As for most people the last 18 months has been a stressful time as the world has been turned upside down by the global pandemic that stopped many many countries in their tracks.

My family is no exception but when the country locked down on 24^th March 2020 it couldn’t actually have come at a better time for us.

For the last 6 years my husband has worked abroad and so it meant that he was grounded.  He couldn’t travel and was able to be at home with his family.  Universities shut down which meant the return of one of my daughter’s, but sadly my other daughter was already at home; she had had to interrupt her studies two months previously due to being the victim of a serious sexual assault.

She was in shock and suffering, and now she could be within the security of her family and the ‘stay at home’ policy gave her time to hide from a world which she felt had seriously let her down.

Her situation was brought into sharp focus when she asked me of the chances of conviction of her assailant.  As a Mother first and a Solicitor second my overriding desire was to make it go away and to tell her it would be ok, but it wasn’t and I couldn’t.  I had to acknowledge the statistics that in the year to the end of March 2020, 58,856 cases of rape were recorded (the other 70,000 victims don’t even bother to report their trauma) of which 823 suspects were charged (that’s not even convicted).

Extraordinarily, serious sexual assault and rape appears to attract a level of scepticism not reserved for any other victim of crime.  Irrespective of the answers, the questions were raised - was she drunk, where was she, was she on her own at night, what was she wearing, as if any of that matters.  Does your son have to worry if he is drunk, on his own or what he is wearing?

She retreated further from life. 

She is young, she is beautiful, she loves life, she is kind and generous I could go on.  But she couldn’t cope.  She couldn’t sleep for the nightmares, she couldn’t function in the day.  She couldn’t concentrate, she needed help.  She was diagnosed with PTSD and life was very very hard.

Enter TalkWorks which is run through the NHS Devon Partnership Trust and specialises in providing talking therapies for adults.  They provided her initial care and then referred her on for EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) therapy.

Fast forward to summer 2021 and my daughter is back at university, sleeping better, able to concentrate and functioning again.  She is still young and beautiful, kind and generous and learning to love life again.  As a family we are incredibly grateful to all of those professionals that have provided invaluable care to get her to this point.

The memories are the sort that you can’t erase or hide from; they will always be there.  But EMDR has helped her to learn to live her life in spite of those memories and to forge forward.  Making a report to the Police has been another piece of the jigsaw to put into place, irrespective of a likely outcome.  It is important to have a voice and to make that voice heard.

For my part I have been awed by her determination to get back up and start again and the therapy and care she has received have been transformative.  So I have decided to raise money for the charity that provided this invaluable support.  At 50, I have entered into my
first (and probably last!) half marathon on 5^th September 2021.  And when the training gets too hard and the distance too far, I think of the marathon my daughter and all victims like her have to run every day and I get my trainers on and get going.  It’s a struggle and as a sufferer of Rheumatoid Arthritis there are days when I simply can’t, but ultimately, I will.

If you would like to follow my progress connect with me on Strava and I will post updates to let you know how I am getting on.  But more importantly, if after reading my story you would like to donate, I would be chuffed to bits.