By Blogger Ben - Child Sexual Exploitation - Can We Find Hope?
Child Sexual Exploitation - Can We Find Hope?
I want to tell you about a little girl I used to
know. She was a beautiful little girl, had a little baby face and she appeared
to be a confident and care free child. To this day, I can still see a lovely,
cheeky smile. She had a Mum and Dad who loved her, a sister and two brothers
who cared deeply for her. She had friends at school, a lovely home and looking
from the outside in, she had everything to look forward to as she continued her
childhood. This little girl was known to me because she was being sexually
exploited.
I worked with her and her family for just over a
year and I think we would all agree that it felt like ten at the time. Day in
and day out I was working closely with her family; we were chasing her around
the city, trying to find where she was and who she may be with. We would find
her in a car with grown adult men, in houses where children should never have
been, abandoned time and time again by those that had tried to convince her of
their lies and stories. She would tell me that the ‘relationships’ that
she thought she was in were ‘consensual’ her ‘choice’ and her ‘body.’
But there is no such thing as consent when you are a child and you are being
abused. You cannot consent to your own abuse - it’s that simple.
We had regular meetings; we followed all of the
guidance of multi-agency working; we had the right people at the right meetings
yet at times the work felt hopeless. It felt like we were fighting a losing
battle and that the battle looked likely to be lost. There were days on end
that she would be missing where I would visit her parents sick with worry and
join the search to find her. I remember at times when she had returned trying
to engage with her. She would cover herself in a blanket on the floor of her
bedroom, refusing to talk or to show her face. Years later she described to me
the main feeling she had felt was ‘shame.’ Oh I wish she could have seen
at the time, the love; the care; the compassion; the fight that all those people
around her had to help her through the trauma she was experiencing and the need
in every single one of us to want to ‘rescue’ her from the sexual exploitation
she was exposed to.
At the time it seemed that it was difficult for
her to understand what we were so worried about but I look back now and think
maybe it was the other way round. Maybe it was difficult for us to understand
what she in hindsight was so worried about and why she did not feel able to
answer my endless questions or accept the initial support on offer. How she
hadn't seen at first the abuse for what it was, but that as time went on and
she started to see how frightening, terrifying, overwhelming and dangerous this
was, whilst for us, it felt that she was slipping further and further away from
us and it felt as though she was out of our reach.
This was taking place prior to the public
inquiry into the Rotherham and Rochdale sexual exploitation scandals and I can
clearly remember these unfolding in the news. Early in my career, working with
her at that stage and looking back, I had no idea of the depth of the issue
that I had just touched the surface of, in my work with this young person. It
felt like desperate work in a desperate time and the risks difficult to even
explain or articulate even after so much time, and now with so much more
experience in the field. The risks were some of the highest to manage and it’s
so heartbreaking to read and know of so many more similar stories.
But there is hope. This little girl went to live
in a fantastic provision, with staff who were able to walk through her trauma
with her. She came out fighting; she was so brave, so determined and she did
it.
This little girl is now a grown woman and this
week her Mum made contact with me to tell me that she has also become a Mum
herself. I couldn't be happier for her if I tried. In the face of adversity,
sexual exploitation and abuse, she managed to find and accept the support to be
able to work through and address her trauma. She is quite possibly one of the
bravest people I had the pleasure of knowing and I am so proud of her. It’s
never too late. It’s never impossible. There is always hope.
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