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Episode details

Radio 4,13 Sep 2021,28 mins

SeriesSeries 4

The Last Taboo

Lights Out

Available for over a year

Documentary adventures that encourage you to take a closer listen. We rarely speak about familial childhood sexual abuse. We should. Through one woman's story, we hear how the silence surrounding childhood sexual abuse compounds trauma in ways that ripple through survivors' lives, touching and tainting relationships and experiences of parenthood, and leading to problems with mental health and addiction. If we could talk about familial abuse more openly, could we help survivors, and make it more difficult for perpetrators to hide behind secrecy? Too often, our mental health systems treat the symptoms of abuse and trauma rather than unlocking the cause. But if we continue to create worlds which permit and encourage silence, are we perpetrators too? Perhaps it's time to speak up. Featuring extracts from The Flying Child by Sophie Olson, founder of The Flying Child Project, and work by John Slater, co-founder of moMENtum. Produced by Redzi Bernard and Phoebe McIndoe A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4

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