Sharing – Listening to Survivors: What Our Survey Is Telling Us
These are an interesting read – survey results from abuse survivors.
Possibly the most important results are the ones about how many either didn’t tell anyone or told someone, and nothing happened. There was a severe lack of trust in institutions that should have provided support, but that support didn’t come through.
Then, of course, the top responses to what they would have wanted are these:
- Being listened to and believed
- Faster and more consistent responses
- Easier access to meaningful support
As a survivor of childhood abuse, I don’t know if these being in place would have changed whether I reported it. For many of us, where abuse happens within the family, that’s a very complex question. What I do know is that those three things did not appear to exist, and that guaranteed I would not tell anyone about it until I was an adult, let alone report it.
