One of the most damaging parts of surviving abuse is not only what was done to you. it’s what follows when you try to tell the truth. The act of speaking out requires courage.

Seeking justice, understanding, or even basic acknowledgment often encounters resistance. This resistance comes from the very systems that were meant to protect you. What is described as “procedure,” “policy,” or “safeguarding” too often becomes a barrier. Instead of amplifying a survivor’s voice, it filters, edits, or erases it. This is done in the name of protection, but it protects the institution, not the child.

Across child welfare, social care, and even the digital world, this red tape creates an invisible network of control. It dictates what can be said, how it must be phrased, and who is deemed “credible.” It decides which words are acceptable and which truths are “too uncomfortable” to acknowledge. In doing so, it sends a message to survivors that their reality must be sanitized before it can be heard.

Survivors of abuse, particularly those failed within the care system, already carry the burden of betrayal. To then face bureaucratic silence or institutional editing adds a second layer of harm. The truth becomes conditional, allowed only if it fits within predefined rules or tone. Yet those who created the conditions for the abuse are rarely held to the same standard of restraint or scrutiny.

Red tape manifests in many forms.

1. It appears in case files that go missing or are rewritten.
2. It exists in investigations that admit “failures of duty” but deny liability, and statutory rights.
3. It lives in compensation systems that quantify lifelong trauma into a token gesture.
4. And it extends into online spaces. Automated filters and algorithms limit how survivors can describe their own experiences. They label them as “graphic” or “unsafe” even when written responsibly and with purpose.

These mechanisms may be designed with good intentions. For example, to protect audiences, to prevent exploitation, or to maintain professionalism. Yet they also have an unintended consequence: they silence survivors, they obstruct truth, and they reinforce shame. When truth becomes administratively inconvenient, systems turn away from it.

The reality is that lived experience cannot always be softened or made comfortable. Abuse in childhood is not abstract — it is violent, confusing, and devastating in its impact. The language required to describe it truthfully will never be easy to read, but it is necessary. Survivors should not have to dilute their stories to make others feel safe.

There is a crucial distinction between sensationalism and honesty. Survivors are not seeking to shock, we are seeking to be understood. The rawness of words is not violence; it is evidence. It is testimony of what happens when oversight fails, when care becomes neglect, and when systems prioritize reputation over responsibility.

When truth is censored, edited, or limited, it does not disappear; it simply goes unheard. And when survivors are silenced, the same conditions that enabled their abuse remain unchallenged.
Honesty is not dangerous. Silence is.

This is why survivor-led spaces matter. They create room for stories to exist in their full, unfiltered reality. They remind the world that trauma cannot be managed through public relations or redacted documents. They expose the gaps between what institutions claim to do and what they actually protect.

Speaking openly is about reclaiming agency. It is about dismantling the systems that decide when and how a survivor is “allowed” to speak. It is about refusing to carry the burden of other people’s discomfort. It is about holding systems accountable to the reality actual lived.

Even here, in digital spaces where help is offered and care is promised, those same limits exist. Automated moderation and strict policies can unintentionally mimic the very culture of silence survivors have fought for years to escape. The red tape follows you everywhere. It’s in bureaucratic offices, in courtrooms, in our records, and even in our attempts to share our own truths online.

But we must persist. Every survivor who speaks their truth; without permission; apology; or disguise, reclaims something that was taken from them. Each word breaks a link in the chain of systemic silence. Each testimony serves as evidence. It shows that what was hidden is real. The systems built to contain truth cannot hold it forever.

This is why I will continue to write, and to tell my story as it is, raw, unfiltered, and exact.
Not because it is easy, but because it is necessary. Because red tape may control process, but it will never control truth.