I see the one of the hashtags on twitter today has been #WhyIdidntreport – incredibly important and painful to read. There is so many myths surrounding why people do not report their abuse and that if you report it later on you’re lying. That’s crap. There are so many reasons as to why people are unable to immediately report. For me, as a child/teenager it simply reporting the abuse I was suffering at the hands of the one man who was supposed to protect us was simply not an option. Here is a poem of sorts I wrote a few years ago when the #Ididnotreport hashtag was used –

#ididnotreport

#ididnotreport because who would have heard?
#ididnotreport because who would believe?
#ididnotreport because i could not utter a single word …
#ididnotreport because it meant more punishment i’d receive.

#ididnotreport as I got older, for what would be the reason?
#ididnotreport as things moved on, but the memories remain,
#ididnotreport as years went by, and life moved into a new season,
#ididnotreport as i always felt i deserved the pain.

#ididnotreport because i had nothing left worth trying to save
#ididnotreport because nothing mattered to me any more
#ididnotreport because i could never be that brave
#ididnotreport because even when i tried, someone always closed that door.

#ididnotreport for it had all gone plus more
#ididnotreport for everything i had left was taken
#ididnotreport for I had been shaken to the very core,
#ididnotreport for my whole life had been broken.

#ididnotreport but sometimes I wish I had.