![]() ![]() It felt so wrong that the defence barrister was using my private notes to score points off me. Having your counselling notes used against you in that way is a shock. Thankfully, their tactic didn’t work this time, and he was found guilty of indecent assault, gross indecency with a child, rape, sexual activity with a child, and making indecent photographs of a child. The defence used that to say that my other sister – the one who had been abused – had coerced me into going to counselling, and led me to believe I was a victim. There was one sentence in my notes where I talk about how I felt unsupported by my sister after I started therapy, and I said “I felt like I’d been led to a dark place, and left there.” In my counselling notes, I talked about how my sister had supported and encouraged me into counselling, but I felt like she abandoned me once I got there, because it was painful for her to listen to. My sister – not the one who had been abused, but my older sister – had been instrumental in persuading me to go to therapy. And, just like in the first trial, they used the notes against me in the second trial. It was during this second trial that I was called to testify in support of my sister’s abuse allegations, and to show bad character on his part. ![]() The jury was hung on the other charges by other victims, including my sister, so a retrial was held for the following year. He was acquitted of the charges I brought against him in that trial, which was devastating. When my counsellor found out what had happened, she was furious and upset for me. They didn’t call my counsellor to testify on my behalf either, because there wasn’t time. The defence counsel said that because my memory came up during therapy, it was a false memory – even though false memory syndrome has been discredited. They pulled up my counselling notes, and said, “Your counsellor is the one that told you you’re a victim, so therefore you now think you’re a victim.” But the defence used that against me during the trial. It was only through counselling that I realised that I was a victim too. I told myself that my sister was the victim, not me, and that whatever happened to me, what happened to her was worse. I’d always known that my sister had been abused as a child, but in my head, I told myself that it happened to my sister, not to me. I just felt like I wanted them to have access to everything, so they could see I was being completely transparent. ![]() You don’t have to give permission, but the defence know if you’ve refused, and they can twist it to make it look like you’re withholding information from the court. It took some time for the Crown Prosecution Service to build a case, but eventually we went to court in July 2018.īefore the trial, the police asked me if they could have access to my medical records, including my counselling notes. Not all of the charges applied to my sister and I. My sister got the worst of the abuse, and she went to the police to tell them what she knew. I had a lot of anxiety around my childhood, and I was also about to become a parent, and I was worried about that too. I realised I needed to go to counselling, to help process a lot of emotions. I was looking over my shoulder the entire time. Every day, I’d walk past the flat and think I was going to see him. When we were kids, he’d come over to our house for dinner and parties, and he would sometimes come up to me and my sister’s bedroom on the pretence of reading us bedtime stories. I was working just around the corner from the flat where this man who was a friend of my dad’s growing up used to live. When I was 35, I started a job in London. ![]() Her counselling notes were used against her in court during both trials. The case was re-listed for trial and she was called to testify again against her abuser. Her abuser was found not guilty of the charges Chloe brought against him, but the jury was hung on the remaining counts. Her case formed part of a broader trial against a single perpetrator including other abuse allegations from different complainants. Chloe,* 45, an admin assistant from Warwickshire, reported her childhood sexual abuse to police in August 2015. ![]()
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