Will there be a tipping point for CSA?

Eight years ago, I was on a Norwegian Air flight from London to Los Angeles. Flying over the Atlantic and the USA, I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell in one sitting. Whilst reading, I opened the Notes app on my phone and typed a short list that stayed there for years:

‘The three rules of the tipping point:

• The Law of the Few

• The Stickiness Factor

• Power of Context

Stickiness means that a message makes an impact. The stickiness factor says that there are specific ways of making a contagious message memorable; there are relatively simple changes in the presentation and structuring of information that can make a big difference in how much of an impact it makes.’

What I find interesting is that for many years, I didn’t know exactly why I wrote and kept this note; I only knew it mattered to me in some way. Since creating Victorious Voices, the reason has become crystal clear. The project doesn’t exist to raise awareness, or for sympathy, or to raise the conversation in safe, sanitised ways.

Victorious Voices exists to help create a tipping point around Childhood Sexual Abuse.

Our portraits are to show CSA survivors in pride and dignity, as powerful people with real lives and complex stories, not as statistics presented to the world as broken victims. And if a tipping point is coming, it won’t arrive because society suddenly becomes kinder. It won’t arrive because an institution issues a statement, or a campaign goes viral, or a single reform is announced as a solution. It will come from critical mass: the moment enough of the millions of survivors out there refuse invisibility at the same time, so visibly, so persistently, that the social fabric can’t simply absorb it and carry on.

When that happens, the shift won’t look like a single “moment.” It will look like a rupture in how society defines safety, justice, family, memory, identity - everything that CSA threatens and distorts. And if we’re serious about a tipping point, we must name what it requires. I believe it will require Survivor visibility without performance. The world has a preferred survivor narrative: a clean recovery arc, a neat “I overcame it” story, the kind of pain that is presentable. But that isn’t the full spectrum. A tipping point requires visibility that does not demand survivors become palatable. It requires space for addicted survivors, relapsing survivors, and survivors who can’t articulate what happened but still carry it in their bodies. It requires that we acknowledge angry Survivors, shut down, volatile, tender, and contradictory. The more survivors are seen without being forced to sanitise their truth, the harder it becomes to erase them.

When enough of those voices show up at once, the demand for honesty begins to outweigh the comfort of denial. We will hit a true tipping point when survivors aren’t only telling their stories, but they’re in control. When Survivors are running courtrooms, classrooms, companies, and local authorities, that is when the change will begin. When Survivors are writing policy, commissioning art, funding other survivors, shaping research, and leading institutions, that’s when CSA stops being a “topic” and starts becoming a lens, a way of interrogating systems and rebuilding them around real accountability.

Because the truth is: disclosure alone is not power. Visibility alone is not power. Power is when survivors are not merely heard, but structurally unignorable. The tipping point will come when survivors stop internalising the cost of what happened to them. When we stop apologising for being “too much” and stop shrinking ourselves to keep other people comfortable. We need to begin showing up in mass without toning down the truth. We’re seeing flashes of this already, but not at scale. Not yet. The moment survivors collectively say:

“We will not whisper anymore. We will not be gatekept. We will not heal quietly, so you can stay comfortable.”

That’s when the rupture comes.

There’s another element that must be said plainly: this is not an abstract idea. It’s a fight we’re already in, whether we acknowledge it or not. Power resists exposure. Systems protect themselves. Institutions, reputations, families, and entire cultural myths depend on silence and denial. And if you look at the world we’re living in, how aggressively some leaders and institutions try to control the future, rewrite the past, and harden the narrative into something that benefits them, you can see what happens whenever truth begins to threaten the order of things.

Tipping points don’t require perfection; they require momentum and people standing up to be counted. Once momentum breaks through, once survivors realise, they are not weak, not broken, not something to be ashamed of, the story cannot go back to what it was. It is impossible to do so. Throughout history, people speaking the truth have been ignored, mocked, discredited, and dismissed. Sometimes for years, sometimes for lifetimes. But history also shows that when the wave finally breaks, it breaks because someone held the line and refused to be small.

CSA Survivors have lived through the unthinkable. Our stories are not redemption arcs. They are reality. We have borne witness to the brutality of abuse and the failures of justice, the failures of protection, and the failures of society. Our scars are not badges of honour to be polished for public consumption; they are the map of our survival. They are evidence of a system that demanded our disappearance, only to have us rise anyway: raw, real, and unyielding.

A tipping point will occur when we reclaim our space and show up in our fullness, rage, grief, love, and sorrow without being forced to audition for credibility. We must reject the notion that we must perform healing for others; our journey is ours alone, and that journey is not linear nor predictable. We must call for the dismantling of systems that silence us. We must demand legal, cultural, and institutional accountability. The era of covering up abuse, shaming victims, and protecting perpetrators must end, not in theory and empty words, but in practice.

Our voices, uncompromised and collective, can become the foundation of a future where our stories are not hidden, but honoured as historical truths and calls to action. We are the architects of a future that values every part of our experience. We will redefine what it means to be resilient, to heal, to live without the burden of enforced silence. Our narratives will teach future generations that truth cannot be muted, and that our pain is not a liability but the catalyst for profound societal change. This should be our declaration:

We are CSA survivors: loud, visible, and unyielding. We will remain, and we will resist. And we will forge a future where no one is forced into silence by the weight of their abuse and the denial of the systems constructed around us.