‘Being sexually abused as a child has cost me over £100,000’

Sally Baker was just seven years old when two teenage boys sexually assaulted her at a family friend’s house. The impact of the attack echoed throughout her life, wrecking her education, creating unhealthy interpersonal relationships, and decades of therapy to recover her self-worth.

‘I had a headline in my head from when I was about 15: ‘Girl found dead in a ditch,”’ Sally, a senior therapist now in her sixties, tells Metro. ‘You feel like you’re pushed onto a trajectory that can only end in death.

‘I left school with two O levels; I didn’t go to university until I was in my 40s. It meant lots of reckless sex, and at 16, I went to live with a much older man who turned out to have paedophilic tendencies.’

An estimated 11 million survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA) live in the UK, and the costs incurred by abusers are not just on an emotional level. Abuse can affect a survivors’ ability to thrive in education, at work, and in relationships, all while blocking the path to healing with lacking mental healthcare support coupled with financial instability.

A Home Office Report found that the lifetime cost incurred to society and on survivors by contact CSA for all abusers and survivors identified in the year ending 31 March 2019 amounts to £10.1 billion. This does not include the exorbitant costs of non-contact CSA, like child sex abuse material.

‘The economic consequences devastate the lives of survivors and their families, often creating cycles of financial instability,’ chief executive of The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) Gabrielle Shaw tells Metro. ‘Survivors face significant challenges in maintaining stable employment, with many experiencing reduced lifetime earnings and persistent economic insecurity.’

When Sally, first told her mother about the abuse as a child, she was told not to mention it again. ‘I immediately internalised it as my fault and believed this happened because I did something wrong,’ she remembers.

While her mum did confront the abusers, threatening them with police action if they came near the family again, this news didn’t get back to Sally until over 20 years later during a family meeting. Her mother’s choice to keep the confrontation to herself, meant the Londoner faced the impact of that trauma alone for years. 

‘It’s hard to put a number on the true cost to myself and the health services. I saw one therapist every Monday for a decade, which was around £20,000 in total. I also had therapy throughout my 20s, 30s, and 40s; the cost has to be upwards of £100,000,’Sally explains.

‘I didn’t go to university until I was in my 40s either, so the whole trajectory of my career was coloured by the abuse. 

‘I’m deeply frustrated by those constant awareness days without any funding. I see a lot of childhood abuse survivors who don’t have access to any publicly funded healthcare because if you want anything more than cognitive behavioural therapy, there’s no funding for it.’

Nadyne McKie is a psychotherapist with significant experience working with victims of CSA, and says she has never treated a patient who was believed upon first disclosure.

‘I’m always dumbfounded by the number of people who have told a parent or a carer and been disbelieved or dismissed, and that has the knock-on effect of a huge betrayal of trust at such a young age that they then carry with them,’ she tells Metro.

While some children find solace in escaping the reality of abuse at school, Nadyne explains, others fail to reach their potential, which can cost survivors hundreds of thousands in lost earnings and opportunities over a lifetime of recovery.

Founder and director of the non-profit Flying Child CIC, Sophie Olson, 47, was sexually abused by a family member from a very early age. The various effects of that abuse are still felt keenly today.

‘It was very much hidden from everyone around me; my signs of distress were ignored and dismissed,’ Sophie tells Metro. ‘It had a huge impact on my education. I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, and I missed a lot of school, but I did manage to get to university.’

However, the trauma hit home in a big way when Sophie entered further education, stepping outside of the family home, where the abuse took place, for the first time.

‘I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning and missed the first couple of weeks, and then when I asked for help, I didn’t receive any,’ she recalls. ‘I was thrown out of my degree by my course lead, who told me that I was a waste of university space and that, because I was lazy, I’d never achieve anything in life.

‘I walked away from her room with this image in my mind of stepping off this big wheel of life while all my peers were carrying on going upwards.’

The experience decimated Sophie’s already compromised sense of self-worth, which later impacted employment opportunities. After becoming a young mum at 22, she felt unable to apply for a job at the local supermarket because she lacked confidence.

‘I was on long-term benefits; it’s just a cycle you can’t escape,’ Sophie explains. ‘In terms of economic cost, I wasn’t working, and I thought that would be lifelong as well.

‘It was easier for me to hang onto the identity of bad mental health than to challenge it, but in the long-term, it was extremely damaging because it kept me caged in this belief that I’d never be able to live well.’

Eventually Sophie was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder after being ‘hot potatoed’ between services when she first reached out for support at age 29.

Over the years, she was admitted to psychiatric wards three times, including rehab twice.

‘I was told that the problem lay with me, that I had a chemical imbalance in the brain, and there was something very wrong with the ways I had survived, like self-injury, addiction, and disordered eating,’ Sophie remembers.

‘[Psychiatric wards] felt extremely abusive, and while that wasn’t their intention, they did compound the trauma. It happens because of a fundamental lack of training. In my case, the average weekly cost for in-patient care was £5,000; I was an inpatient for approximately six months, so the figure is in the £120,000 region.

‘When you add the costs of out-patient aftercare and long-term support in the community, which I was told I wouldn’t survive without, then the financial impact is enormous. 

‘I’m a survivor of CSA, but that abuse doesn’t just end when childhood ends; the impacts go on and on and on.’

Life therapist Patience Chigodora,, 32, used school as an escape from the sexual abuse she suffered while living in Zimbabwe until the age of 10. However, while she went on to complete multiple degrees, the abuse had a significant impact on how she used her voice in the workplace.

‘[In work] there was a part of me not wanting to speak up out of fear of not being listened to again,’ Nottingham-based Patience tells Metro. ‘I’m ambitious by nature, but there is this underlying trauma, so when I want to go for a goal, I pull back because of the fear of saying too much and not being listened to.

‘I’ve spent a minimum of £35,000 across the last ten years of working life on my recovery, not including the loss of income for mental health days.’

To find peace, like many survivors, Patience has spent thousands in various healing modalities, including reiki, yoga, and therapy, but it’s an ongoing process.

‘Even to this day, I am working on reconditioning, reparenting, and retraining myself to say what I feel and voice what I need.

‘On one side, I feel really annoyed about having to invest so much in my recovery, especially when I see the total amount; that’s a yearly salary spent on trying to heal an issue I didn’t cause.

‘Then, on the other side, it was worth it and still is because I’m doing this for my healing, wellbeing, and peace of mind, and any money spent on myself is well spent.’

The actual economic cost of CSA on survivors and society is immeasurable, particularly when looking at the global scale, but the data on the commonality is clear. With an stimated one in four children will experience sexual abuse before the age of 18 – there is a lot of work to be doneto protect survivors from the lifelong emotional, physical, and financial costs that manifest.

‘Beyond direct costs, CSA undermines trust, safety, and connection in communities, reinforcing stigma to survivors,’ says Nadyne. ‘Preventing CSA through education, therapeutic support services, and justice measures is not only a moral imperative but an economic necessity.’

At her non-profit, Sophie focuses on creating survivor-led, trauma-informed training programmes to improve prevention and treatment options.

‘There is a fundamental lack of CSA-specific training, which needs to include the voices of survivors to stop perpetuating misconceptions. Whilst there is no magical solution to CSA, costs will inevitably be reduced if unnecessary medication and in-patient stays can be reduced.

I missed nearly 30 years of adult working life due to the impacts of child sexual abuse

‘If even a small proportion of money invested into mental health pathways were redirected into specialised training and resources for professionals coming into connect with survivors, the perpetual hamster wheel of diagnosis and psychiatric care might be avoided for many, particularly if these interventions are made early in life.’

Meanwhile NAPAC adds that we need to recognises CSA as a critical public health issue. This means ‘approaching it with the same urgency and systemic coordination as other major public health challenges, such as cancer or heart disease.’

Creating safe spaces for children to speak up is also a crucial. British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy member Dan Mills-Da’Bell, has worked extensively with survivors and in prevention work, stresses the importance of creating safe spaces for children’s voices to be heard.

‘[Not being believed] delays children’s ability to do anything else with it,’ he tells Metro. ‘If there’s no way to share it, you may believe it’s just a normal experience.’

The ultimate battle, though, is shattering the stigma attached to childhood sexual abuse and confronting the ‘societal flinch’, adds Sophie.

‘My life would’ve looked very different if the abuse had been detected, perhaps prevented, at an earlier age,’ she explains. I missed nearly 30 years of adult working life due to the impacts of CSA. Even with an average salary, this would represent a huge loss of earnings of around £900,000.

‘Once I received the right support, I found my way forward, alongside the trauma, and was working full-time within five years. Potentially, I could have reached this point so much earlier in life and at a fraction of the cost, both financially and emotionally.

‘Yes, it makes us uncomfortable, but the only way we can start to tackle it is by having more awareness, a better understanding, and by having the conversation.’

For information and support visit NAPAC here or call 0808 801 0331