I still can’t believe I was able to do it. Leave all of my family behind, basically escape, that’s how dangerous they were. Now I can actually look back to what I had to do to leave, for the safety of my daughter and myself, it seems an impossible task. But, when I was in it having to deal with it, my daughter’s safety is what kept me moving forward, what kept me upright and able to focus on what I needed to do. At the time I was being supported by a number of people, professionals who worked in the field of organised child abuse, and one of them, a beautiful guy called Joseph, told me to keep my eyes on the prize, meaning my daughter. Focus on her whenever you feel like you are loosing your mind, he would say, in every conversation we had. Because it felt like I was loosing my mind, walking some line between sanity and the oblivion of the truth showing me just what my family were involved with, and who they really are. I mean I still feel embarrassed to talk about it. I probably always will. I know I shouldn’t, but the truth is so ludicrous, so extreme when I talk about the full extent of what I was born into, it’s just too much even for me to believe sometimes, and I survived it. They were powerful and wealthy and they were involved with people who were even more powerful and wealthy. You don’t escape these kinds of people who are involved in the stuff they were. You don’t speak out about them and you certainly don’t report them to the police, as I did. If I knew then what I know now would I still go to the police ? Yes. I had no option. I had to protect my daughter, I had to tell the truth, despite how terrified I was. My love for my daughter was and always will be stronger than any fear they could have brain washed me with. Today I am not afraid anymore , but back then in 2007 when I went to the police I was rigid with terror. All I was told as a child was that if I spoke out I would be killed. You tell a child that once they will believe you. You tell them over and over and over, then show them how you would do it, then chances are that child will never speak out. Going to the police I truly believed they would protect me, that they would bring me some justice. I was so naive. I see the hope of the child in me when I went forward with my story, but it wasn’t grounded in reality. What reality tells me now, is that those who operate at the top of British society, who are involved in the organised abuse of children, do not get held to account. They are literally above the law. At this point in my life as I made my statement to detectives in a video recorded interview for court, everything I ever knew about my own identity was about to disintegrate and the life I had worked for would be lost. The police failed me, they failed me so badly and they put us at huge risk. They did not bring anyone to justice, they did not protect us and they did not believe me, even though they pretended they did, and went forward with a big investigation into my family. I was not aware at the time they interviewed me, that they didn’t believe me, because they didn’t tell me this. They were informed by the Rape Crisis agency supporting me, that the nature of the abuse I was to disclose would put me at risk, but they went ahead and interviewed my family anyway, alerting them to the fact I had spoken out. I found out in 2016 I had not been believed, when I applied for Criminal Injuries Compensation. I had to prove I had reported my abuse to the police in order to be granted compensation, so I sent off for my police records to evidence that. I was sent a huge file which had all the notes the detectives had made on my case and a transcript of the video interview I had made. It was a hot summer afternoon as I opened the file and sat in my kitchen to read through the notes. What I read made me scream. There in black and white were the detective’s opinions of me. They stated I was “dramatic,” when recalling memories of sexual abuse. They said I was making it up, that because I was in recovery from addiction I had false memory syndrome, drugs and alcohol had made me hallucinate the abuse. I wish ! When they sent me my police file they had no idea what was in it, or they wouldn’t have sent it to me. They certainly would not have wanted me to know the extent of their failure. I complained of course , I tried to get them to take responsibility for the huge damage and risk they had caused my daughter and I. This complaint went on forever. In the end I had to choose my sanity over trying to hold them to account. I got an apology of sorts, not a real one, and only when they realised I wasn’t going to just go away with all their attempts to bully me and shut me down. I arrived at the point of knowing that my truth was my truth, so fuck them. At that point I became much stronger. I stopped caring that they did not believe me. Sure, it’s appalling, but I would never feel I would have to convince anyone ever again. Those that do not believe this kind of abuse goes on either can’t face the horror of it, which I get, or are involved in colluding with the abusers, like the police do.
During those years, between reporting the abuse in 2007 and applying for Criminal Injuries Compensation in 2016, my life was torn apart from the repercussions of the police investigation. I do not regret what I did, it got me free finally from all of them, but I lost so much doing it, my home, my career my health for a while and almost my sanity. Freedom came with a huge price. I didn’t realise just how huge back then, but the safety of my daughter would never have stopped me, even if I had known. The consequences of my family and the other perpetrators knowing I had spoken to the police meant they came after my daughter and I and tried to kill us. My life descended into something that didn’t seem real. It was like a movie. I got hold of experts in the field of organised abuse to talk to, some of whom I already knew. I needed the cold hard facts of what I was actually dealing with, to counter the triggers I was experiencing from being pursued and terrorised by the group. These professionals saved my life and stopped me from going insane. I had to leave my home and relocate somewhere safe. It was a nightmare. As I was trying to get us out, our home was broken into, I had men turning up in the middle of the night knocking on the door, I received death threats over the phone and in the mail. I was in a constant state of trauma and my body was responding in all kind of extreme ways because of the threat.
I did it though. I got us out. I got us to safety. That was the most important thing. We lost our beautiful home in Australia, I lost the job that I loved. We boarded a plane at 11.45 pm and flew back to the UK, a place I did not want to be, but it was safe, safer than Australia had been and that was all that mattered. We took off in the dark and landed in Singapore at dawn. The early morning light and the haze of humidity over all the lush tropical plants and flowers lifted my spirits. I’d done it. I was finally free. On the leg to London the plane was almost empty and we were able to stretch out and sleep . I was euphoric about protecting my daughter and getting us out.
It wasn’t long after arriving back in the UK, that I fell apart and was diagnosed with Complex PTSD and DID. My whole system, body and mind could finally give up the stories they had to bury. And so I started EMDR therapy for 7 years to free myself. There began a process of time travel back to all the child parts I had to be to survive the abuse. EMDR has given me back to my true self, it has returned me to my soul, my true essence. When I speak of freedom in my writing, it is something I have fought a war for. It is what I stand for as a survivor. It is what I share in the hope that other survivors of organised abuse believe they too can be free. I may have lost so much, but today I am free and I live a life full of love with my beautiful queen of a daughter and my wonderful animals. It is possible to escape organised abuse. It is possible to live a life full of love. I have lived it.
