The Beck Road Alliance (BRA) exists to support survivors of organised childhood sexual abuse on Beck Road, Hackney, and ALL survivors EVERYWHERE, to share their testimonies of surviving childhood sexual abuse.
BRA believes that by sharing our experiences, we’re showing the world that the reality of childhood sexual abuse is a global epidemic, which profoundly effects girls and boys.
BRA believes that breaking the silence about childhood sexual abuse is crucial in terms of healing from the impact of, and drawing attention to, the widespread prevalence of abuse. Our silence will not protect us. Only the truth will set us free.
BRA believes that it is the mark of a responsible society (and responsive services), to honour those experiences, support them and learn from them at all levels. Only then can we stop the cycle of abuse and prevent future generations from being left with the lifelong legacy of surviving childhood sexual exploitation.
Share Your Testimony with BRA
This is your chance to share your testimony, in your own words, on your own terms.
Sociologist Inger Agger and psychiatrist Soren Buus Jenwen describe the act of testimony as a ritual with dual purposes. When a survivor testifies, they both purge themselves of an internal ‘evil’, and bears witness to a social or political injustice:
‘The word ‘testimony has in itself a double connation of both something objective, judicial, public, or political, and of something subjective, spiritual, cathartic, or private…Thus the use of the word ‘testimony’…implies that the subjective, private pain is to be seen in an objective, political context’.
(Worlds of Hurt: Reading the Literatures of Trauma, Kali Tal. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1996).
Feel free to share as much or as little as you like, and to use your real name or to use a pseudonym – it’s entirely up to you.
If you prefer to e-mail us at beckrdalliance@gmail.com, we can upload your story for you instead. Please follow us on Twitter (where you can also submit entries by tweet) at @BeckRdAlliance