My name is Jack Jackson.

I am happy to share my experience of what happened to me. My abuse started when I was around eight years old going on nine and it was a family member who sexually abused me right up until I was sixteen when I finally broke my silence. Because of all of this my mental health and struggles growing up were really difficult. I wanted it to stop, and I didn't know how to stop it, but when I was sixteen, I decided enough was enough and found the courage to be able to speak up and report my abuse.

I am happy to share my experience of what happened to me. My abuse started when I was around eight years old going on nine and it was a family member who sexually abused me right up until I was sixteen when I finally broke my silence.

Because of all this my mental health and struggles growing up were really difficult. I wanted it to stop, and I didn't know how to stop it, but when I was sixteen, I decided enough was enough and found the courage to be able to speak up and report my abuse.

Unfortunately, when I was eighteen my court case against my perpetrator failed after the second day of trial. A woman from the Victim Support Unit in the courts put me in touch with We Are Survivors (formerly known as Survivors Manchester), and I started my journey of trying to heal from there. Time has been one of the biggest healers allowing me to find myself and find my path in life.

Music is one my best coping mechanisms, if I am having such a bad day or have any reminders of my abuse it really helps to drown it out. I discovered this works at a young age due to being in an abusive household music was my escape. TRANCE more so due to the euphoric feeling it gave me.

I have developed a support network over time, but that has been difficult in relation to my family due to them being in the middle of it all. My friends have been great, they have been immensely helpful and are always there to listen. I managed to go back to We Are Survivors back in 2022 after taking a break due to work and life getting in the way.

I still attend the Safe Room which is a male peer to peer support group. I have also had my 1 to 1 therapy which helped tremendously and helped me reframe lots of stuff from the abuse and my mindset in general.

My therapy was one of the main turning points within my recovery journey because of this shift in mindset. Prior to therapy I had a mindset of ‘I can’t fuck up’ and we managed to unpick all of that and turn it around. Now my mindset is ‘my life is for me and only me’ and I can make mistakes because I am human.

That being said I have encountered many setbacks along the way, a lot of this was because every time I would try and talk about the abuse and how it affected me people would try and change the subject or keep telling me to get over. For people who haven’t suffered childhood CSA they wouldn't understand and can’t expect people to get over the trauma suffered. This is why I share my story and want to help others to make other people understand the extent of how bad this can affect people later in life living with trauma.

I managed to reclaim my identity when I was around twenty-four, mainly because I had the mindset to keep going and wanting to help others. I knew if I could share my story, it could help inspire people to break their silences and I have met a lot of survivors along the way from sharing my story.

In terms of forgiveness, I’ll be honest I don’t have any forgiveness towards my abuser for what he did to me. I won’t forgive or forget and I struggle with this towards others who do any wrongdoing towards me. However, I did forgive myself for being so angry towards myself for not doing anything sooner than sixteen to break my silence. This took some time to do, but I'm glad I did.

My advice to other survivors is take each and every day as it comes, we are allowed to have our dark days regardless of if that lasts a day, weeks, or months. This will sound really cheesy but there it light at the end of the rainbow, we will get through this together and show the world we are great, and we are VICTORIOUS!