“I had sworn to myself that I would never speak, that I would carry this within me until my last breath! Why; Because I knew that no one will believe me, that everyone will blame me, that everyone will point the finger at me, that everyone will say “she wanted it and she got it”, but didn’t you see how she moved around? She provoked him. And many but such. With the childish mind I had then, yes, I didn’t have the strength or endurance to go through all these comments. But how could I have power? When my own father was raping me? How can a child’s mind handle it?’

Thus begins the letter of a minor who was a victim of sexual abuse and sent this letter to the curator of Minors and Social Assistance of Kalamata, Angeliki Roumeliotou, with the request that this letter “reach where it is needed and where it can reach, to help other children find pieces of themselves in his lines.”

“Until I found a wonderful person who I opened up to, believed in me, supported me throughout my struggle to be vindicated. He stood by me like a rock. From the moment I told her, she didn’t stop begging me, telling me, say it and don’t let anyone believe you, I will be by your side, say it because this man will do the same to other girls, if not he has already done so. Say it and I swear I’ll support you every step of the way, I’ll be by your side no matter what happens. And so the day came when I confessed everything, in every detail, in every horrifying detail, and I was right after all.

Well, at first no one believed me, of course, who will we believe? The little girl who went through all this? Or does he deserve a father? Well, guess who they believed?

I went through 40 waves. I had to prove to them that I was telling the truth. Because of course, I was accusing “a decent man”. Because this is our society, this is our family, we didn’t choose them. It happened to be her. Until we reached the day when strangers became my family, people stood up to me who knew nothing about me, but above all, I was believed by the people who had to believe me in order to finally be vindicated. That my soul may be redeemed, why wounds never heal.

You get used to them to be able to endure. You are strong. And there is nothing more beautiful than that! And so there you start stepping on your feet, you start from scratch but with all the knowledge you had until then, with all those scars that someone caused you with this way of wanting, without calculating your “being”, depriving you of everything your rights, crushing your every dream. I want to tell you through this story, love yourself, don’t ask yourself why, talk to the person closest to you. To the one you know will believe you and let no one else believe you. Just Speak. Close your ears to bad people and their negative messages. Just think that with your own story you can help other people who really need it, people who don’t have the same strength as you to face the “monster”. Be their strength.” With these words, the minor concludes the letter to Ms. Roumeliotou.

Society needs to stand by abused children

According to experts, secondary sexual abuse of a minor, that is, abuse that comes a second time, from the social environment, society at large and the media, is just as harmful as primary abuse.

“It is just as damaging as the primary as the consequences act multiplyingly since they rest on an already sensitive and disturbed condition. The social stigma creates additional difficulties in establishing relationships of the child victim with peers and the wider community, which arise, either as a consequence of the primary abuse, or as a social consequence of all that the child will experience when there is no adequate framework of protective mechanisms after the revelation. In other words, it is also the feeling of guilt and shame that is created through the bad handling of the agencies, the community, the environment, and sometimes even some mass media that interfere in the daily life of the child in an extremely penetrating and revealing way, while he is still trying to recover from a brutal trauma, as a result of which he is led to social exclusion”, says Mrs. Roumeliotou speaking to APE-MPE.

“The experience of such trauma has been paralleled by experts as a holocaust of the victims’ lives. They will never forget. They are trying to learn to live with it and therefore need long-term and systematic support. If they do not have support, from the environment or from a professional, things are very painful because they are called to climb their personal Golgotha ​​alone. And this is extremely shocking for their course and “relatable” to people. But if they are supported by a “significant other”, things become brighter, more optimistic. Sometimes, in fact, there are victims who lead movements to support other victims, and this, apart from an extraordinary act of altruism, is also a form of internal healing of the trauma”, he explains.

The percentage of abuses is much higher than the numbers that are made public, as minors have a hard time reporting what happened to them. But experts say that even among that small percentage of horror stories that come to light, there are a large number of minors who regret reporting because of the procedures. And this is due to the re-traumatization, among others, from the leaking of the depositions, the presentation by the media and the non-application of basic ethical rules. The institution of foster care, which has developed and shown tangible results in recent years, can play an important role in relieving child victims of sexual abuse.

“The institution of foster care is a very important alternative form of care. He comes to give hope to a child who has been judged to need to be removed, short-term or long-term, from the biological family because the family itself cannot protect him. The child should not go to an institution because there it is certain that he will suffer secondary abuse due to the impersonal situation in which he will find himself, the absence of stability and adequacy of caregivers, the stigma “I live in an institution” that will define all his social contacts , the absence of personal space, the dim prospect of reunification with the family due to the absence of supportive mechanisms in this direction and finally the very frequent institutionalization”, states Ms. Roumeliotou but at the same time, she emphasizes: “However, even foster care is alternative form. That is, we should not ignore that the most essential form of relief is the constant systematic support of the biological family within the community so that it remains, as much as possible, functional and keeps the child in its bosom”.

Mrs. Roumeliotou says that it is very important that the “Children’s Houses” operate in all the courts of appeal, but also that our country moves towards a single institutional framework, an integrated national protection mechanism that will concern all forms of child abuse .