‘Sexual Abuse doesn’t kill children’ said a Social Worker.

A senior social worker actually said that to me.

He said that to me as I was questioning if I should let their father see them whilst the disclosures were still ambiguous.

Over the first few months of the girls disclosures I felt like I was living in 'Sleeping with the Enemy'. The girls told me more and more, they draw pictures, they acted out what he did and every time I would report new developments I was told to stop. I was told I was emotionally abusing the children. That I was the abuser. That if I didn't stop they would take action. I was sleeping no more than 4 hours a night, the only benefit was i dropped about 2 stone (which I know shouldn't be a benefit) so I could wear Tesco and Primark clothes and they still looked good (I recently saw some photos of that time, I was emaciated).

We went through a chain of Social Workers. We had one lovely one for a matter of weeks, amidst some utter terrors. The lovely one suggested a book, ‘when terrible things happen’ and I bought it, Lola was about 7 at the time and it really resonated with her as the teddy bear protagonist is encouraged to draw his traumatic experience.

It worked, and Lola wrote a book, every night she would draw what happened compiling it for other children so they would have the courage to speak up if it happened to them. Some of her pictures were clear, others seemed bizarre - semen in the eyes of a child is quite different. But to the Police, it meant nothing, as she drew and wrote whilst I was present so it couldn’t be submitted as evidence to the CPS as I could have been coercing her.

One escorted me around the school playground, she spent 20 minutes with the girls and then said that she categorically knew they hadn't been abused and she would testify to that effect. I still remember her almost spitting at me as she said it, malice in her eyes. I spotted cystitis relief in her bag, her temporary ailment clearly a driver in my children’s safety.

After this meeting it was clear she had reported me with malice, I was invited into the Council to meet a ‘Senior Leader’, I took a friend (always do if you can as it is good to have witnesses), and we heard her say that my emotional abuse had to stop or they would take action against me. They had no reason to believe the girls had been abused and according to them I was coercing them and the charges would be reversed. I felt my middle class and professional career was riding against me, they didn’t like the challenges I threw them, the counsel I sought from friends - a Met Police Officer, a Safeguarding lead, a Head Teacher and a Coroner amongst them.

If it has happened to you you’ll know, that as soon as you have Social Services involved you scrutinise your own behaviour; could they deem me an unfit mother? could they take them into care? How serious was this threat of action against me? At times I had no idea, and I planned escape routes thinking of places I could run without extradition treaties. I was having to provide details on how much I was drinking (Liam had told them I was an alcoholic I wasn’t - then) - my evening 2 glasses of red wine and a whisky to take away the horrors (once Lola had stopped drawing pictures of penises which was normally about midnight). The feeling of helplessness, that these people had such control over our lives yet they didn't have the capacity to listen or to help, causing more damage.

The last Social Worker was the worst she always wore a white tracksuit showing just enough of a generic tattoo on her chest. She would ask the girls questions and as they started to disclose she would say she had to leave. You could see them starting to open up, and it was if she sensed it, so it was ‘time to leave’. If she unearthed something I guess it would have made more paperwork.

White tracksuit was the one that delivered the first Section 7 report stating that the children would come to no harm if they had unsupervised access and I’ll never forget that day, when my solicitor rang me and said we were screwed.

But I wish I could see that first Social Worker again now. I wish I could tell him he was wrong (as he must have known) when he said abuse wouldn’t kill them. I could tell him about the self harm, suicide threats, ‘I want to jump off a bridge’, one banging their head against a wall. The vapeing, the risky behaviour.

And it says it all. If that is the voice of a senior Social Worker then is it a wonder we hear time and time again of the children who have died because the Social Services haven't listened?