"Hello, my name is Jacqueline and I am a volunteer for Jersey Action Against Rape (JAAR). I am also a witness and a survivor of childhood mental, physical and sexual abuse.

As a very young child, I vividly remember trying to explain what was happening in my home, to an adult that was very close to my family. The response from this lady, standing in the kitchen of her home, just across the road from mine was pretty much amusement. I was told not to repeat my accusations, otherwise it would be all my fault if this person went to prison! I’m talking about a very small mining village in the 1970’s when children were literally, seen but not heard.

In hindsight, I can see what my childish, garbled, red-faced attempts to explain something really, really, terrible must have looked like, and the difficult choice, if any, I was asking this person to make. What I could not see as an eight-year-old child, and still cannot see as a 50-something-year-old woman, is how I could be accused of making up “stories”. What young child’s story starts with, “Today, teddy, I had to sit in a drawer in a locked room and watch the rape of someone close to me"?

Pictured: Jacqueline struggled for years with the abuse she suffered during her childhood.

The last time I was raped I was 15 years old and, as a result, the last cry for help was an attempt to take my own life. I was recovering in hospital after the suicide attempt and I tried to reach out again but my mother’s latest husband had me branded as a problem teen with an overstretched imagination, so the only help that I was offered was a pregnancy test.

In our society today, we gasp at the amount of child abuse cases in the media. “How can children be mistreated in such a way and it go unnoticed? Surely there must have been warning signs?”

The warning signs in my family were emblazoned in red across our foreheads.

In the hope of escaping, I found my home in Jersey at 19 - for me, my saving grace!

Pictured: Jacqueline relocated to Jersey in order to escape her past.

I have had a good life on this lovely island - a better life - but, despite my surroundings and my friends, I have not been able to escape the past. With no way of letting all of ‘this’ go, I feel that my life, until recently, has followed a path of mistrust, insecurity, and anger.

Only recently - two-and-a-half years ago to be precise - following a sudden life-threatening illness did I reach out again and, amongst others, I found JAAR.

JAAR is a local charity founded by a survivor which offers support through access to non-judgmental, empathic counsellors who will help survivors and their family learn to cope and recover from trauma.

This is something that so many could only dream of, something I could have only dreamed of.

Please do not ever feel afraid, there is someone to talk to."

This article first appeared in Connect Magazine, which you can read in full by clicking HERE.