AUSTRALIA
Illawarra Mercury
Rachel Browne
30 Mar 2017
.
The damage inflicted by childhood abuse is lifelong and catastrophic but support services for victims are “grossly inadequate”, a royal commission has heard.
Shelly Braieoux told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse she still suffers decades after allegedly being abused in a religious organisation.
“Being a survivor of sexual abuse is like being in a lifelong invisible war,” she said.
“If the scars of sexual abuse were visual I’m sure I would be in a wheelchair with missing limbs and horribly deformed with burns and scars.”
The 45-year-old mother of four has ongoing physical and mental health problems including depression, anxiety and panic attacks.
“Even though we may have physically survived, we have been sentenced to a torturous life sentence full of unnumbered battles,” she said.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.