creating this safe space and thank anyone who takes their time to read my story, when my mum was a teen she fell pregnant with me, once I was born we didn’t have a stable home we lived between houses the main house was my nanas, where my uncle lived too. I was 5 he was 15 and When no one was in my uncle would take it upon himself to rape me I don’t remember everything as I was so young and somethings slowly come back especially since my police report but I vividly remember him taking out his penis and putting it my face telling me to suck it..the other memory I have it him sitting me on my nanas bed and him attempting to rape me..he used pliers to try make it easier and also asked me to try help too which I did.. these memories stuck so well in my head and I can never shake them..I also remember my mum bathing me and she has since stated she saw very sore red skin around my lady area and asked “who’s been touching you” to which I replied “name” …now I may not remember everything I may not have been pinned down but that day a piece of me died and I haven’t been the same since, I went my whole life my mum telling me it never happened all my family went against us told everyone i was lying and he was protected whilst I questioned should I even be alive right now at the small age of 9 years old..because I did question my mum on the night terrors and I asked why I got moved so far away and why I have memories of it and I went all this time thinking I had made it up I told myself I was a freak an attention seeker but all along I was right I was a survivor and now I’m 21 years old I’ve just recently reported my uncle to the police and I have my own baby to protect..I don’t get why everyone or how anyone can hurt a child the way so many are hurt

It’s been almost 10 years and the scars still feel so fresh and I honestly don’t know how to stop feeling so much pain and anger. How can someone who claims to love you, hurt you because your boundaries did not benefit them. “I am trying to help you“ lol. Help me? By violating my boundaries because you didn’t want to wait for me to be ready? Because you knew this was something I’d never done and I wanted to take my time to make sure I was comfortable but that would mean that you would have had to respect what I wanted and that didn’t sit right with you, so you decided to force something that I didn’t even know if I was ready for. Thanks to you I have an emotional scars and trauma that feel like I will never be free. Thanks to you, I feel so much anger, thanks to you I have to spend the rest of my life trying to heal because you couldn’t wait for me to be ready.

TW: physical, emotional, sexual abuse Ever since I started primary school at the age of 4, I’ve been afraid of my dad. I truly believed I was the worst daughter in the world and that I was a huge disappointment to my parents. My Ukrainian immigrant parents were well educated and well respected people, they were quite wealthy and interesting people who had a “perfect” daughter. No one knew what happened behind closed doors, of course, and no one suspected anything as I was taught to hide my feelings and physical signs of abuse (still hate thinking about that word) really well. The physical and emotional abuse started as I started school and was a punishment for something I did or didn’t do, but looking back now, there was no consistency and no “reasoning” behind all of it. The sexual abuse started when I was 8 and stopped when I got my period at 14, when he told me it made me dirty and disgusting. Only at the end of high school I realised that not all fathers were like this and, in fact, this was very severe abuse. At 15 I was sexual assaulted by a coworker of my age at my job in a leisure center. At this point I was attracting the somewhat wanted attention of boys and I was naive. Even now, I am still trying to remind myself that I am not at fault. My 2 years at sixth form were made up of studying very hard and also trying to get help for ptsd symptoms. I met my current boyfriend of 2 years at sixth form too. I have told him about the majority of my childhood and he has been extremely supportive. I am so grateful for him. I am now having CPTSD support and, although I have bad days, I am keen to get better and to start a new chapter of life :)

I am a survivor of abuse from a partner. With this abuse I was learning how the system fails to have safety nets for helping women in need. Domestic Violence grows in closed doors situations. I want the public to learn that I went to college and was emotionally abused by a Spouse who was running a double life. This abuse was able to be successful because isolation was first done followed up by manipulation, control, drugging, sex trafficking, Domestic Violence, abuse, slavery and because the gas lighting was so good I prayed for death. Now I'm left feeling broken with PTSD and huge trust issues. No-more will I put myself in that situation. I trust no-one now. Forever alone. Forever sad.

When I was 14-18, I was in an abusive relationship, but at the time, I could not see it. This boy was controlling, manipulative and he forced himself on me when I said no. He was physically violent and tried to prevent me from going to university. Whenever I tried to escape the relationship, he would threaten to kill himself, and I was also scared of him. I never had any time to myself as he would be there. I was not allowed to have any male friends on social media, and I could not hang out or talk to any boys. I was not allowed to wear certain clothing, and he told me I was ugly and should wear makeup. I use to self-harm because I cut my emotions out, and I wanted to feel something. One day I told him that I did not want to be with him anymore and that I was going to university. He again told me he would kill himself, but at that point, I told him I did not care, and I managed to get out. He has since been arrested and kicked out of his home. This relationship has scared me since I'm now 28.

I didn't realise until over a year after the separation that the relationship I had been in for almost a decade was abusive. I was confused, I was lost, I doubted every thought and memory I had because that's what I'd been conditioned to do. He used to tell me I had a bad memory, that I remembered the incident wrongly; he would start an argument in the car on the way to what was supposed to be a pleasant gathering with friends; he would criticise me all the time and when I finally snapped and shouted at him to stop criticising, he said I was crazy. He didn't let me sleep a full night for 4 years after our baby was born, I was exhausted, I was extremely anxious about everything. I was in fight or flight mode all the time. The last straw was him shouting at our child all the time because he made a noise, because he made a mess, because of something. I know all this now, but I didn't understand what was happening at the time. I will still second guess myself if anyone vaguely questions my choice or my decision. I was strong before and I lost my voice. I'm fighting hard to get it back but post separation abuse is real and it's difficult when someone is constantly trying to invalidate you and dismiss your concerns. No more. We have to talk about it, join together and eradicate a permissiveness that allows victims to be suppressed and perpetrators to continue unchecked.

It took me years to come to terms with what was really happening. When I was 9 years old, I met a boy online, and we quickly became friends. We knew everything about each other - He was 15 when we first met. When I was 10 and he was 16, he asked to be my boyfriend. Being a naive 10 year old girl I said yes. I can’t be mad at her for that. It was innocent at first. Just what you’d expect from a childhood relationship - “I love you, goodnight.” “Hope you’re doing okay.” “Let’s play some games together!” The only difference was that one of us were nearly an adult. Someone who should have known better to not even THINK about being romantically involved with a 10 year old girl. However, it went sour. He started talking to me about sexual subjects. Stuff I wasn’t at all familiar with. He’d make us roleplay situations, what he’d do to me if he got ahold of me in real life. Asking for photos. Guilt tripping me for seeming “off” or uninterested. I began to feel distressed at the time, but I was so young, that wasn’t really an emotion I had felt before. I told myself, this sick feeling must be love. That must be why I feel so nervous, why I feel knots in my stomach when I see his name pop up on my screen. I was very attached to him, at least I thought I was. I was always picked on in school and the few friends I had were awful to me, so he was my only real friend. My worst fear was somehow losing him, and he must have known that I thought that. He took advantage of that, and would guilt trip me at any opportunity to make sure I did whatever he wanted me to. After a while, he broke up with me, but we were still very much so “friends”. We would talk everyday, and he was still just as inappropriate and creepy with me as he was before. Throughout the years, he would begin to talk to me about worse and worse stuff. He explicitly told me about his attraction to children, and that he worked as a teaching assistant in a primary school. I tried to brush it off and keep it at the back of my mind, but I got to tipping point last year when he started to pressure me into meeting with him in real life. It went on for 7 years. I hate to say it, and it makes me sad for the little girl that I was, but the rest of my childhood was stolen from me. I’m 17 now, about the same age he was when we met. The thought of EVER saying the stuff to a 10,11,12 year old that he did makes me feel physically ill. I still haven’t fully processed what happened to me, but I’ve been working on it. I’m yet to cry, at least properly, about it. The thing that sucks about this is that this went on for so long, that it felt completely normal. The people in my life who know all cried when I told them. It felt unfair, really - that they could cry about it. And I’m just stuck in a mindset I’m desperately trying to get out of where this is normal, and I feel completely numb. Recently, I decided I wanted to do something about it. I went to the police. This night, I sent off old screenshots of conversations between us to a detective working on my case. It’s terrifying, being that vulnerable. But I feel obligated to do it. The thought of him being around children all day makes me sick. I don’t care if he doesn’t go to prison - as long as he’s never near a child again I’ll be happy. That’s why I’m doing it. I won’t let shame and embarrassment stop me from doing this, and I especially won’t let my brain tell me he doesn’t deserve punishment. Because that’s exactly what he’d want me to think, too.

I Say No More Cause..... I am a mother of a 5 year old daughter. I was 23 when I had my daughter, left my mothers house and moved in with my daughters father. You know there is a saying "you will only know a men true colors once you live with them under the same roof", its absolutely true. My daughters father was a drug addict and he loved women. I used to get beaten up for asking questions for looking at his phone and especially when i use to find out the truth, that was it knowing about the truth should eat him up. He use to beat me while i had my daughter in my arms, he use to chock me till i have a black out, he use to take my head and bang it on the wall and fridge, he use to call me names , disrespect me and my family. He sold/pawned all my daughters jewelry to support his bad habits. I was so stupid cause i left him & went back around about 3 times. Do you know at one point he was saving my neighbors (female) picture on the phone , he use to chat to a lady that was married and bad mouth me to her. I was dark in my skin . I was so thin (I) use to fit in a size 26 jeans I still have scars on my body cause of the dirty, dis-respectable animal not even a women begin. As for his family they never kept me safe at all even when I spoke up.When he use to lift his hands for me I started doing the same to protect myself from digging my own grave, I had to stand up for myself cause nobody else was going to do it for me. The day I left my daughters father for good was the day he broke my nose he punched me in the face I was covered with blood, still lied to my family and said "I fell in the bathroom" but deep down I knew my family knew it was a lie. Today I still look in the mirror with a Crockett nose. I packed my daughters & my clothing called my father and went to my mum. It has been 2 and a half years since I am not with him, thanks to my mother I look an feel beautiful again. My parents & 2 sisters supported my daughter & I till I got a stable job. I am so glad that I walked away as soon as i seen blood on myself that was it. I TOLD MYSELF I HAD ENOUGH.... Date today am 28 married to such an amazing men that treats me like a queen never disrespected me or even tried to lift a finger on me, makes me feel beautiful , loved am truly blessed. My daughter does not have to see her mother getting beaten again. Oh yes am in a size 34 jeans now :-), it feels great. I say am blessed cause the men i married accepted me with my scars and a daughter. ''DONT BE AFRAID TO WALK AWAY"

Im struggling to get my head around what to do and who to speak to. I was comfortably asleep and cuddling my boyfriend and had my head kind of on top of him, i woke up slightly and he was moving my hand to his crotch that was h*rd and at that point i was wide awake with my eyes still closed wondering what he was doing, i opened them a little and pretended i was moving in my sleep but he kept on using force moving my whole arm and hand to touch him and i didnt know what to do so i was still and he took out his phone like he was gonna take a picture. He knows i wouldnt want to do that and I dont know what to do or how to feel, i confronted him about it when i ‘woke up’ and i was in shock shaking, we were arguing and he started crying and long story short i ended up comforting him. he never truly said sorry once and i just feel lost because i have so much love for him but i genuinely never want to be with him again but the thought of never speaking to him again hurts me, and i know he wouldnt live without me. which is what scares me because im the only one there for him, i dont know what he would do without me. i just need help on a decision please im feeling very alone in this.

I was age out in a club and my boss and his friends were there at a stag, he introduced me to his friend who was hot so initially I was delighted. Had one drink with him and next thing I wake up in a hotel room, naked in a bed with him, the double bed was covered in my vomit, my first reaction was I just got too drunk and was consensual, he was horrible told me to go clean myself up and he would drive me home, he laughed at me when I asked did I need the morning after pill, I knew I did? I had only had sex with one other person, I’d bruises all over me and was sore. I knew something was wrong, he drove me home in his BMW acting like he had done nothing wrong. I got home, showered, knew 100% then I’d been date raped. Didn’t want to worry my mum so my best friend brought me to my doc and he refused morning after cause he thought it was abortion so we had to drive hours to get it. Also had to get std tests. I’ll never forget the smirk I got from my boss when I went back to work. The shame, guilt, embarrassment I put on myself over it, I drank too much, got in abusive relationship, and had about 10 years of feeling so negative about myself. Counselling, talking to friends and now meds have helped. I’m now embedding consent into my own kids and letting them know the dangers out there. It’s happening too often and it needs to stop. I wish I had of reported him, wish I knew then that it wasn’t my fault, that it was him being pathetic, sad excuse of a man. Fuck him and fuck all of the others that think it’s ok to rape. Hope you all rot in hell. And sending massive love to the women who have the courage to stand up to them, you are amazing xxx

It was my spiritual teacher. I loved him and trusted him more than anyone. Now I don't feel safe with my faith. My friends were in the spiritual community and ghosted me for seeking treatment. I don't feel safe to leave my room. I have constant panic attacks. I don't recognize life anymore.

I must have been around 4/6 when my sister started to ask me for ‘massages’ all over her body. She is 10 years older than I am. It felt wrong at first but I remember her telling me it’s okay because it’s just skin. I don’t recall her ever touching me. She asked me for oral sex also and this was our game. But I feel so wrong looking back now because I even recall asking her to play this game just one more time. So is this my fault? It’s never been something I’ve let affect me however the last few years I’ve thought about this more. I am 21(F) now and realise that I was curious about sex from a very young age. Falling in love with a girl older than me at age 10 and always being attracted to those older than me, even if only a year older. I always wonder if I would be straight if I hadn’t had these young experiences.

In my survival story, "Just Words, Dirty Words", I shared so much and I brushed over an experience with a male gynecologist. It was a much bigger deal that I let on because it had triggered my previous abuse as an adolescent on my first job. I wonted other girls and women to understand what is not okay for a gynecologist to do. It was not until after it happened that I realized the full impact. I realized I had let myself be victimized again without trying to stop it. I felt self-loathing and anxiety. I write this letter to that opportunistic predator. You broke your oath. You betrayed the trust. You are terrible! I have done research on what a breast and pelvic exam is supposed be like and understand you used the framework to sexually assault me. I was late for the appointment to get birth control at the university clinic when I had just moved for college. You let me in even though you had no nurse chaperon, it seemed that you might have sent them home after putting me in the room. You are a man and that is against policy. We shared our first eye contact and I ignored your lust and first glance flirtation. You saw I was vulnerable and needed something from you. You told me as a new patient you have to do a full first visit exam. Now I believe you may have lied. I nodded and put down my guard. When you returned I was undressed wearing a paper smock for a false sense of security. I was self conscious even though I had impeccable hygiene and grooming but worried I was not fresh enough so late in the day because you were a man and you made it sexual. You examined my breasts with no gloves. I said nothing. I knew you were massaging them for you pleasure. You went on for five minutes like that. I think five whole minutes while you kept talking. When my boss used to molest me just seconds was plenty to make me feel sick and used. He would sit on my torso, compressing my ribs to the point I could not take a deep breath and have sex with my breasts and he usually took less time than you. do remember you used the words “wonderful” and “amazing” when commenting on by breast health. We could both smell the musk from down below from stimulating me like that. I was embarrassed. You should have been the one ashamed! You mentioned the textures and gave some instructional anatomy to pretend it might be official. You asked random questions and you shared personal stories like it was a date. All the while you were groping my tits like a pervert. Both hands at the same time! I tried to cover for you by pretending like this was not insane and not a sexual assault. You were twice my age and your mustache was ridiculous. You finally moved on to the pelvic exam. You said the words, “Very nice” when you lifted up the paper drape to help my feet into the stirrups. That is not appropriate when viewing a patient’s vagina for the first time. You explained every step from “I’m going to touch your thighs now” to “take a deep breath as I insert the speculum”. That part was quick but then you explained the manual exam that you did for too long. You inserted two fingers to check for cervical motion tenderness but rubbed my clitoris with your lubricated thumb as you did so. That was wrong! You explained that you were going to move your other hand to check for tenderness of my ovaries to check for infection but kept working your other hand on my clit and inside me. You put what felt like three fingers in me! You were sexually assaulting me again. Breaching my trust. Ignoring you oath. As a last indignity you felt for masses in the space between my vagina and rectum. You left your thumb in my vagina while you put a finger in my anus and moved them both back and in and out explaining you thought you felt something for a second but it resolved on massage, meaning it was nothing to worry about. You raped me! That was rape! I looked it up and what you were doing is a real part of an exam but no gynecologist had done that before then or ever since! Instead of leaving the room while I dressed you stayed and helped by holding out my clothes! Totally inappropriate! You should not have a medical license! Sure I let you, and I cooperated, and even tried to endure it and put on a pleasant face. I was a different person then and you just continued my cycle of being abused by men. But the anus part was where I felt true terror and wanted to get out. You gave me a business card with your name on it and told me to call and ask when you were working to schedule next visit. Then you only wrote me for 1 refill on 30 day birth control! Like I would even come back to be assaulted again. You smug abuser of power and trust! I left with you thinking I enjoyed that and would see you again!!! You make me want to scream and pound on things! It was delayed, but my abuse anxiety was triggered that night, and days after. I will never see a male gynecologist again. Your lust and greed is not better than that of a rapist. You broke my trust in the medical system and I still get anxiety at any doctor visit. Just because a girl’s reaction to abuse is not instant, because of some survival mechanism, does not make it any less painful. Sometimes even more, because we feel guilty for not being strong and assertive. You were in a position of authority and abused it so badly. You should be ashamed, doctor! You should be in prison!

*TRIGGER WARNING IN ADVANCE* So, it all began when I was like 5 or 6 and ended when I was around 10 or 11. I think. My own grandad was sexually abusing me. I couldn’t tell you all the events in chronological order because I can’t remember every single time or what order they went in. I can just share the types of things that would be done. When I would stay at my grandparents house, my grandad would read a bedtime story every night. However, it wasn’t just a bedtime story… no… it would end up with him holding my hand through a hole in his pocket making me touch his penis. Sometimes I’d be asleep and he’d come upstairs and rub his penis on my body and pull up my top and lick my nipples. I used to love insects as a child so his excuse was that his penis was a glow worm called Name and “Name would want a tickle”… he would draw bizarre pictures of different sexual poses and say that those would help with a spell because I was into magic… he would buy me things all the time like a phone, credit for my phone, an Xbox but this wasn’t on birthdays or Christmas this was just random and my brother wouldn’t get anything other than birthday and Christmas presents… I used to do acting and I loved it, he then made a script about a girl called poppy longstockings and bought a whole outfit for me to dress up in and gave me a script and I had to act out and let’s say the costume was certainly not PG… He would always try and do anal on me and I mean always… in his shed, at his work (which he was like a handyman and he’d work on student flats and stuff) I’d go on jobs with him sometimes. Listen. I was young I didn’t understand what was happening was wrong. Anyway… Let’s get to where it all got found out… When I was around 11 I told my friend that I thought what he was doing was wrong and that’s when it all stopped was when I realised or learned that it was wrong. Didn’t tell anybody else. Years later in secondary school me and my friend were in a lesson together and somehow it came up in conversation and someone overheard and then they went and told someone, then that person told someone, then so on… the whole year knew… I didn’t know everyone knew until I was sat next to my other friend who didn’t know and he texted me saying I know what your grandad did and I just bursted out crying… anyway I got taken out and a teacher spoke to me so I told her and that’s when I had to speak to the police… the weekend went by and I had to pretend everything was fine to my mum, dad and brother because they had no clue about anything… Monday came around and I get a knock on my class, it’s my brother asking to see me, we stand in the hall and he just hugs me and starts crying so then I start crying. Anyway, end up going home and my mum gives me a hug and then my dad comes home and gives me a hug and we’ve never been closer as a family…. Then comes court… What a horrible horrible experience…. But it was absolutely worth it! To see him go down for 15 years for what he did to me (wasn’t enough in my opinion but still better than nothing and I’m very grateful for that)… t This is not the end of my story but my entire mood has changed since the beginning of writing so I’m going to take a little break:) lots of love <3 x

Experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace was shit. I was a single parent. I was informed by my employer that I couldnt quit the job without being able to prove I was experiencing sexual harassment. With my employer, if you leave a job without good reason, they can refuse to pay. I had a daughter to take care of, and responsibilities. By that point, my power was already being put out, and light gone. I was quite lucky; as I was still with a union. But I couldnt use my voice. I started dressing down for work, not caring about my appearance; not taking care, not looking professional. I couldnt find help. Didnt know what to do. I managed to get away, a signed off holiday for a week; although even then I was just swimming in dark waters, not thinking about it, trying to push it away, deep down; it didnt happen. I returned from my break, not sure if it was a day or the same day, my wages were deducted. So much so that I wouldnt have been able to pay the rent or get through the month. It was like a lid coming off. An eruption. It was a small warehouse, with a small cabin. I was in disbelief at first. Then my mouth opened and I just let go slowly building up to a shout saying you took my money, you took my money, then shouting the obscenities that they had committed in the work place against me, I wasnt even aware it was happening, tears of anger pouring out. I was sacked the same day, within minutes. The worst part at the time I left to go outside to ring the union, and they told me to go back in My power was constantly being taken. Now there was no personal or human resources, just the director. Given letter and off I went. Advised by union to go to police. They took my statement. A day or so later I was informed by a police woman over the phone that the only reason I was reporting the sexual harassment was because I was fired. The union wrote a letter confirming that this wasnt the case as I had been in contact with them prior to contacting the police and being fired. Didint make any difference. The police never contacted me after that. However, I did find out by chance later on that on their records its says I didnt want them to do anything about it. Which wasnt true. I managed through the union to take it to a tribunal. I wish I hadnt gone on my own. I felt so unclean for such a time after the event; there were triggers, lots (continued for years). Having to go to the tribunal although they didnt have the guts to turn up, there was a directors partner there, they followed me into the building having almost bumped into me on the way there; giving me dirty looks etc. I had the barrister there eventually, who was quick talking and looking to get it over and done with. It was never about the money, it was justice and them admitting what they did. But they never did. They did call round my home before the tribunal at about 3-4am. I didnt answer the door. The judge seemed very one sided for the employer. I never got the chance to talk. It was like being a victim all over again and losing my voice. They said how kind etc this guy was. It all gave me the creeps that these 3 people were saying that it was ok what he did. The judge seemed to be going with them. They decided to settle. That was it. I sought counselling, but its never gone away. I've been a full time carer since. The thought of working with men again well, I would prefer to set up my own business so that I never have to be in that situation again. The other thing I dont see mentioned often is the aftermath. Youve spoken up which really takes some. Its the revenge that person takes after. they've not stopped. Theyve gotten other people to do their dirty work. These people must be under the illusion that I made it all up. Its a few years now, and they are still instigating others to harass me for telling the truth and making a stand. The Me too movement had just started a couple of months after my ordeal. The ordeal never goes away, like grief. Its disempowering. Its the hindsight, its the fear of freezing again. Ive not been the same person since. I have a gagging order, not allowed to talk about it. I think thats bullshit. Another way to disempower and allow them to walk around and do it again. I know for a fact that they did it to someone else before me. I bet theyve done it since; obviously, I hope not. The problem is, the constant revenge style they have going on means they've not reflected on their behaviour once or considered how wrong it is. They continue as though they have a right to touch another human being without consent in any way they wish. There were three people at the tribunal that agreed with that. Even the judge at the end was surprised that they settled. Where is the justice in that and the ethical considerations? The police response at the time, from a police woman. What kind of society do we have? I wonder from the me to movement what it would be like now for others to come forward? I also wonder, what are we educating our young boys in school and at home about consent and respect to women and themselves. Why did all those people look the other way, or project that it was acceptable behaviour? Im not the same person.

I am a looked after child. Well, that is what most people know me for. Being looked after is not this lucky life where you have two families, it is a life that no one wishes for. When I was little, I thought it was a good thing, something to be thankful for. I am thankful but not in all aspects. I hate being known as a looked after child and I have my reasons. In primary school I was put in a corner. None of the teachers believed in me. Most of them gave up on me. The truth is, I missed quite a big chunk of my education as a little girl as my birth mother did not take me to school a lot of the time. So, when I finally got the chance to go to school, I was quite a bit behind than the rest. I agree, I was challenging as I did not know the things I should at the age of 6. But my carers (who I now call mum and dad) believed in me, they helped me read and write. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be where I am today. So going back to what I was saying; I was put in a corner and at the time I thought that’s what I was meant to do- dress up all day long with a bit of carpet time here and there. But I’ve grown to know that this was very wrong. In high school I was put with all the looked after children. To me it was just like meeting new people but in my parents eyes it was me being put with the rest. People think that because you are looked after, you won’t excel in life like everyone else. They are wrong. I have proved that this is wrong. I put my head down and worked at my best ability, I am determined to achieve high in life and no one is taking that from me. See being fostered is all good. There is the bad parts too. I feel like I am stuck between two families. One I love and one I don’t know anymore. My birth mums life is like a shadow to me, I don’t know of it. Where I am now is my home and no one can take this from me. This is my story. Sometimes, I just want to be normal. one family and jobs a good one. But no I can't. This is me and if those around me don't like it then they shouldn't stick around. I am still a human. Nothing different. Just a horrible past.