Warwickshire Victims Forum: Delay, Deflection, Disappearance

On Thursday, Victorious Voices exhibited at the Warwickshire Victims Forum hosted by Safeline UK at the University of Warwick. I was also given the unique opportunity to speak directly to representatives from the Police, CPS, and frontline services about the lived reality many survivors face when navigating these decayed systems. Too often, survivors are invited into rooms to be heard politely, then forgotten quickly. This week, the truth was spoken plainly, without softening the edges for comfort.

I compressed my ongoing 5-year journey through the Criminal Justice System into 20 slides, starting in September 2021, when I made the decision to report historical child sexual abuse. It was not a spontaneous act, nor an easy one. Like many survivors, I had spent years carrying the weight of what happened in silence. When I finally chose to speak, I believed, very naively, that the systems designed to protect the vulnerable would respond with urgency, care, and competence.

What followed instead was the start of a process of delay, dysfunction, and indifference. My first attempt to report the abuse was through the non-emergency 101 line. The call rang for nearly twenty minutes before it was answered. When it finally was, I was told that no one was available to handle such a matter and was redirected to an online LiveChat service. After another ten-minute wait, I was sent a generic link to a web form, one that felt more appropriate for reporting minor theft than serious abuse. I abandoned the process entirely. I remember thinking: how many others had reached this same point and quietly given up forever?

The following month, I attended Ashton Police Station in person. I was told my case would need to be transferred due to jurisdictional boundaries, and that an Achieving Best Evidence (ABE) interview would be arranged elsewhere. Weeks passed with no update. When I eventually followed up, I was told they were still trying to book a room. I had made it clear I was available at any time, yet the process stalled regardless.

Six weeks after reporting in person, no interview had taken place. The delays, the absence of communication, and the lack of visible progress compounded my distress and I withdrew from the process. Months later, in April 2022, the case was reopened through an Independent Sexual Violence Advisor. An ABE interview was finally conducted in May.

The investigation passed between multiple officers. The suspect failed to attend a voluntary interview. No arrest was attempted. Months passed. Then more months. By December 2022, the suspect remained at large and had become a fugitive. When I, the victim, eventually tracked down my perpetrator and reported his location to emergency service as an active lead and a tangible opportunity, there was no meaningful action. When I checked in days later, it was clear that the information had not only not been acted upon, but hadn’t been passed to the right people. This was not just inefficiency. It was neglect.

The consequences of that neglect were not abstract. They landed in real lives. On 10th January 2024, a family member was taken to A&E after self-harming. The stress of the suspect’s continued harassment and the sense that nothing was being done had pushed them to a breaking point. Still, there was no action. It was only after external pressure, after intervention involving The Maggie Oliver Foundation, that something shifted. Within a week of that intervention, the suspect was arrested. Not through new intelligence, but at the same location I had reported months earlier. When I later met with investigators, there was no acknowledgement of failure. No apology. Only the assertion that they had done their best under difficult circumstances.

This brief overview speeds through a whole catalogue of failures. There is a misconception about trauma that persists both publicly and institutionally: that the primary injury is the abuse itself. That once disclosed, the survivor begins a linear journey toward healing. This is not reality.

What many survivors experience is a second wound, one inflicted not by the abuser, but by the systems meant to respond. When institutions fail to act, delay, minimise, or deflect responsibility, they do not remain neutral. They compound the harm. This is where the concept of moral injury becomes critical.

Moral injury is not simply trauma. It is the psychological, emotional, and existential damage that occurs when a person’s fundamental expectations of justice, protection, and accountability are violated. For survivors of child sexual abuse, this often manifests as a deep rupture, not just in trust, but in meaning itself.

We are told to speak. To come forward. To trust the system. But what happens when the system fails to meet us there? Through my journey I have come to understand something that is rarely acknowledged in mainstream discourse: Many survivors are not mentally ill. They are morally injured. They are carrying grief that has been denied, pain that has been minimised, and shame that was never theirs to begin with.

When the internal equation shifts, when pain outweighs hope and available resources, the risk of crisis escalates. This is not theoretical. It is observable. It is lived. And it is preventable. Yet too often, responses focus on the individual; on therapy, resilience, coping, while ignoring the systemic conditions that exacerbate suffering in the first place.

At the Warwickshire Victims Forum, I was given the opportunity to speak directly to representatives from policing, the Crown Prosecution Service, and frontline services. I did not soften my message. I spoke plainly about the failures I have endured. I described the systems as they are experienced from the outside, not as they are presented internally. I said that in the eyes of many people, these organisations are pathetic, their systems are pathetic, and their leadership is pathetic.

The room was silent and uncomfortable. Too often, survivors are invited into these spaces to be heard politely and then forgotten quickly. The purpose of speaking is not to maintain comfort; it is to disrupt it. Because without disruption, there is no change.

Victorious Voices exists as both a response and a refusal. A response to the silence, stigma, and systemic abandonment that survivors face. A refusal to be reduced to statistics, case numbers, or consultation exercises. Through portraiture, testimony, and platform-building, the project aims to do something simple but radical: to ensure that survivors are seen, heard, and understood in their full humanity.

There is, of course, a high cost to speaking like this. When you refuse to dilute your truth, you force others to confront things they would rather ignore: their complicity, their inaction, the limitations of the systems they represent. That can make it difficult for you to obtain opportunities. Not because you are unreasonable, but because you are unwilling to provide comfort and continue the charade.

The alternative of silence, compliance, and disappearance is no longer acceptable. CSA Survivors do not just survive abuse. They survive systems that fail them. They survive stigma. They survive being told, implicitly and explicitly, to move on. Our work exists to challenge that. Not just to demand change, but to embody it. And to ensure that every voice shared is one more refusal to accept this woeful treatment. Once this moral injury is seen clearly, it becomes much harder to ignore. And once it can no longer be ignored, it becomes something else entirely:

Not an unfortunate reality, but a choice.