ABSTRACT
In this account of her abuse and its effects on her life Rachel describes her experience of victimisation, revictimisation and systems abuse by official agencies: the police and social services, in particular, but also by the church, the hospital and the child and adolescent mental health services. She also describes how her childhood abuse history and her ‘psychiatric’ history have been, and continue to be, used against her, notwithstanding the fact that eventually, many years later, her father was prosecuted and convicted for the childhood sexual assault of her, his daughter, and also, at the same time, for the more recent abuse then of a girl whom he had raped. He is currently serving a fourteen-year prison sentence. Identification here would put Rachel at additional and further risk of ‘systems abuse’. Rachel’s story illustrates how victims of child sexual abuse are silenced, and in her experience, the particular silencing effects of the Cleveland affair.
