For the attention of Gavin Jones, CEO Essex County Council and Slough Council and Chair of Solace
My telephone number is 07306 896851, you can contact me at any time of the night or day, or weekend on this number, or use the phone number on my records, a text giving a short explanation would suffice.
Trying to work out in my head why you liked a tweet that described in detail a horrific incident where one of your employees made me disclose childhood sexual abuse over the phone while my child was present. The incident in question gave me PTSD. Given that you are responsible for all actions taken by officers of Essex County Council, you didn’t even deem it worthy of an investigation.
It happened, it was absolute horrendous and traumatising, one can only come to the conclusion given your reluctance to investigate, that it’s not an isolated incident.
So why did you like a tweet that contained a blog post that describes in detail what I had to endure? The tweet itself for descriptive enough regarding the incident, so even if you didn’t read the blog post, the tweet itself described the incident and how abhorrent Essex County Council’s behaviour towards myself and my child was.
I desperately need an explanation for my mental health, I keep tweeting about it, writing about it, and putting it out there in facebook groups.
You condoned what happened to me, firstly by allowing the incident to happen to myself and my son, secondly by refusing to investigate, and then thirdly, liking my tweet.
The incident in question was horrific, I still suffer with the trauma from it now, I suffer with guilt over not reporting a case of child sexual abuse that I was almost certain was happening. I felt that sexual abuse was preferable to how you allow victims of sexual abuse to be traumatised when they are disclosing the abuse to yourselves.
I know my hesitation in reporting allowed the abuse to carry on for another year, but the child in question eventually disclosed the abuse to their parent who has dealt with it all in a loving and safe manner and made sure that the child is safe. I was not in a position to approach the parent at that time. You and your employees have not been involved in any way. The child is safe, loved, being looked after and did not have to endure the level of trauma I was put through by you on top of the abuse that I suffered.
Both a sexual abuse chairty and Essex Police were absolutely horrified regarding how you deal with disclosures of sexual abuse?
In fact, more than one professional after i’ve told them that I believe one of the men who abused me has regular contact with young children, have reacted with horror and have called it a safeguarding concern.
Someone who works directly with protecting children was actually going to raise a safeguarding concern with yourselves because someone had named a child abuser and you did nothing.
His name isn’t even recorded. After how you dealt with the disclosure I have refused to give his name to anyone else.
I did however, give the name of the other person. Some professionals as part of their duties have to make sure children are protected, someone working in mental health said it was a safeguarding concern. It took a while to convince me but I then agreed for her to contact the police. I refused to give any details of the other man who abused me, now i’m having flashbacks to the abuse they need to burn it all down, all of it, the whole building, burn it and demolish it, and the grass, they need to burn that and then remove it all, it all needs to go it needs to no longer exist. Cut the whole lot out of the ground and then sew the ground together so that part of the earth no longer exists.
The police called and I only gave them one name, the first thing they had to do was establish whether or not he was still alive.. I told them how you had forced me to disclose it over the phone with my son present, and you could hear me crying and my son asking me if I was okay and I lied and said my contact lenses were hurting, and then you wouldn’t let me stop, you heard my son and knew he was right next to me yet you forced me to carry on, intimate details that I had never told anyone before and you forced me to tell you over the phone with my child present
They said they would not make me go through the trauma of making a full disclosure until they found out if he was alive or dead because they don’t put victims through that trauma if there is nothing they can do about it.
He was brilliant, the surname is rather unique, and while I was able to give the name and place of the pub, the brewery didn’t have records that far back. He had to pass it on to another police force to see if they could find him as it didn’t happen in Essex, and together with his name and that his marriage happened in Harlow, they were able to find him and he is dead. As the policeman said “He’s burning in hell”.
The other one I just can’t I cannot disclose anything about that ever again, I know children are at risk and he has contact with children as far as I could find out, I know it’s a huge safeguarding risk, but I can’t, it would utterly destroy me.
There is another child who I believe is at risk, I could never do to a child what you did to me, I can never report it because she would probably end up dead at some point in the future from the trauma of disclosing. I’m an adult and i’m still struggling with it, it would end up killing a child. I cannot emphasise enough how difficult it is even now to cope with it.
Writing about it on this blog and on social media is incredibly hard and traumatising, I have flashbacks to both what you did, and the abuse itself whenever I do. I have to warn the public, they have to know what happens, what you do to people who have suffered sexual abuse.
I was also raped, the one who raped me has daily contact with children, he could right now be working with children or vulnerable women, you don’t even know his name, nobody even bothered asking, safeguarding is just a joke to you.
I’m using the word ‘you’ because as CEO, these are your policies, this is how your leadership teaches your employees how to act, you have condoned what happened to me, I contacted you personally in an attempt to get it investigated, you ignored me. You liked my tweet, I know from your actions, and inactions, you already condoned what happened to me, and my son, I can’t cope with how traumatising hearing about his mothers childhood sexual abuse in graphic detail must have been, you wanted the graphic details, i’m talking a blow by blow account of a child being sexually abused in front of a child.
Your last excuse was that your complaints policy was followed correctly. It was a corporate complaint, which going by the guidance from the LGO means that you should act in the best interests of the service user, you can investigate something 10 times, 10 years after it happened if you felt it was in the best interests of the service user, you could investigate what happened to me, and my son, right now, there is literally nothing stopping you apart from the fact that either yourself, or someone else, thinks it’s funny that I had to go through that and then you caused even more paid and trauma by refusing to investigate.
This is the only strength I have, the only power, I have the truth, and also legally, you cannot say it didn’t happen because you haven’t investigated.
You are in a position of immense power, probably the most powerful man in Essex.
You know you can do whatever you want to me and I can do absolutely nothing about it. You know that because you’ve done it, you are responsible for the trauma you caused, you are responsible for coming up with five different excuses as to why you couldn’t investigate incidents such as this, and each time I came up with the evidence to disprove the latest excuse, you changed it into something else, just so you could add to the trauma i’d already suffered, it may not have been your name on the emails, but the responsibility is on you.
Then after everything i’ve been through, desperately trying to get you to investigate what happened, and I went over and above, I did absolutely everything and anything I could because I care more about children and families in Essex and I wanted everyone to know how traumatising and harmful the way you take disclosures of sexual abuse it and that it needs to change, you then liked my tweet describing everything i’ve been through.
You have put me through a lot, you nearly killed one of my children, I spent 2 years with 3 of my children suicidal and absolutely no help, they told you what happened to them, they were met with silence, you almost killed me.
I still have two children who are at risk of suicide, one more at risk than the other, you refused to accept any responsibility for what you did to them, going over and above to refuse to investigate, five different excuses you came up with, all of them I managed to prove were false and you just would not give up. You knew my children needed an apology and an acknowledgement that what they said were true, you did everything you possibly could to not make that happen. Seriously, you put more effort into refusing to investigate than it would have taken to write an email or send a letter saying sorry and giving them that desperately needed acknowledgement.
I am not writing this blog and putting my trauma all over social media for any other reason other than it’s the only thing I can do to warn others.
I do have another option regarding what this post is about, but that would only be Heidi Hibbett, and would not change a thing about how you treat victims of sexual abuse. I’d also have to keep telling what happened over and over again, and while i’ve known I can do it for a while, I haven’t, because the risk of it making me greatly unwell is too high.
In other cases like this the local authority would be backing the service user after having investigated, I haven’t got that support, I actually have no support, so I have to take into account that I need to protect my mental health.
I have also been asked to write out our whole story for someone extremely important who may be able to make an impact, but again, just writing this blog post has been incredibly difficult for me to do, i’ve been having flashbacks throughout, it’s taken me many hours as I keep needing breaks, i’ll have flashbacks for a few days, of the abuse, and disclosing the abuse.
So this is how one of the most powerful men in Essex treats victims of sexual abuse, you treat us as if we deserved it by making things so much more traumatic. I had never told anyone about what had happened except for my Mum, and that was only one of the men. Of course you don’t believe in confidentiality and decided to tell my Mum that there were two different men who abused me. Why did you do that? Why did you think it was appropriate to make me talk about it in front of my son? Why?
If i’d decided to tell my son what had happened to me, and I gone into the level of detail that you forced me to go into, that would be a safeguarding issue, so why do you feel it’s acceptable to force me into giving my son all of the intimate details of the abuse I suffered? It was just an overview you wanted, you wanted the full graphic details, you didn’t care that I begged you to stop and at least let me do it somewhere safe, you also wanted my son to hear absolutely everything. Why?
After everything you did to me, and my son, you didn’t even give me an explanation as to why you liked my tweet.
If you feel that maybe, just maybe, you would like to lighten the amount of trauma this whole thing has caused me by giving me an explanation as to why you liked my tweet, you can give me an explanation in anyway you want, all of my information is on the system, but you can also contact me on the number at the top of this post, either by text message or a phone call, at any time of the day or night, if it’s 3am and it wakes me, that is acceptable.
I’m going to stop talking about this subject now, including you liking my tweet because it is damaging my mental health and I can’t cope with the flashbacks and i’m frightened. This will be the last post on the subject.
I will share it on social media, on Twitter I am going to tag absolutely everyone I can think of in the hope that you read it.
I’m not going to send it to you directly because i’ve been there, and reaching out to you for help and you ignoring me was incredibly painful, and that was over a year ago, not going to look at the email I sent you as again, it’s too painful that you just ignored what had happened to my children.
I’m undecided on doing the two things i’ve mentioned above, probably won’t, you have retraumatised me again and again regarding this and I need to protect myself.
So I’ll share this absolutely everywhere and tag everyone in it on twitter, and post it absolutely everywhere on Facebook in the hope that someone who you deem worthy of talking to, will pass it on to you.
My hopes aren’t high that you will read this, I can only go by your behaviour towards myself and my children and how you spent more time and money refusing to help us, than it would have taken to just apologise to them. You won’t read this, and wouldn’t respond if you did.
But I needed to do this, I can’t keep going on about you liking my tweet as it’s too painful for me, so this post is me closing the lid on that. It is painful, and now you are intertwined with the sexual abuse I suffered as a child so every time I think of you liking my tweet, I have flashbacks and it’s all so confusing and horrible and I want it to stop.