“When I was nine, I was sexually abused by my uncle,” says Phil. “My father left me with him after school and he abused me and my sister. I was terrified and I felt so guilty for not being able to protect my sister. He warned me not to tell anyone and I was too scared to because he was family.
Phil’s case is not uncommon. Most childhood victims of sexual abuse are too frightened to speak out about the injustice that has been done to them. They hold their tongue and slide painfully into an unacknowledged stratum of society – one that is more likely than any other to suffer from depression, alcohol or drug dependency, one in which suicide and self-harm are far more common, and one that is twenty times more likely than non victims to be arrested for child prostitution later in life.
Family Matters is a specialist charity that provides free, one-to-one counselling for men and women who survived childhood sexual abuse; it helps thousands of people each year to come face to face with the problems that have plagued them ever since their ordeal. “We try to get to the root of their distress,” says Malcolm, a police officer and trained counsellor who retired from his job to become general manager of the charity.
Family Matters’ trained therapists travel out to see people within their own community. “It’s really important to de-stigmatise sexual abuse so that it is seen as a life event rather than medicalised as a kind of ‘problem’ to be ‘treated’. That’s why we see people not in a hospital but as close as possible to their own homes” says Malcolm.
Phil sought help from Family Matters at 17, eight years after the abuse had first started. By that time, he had turned to alcoholism as a way of combating the frequent panic attacks that had plagued him ever since his ordeal. Like over 80% of those that Family Matters helps, Phil was able to change his outlook dramatically after just twelve sessions. His panic attacks slowed and stopped altogether, he got a regular job and most importantly, was finally able to realise that he was not responsible for what had happened to him.
In the words of Malcolm Gilbert: “It is so rewarding to see people who make an amazing recovery from such awful abuse. If you can help them relieve their feelings of guilt, responsibility and shame and put it back where it belongs – with the perpetrator – then the effect can be absolutely life-transforming”. Donations through a local community foundation help projects such as these.