Prevent child abuse and neglect video transcript

18 million children in the WHO European Region have experienced sexual abuse.

44 million children in the WHO European Region have experienced physical abuse.

55 million children in the WHO European Region have experienced mental abuse.

The first time someone saw that I needed help was when a teacher, I think I was about 8 or 9 years old. She saw me outside a bar with my mother and I was crying and I was burned with cigarettes on my arms and she took me.

I was born in ?? and my mum was a drug addict and so was my father. He took drugs also and already when I was eight months old, I was in the hospital, because I didn't get enough food and that's how my life started.

Since I was a baby I was told that I should have been a stain on the mattress instead of a stain on society. And I was of no use except for sexual abuse. My parents abused me and since I was 3 years old it was full sexual intercourse. And they began hiring me out to their drinking friends.

Everybody in the school notice that me and my sisters were having a hard time. They saw my mother drunk picking us up in kindergarten, in school. My dad was violent in front of my school and in the kindergarten also.

I grew up with sexual assault both from someone I did not know and in the institution in which I was placed, and was also abused by my father.

But they didn't know, you know, she was raped there. So maybe, oh, we didn't offer her psychology out there, you know, I never had any help. Was never offered any help.

When the attack took place, I was with a friend and we were lured by this man with some money that we obviously were very interested in getting hold of. We got caught, in front of the kiosk with a big bag of candy and pockets filled with money.

We moved around a lot, us children and my biological mother. We have also been in shelters many times and I think that someone there should have noticed and opened their eyes. I never had lunch with me at school, I was not, I did not have clean clothes. I had holes in my clothes and the evenings when I had ‘clients’ I could hardly walk the next day.

I was abused of my father when I was a teenager. And it was sexual and physical and also psychological abuse. So I was really afraid of my father for many years. And sometimes when I hear his voice I still am a little afraid of him, even as a grown man.

90% of all abuse and neglect is unreported.

There's a lot of things that you have to learn to reduce the risk of conflicts and other things in the family. What could have made the biggest difference in my life would have been if the grown-ups that was supposed to look after me would have listened to me, talk to me, spend time with me.

I think it could have made a huge difference to get it out in the open, instead of leaving a child alone with these thoughts and the perception that it is normal that adults do this with a child and of course it’s not.

Some of these families, one of these families doesn't have the network. They don't. Maybe they don't have a job. And they maybe don't have friends or their family, maybe they don't talk with the family. So they need a kind of network around them and then you can build that.

What I think would have made a really big difference for me is if there had been a place where there was trust, a safe place where you could open up and talk.

If you have more supervision with the families in the early start. Visit the families without saying, just come and visit the family more than once. 2, 3, 4 times in a month maybe. Because then you can see how they live. And in real life.

So I would say if somebody had spent time with me continually not stopped again, but actually had stayed in contact with during my whole child, one contact person, one person or you could even be an agency, whatever. But you stay one place under one umbrella, under one care. Until you're 18.

What really works is that you have to train the parents, you have to in to make some courses to offer them. They will participate. We know that, most of them. So that's the one thing you have to train. You have to learn to be a parent. I think it's very important that parents are working that they are employed. A lot of these vulnerable families they are poor. They need money. But it's not only money, it's it's also the feeling of being someone and have a meaningful life. As a grown up so we know that job employment can reduce risk.

I hope that the people who take the decisions will make the right decision so that the children who need help can actually get it so that it makes a difference.

It will make a big difference for me if you start and for everyone else also to start as early as you can so you don't have all that pain through your life. It's really hard to live back and forward on the institutions, on the street and in jail and all that. It’s not a life, it’s hell.

I had constant anxiety. I remember that I was far up in the 20s before I began to sleep at night. Before that I had never actually tried sleeping through a whole night.

I think for the first ten years nobody came. And nobody did anything to help us.

People would rather close their eyes to what they do not wish and what is not known.

I think that the most important thing is that people on the street, they don't have to be afraid to approach and say I want to help you.

Prevent child abuse and neglect video

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