Monthly Archives: February 2017

Why I Reported Non-Recent Abuse to the Police

Posted on by Leave a comment

While there is a lot of talk, and I hope action, around detecting abuse so that it can be stopped and the child given help and protection there is less understanding of why adults don’t report abuse to the police once they are adults.

Some recent statistics from the British Crime survey suggest that the top reasons adults don’t disclose, and make formal complaints to the police, is embarrassment and thinking that they either wouldn’t be believed and / or that the police wouldn’t do anything about it. [1]

These reasons are certainly high on my list but there are others that are as difficult for me to deal with.

Possibly top is fear. Fear that my abuser, a family member, will react negatively to it and punish me. Even though I have no contact with the person, know that there is nothing left that they can do to hurt me and they already know I have talked to Social Services about it that fear is still there.

Read more »

Share
Posted in Life as a Survivor

Who Commissions Support for Survivors?

Posted on by Leave a comment

Like many who have been sexually abused as children I suppressed the memories of the abuse for many years as a self-protective mechanism. It was only in the last couple of years that I have found those memories and feeling beginning to surface despite my best efforts to keep them down.

As they did my own mental health deteriorated and I began looking for support and help only to find that there seemed to be no help tailored to Adult survivors of abuse available in Somerset. Even that provided by charities was sparse and focused in the bigger cities.

This prompted me to begin asking questions believing that either the NHS or Local Authority would be responsible for the recognition of the need for such support and its provision. After finding little or no information on the web sites of wither the Clinical Commissioning Group or the local authority I decided to ask, via a freedom of information request, what provision they had in place and what their planed provision was.

Read more »

Share
Posted in Freedom Of Information, Life as a Survivor