By Sophie Lewis – The Grooming Files | The Indie Leaks | @realtalkrealtea

Disclaimer:
This story has been shared with full consent. The survivor has chosen to remain anonymous. All identifying details have been removed to protect her privacy. This account is based on her lived experience and is told in her own words and truth.

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I was about five years old.
The kind of age where you believe in magic, and kindness, and promises made by strangers.

I remember standing outside, in the street, when she came over.
A woman.
She had a puppy with her — small, wriggling, alive in her arms.

“Would you like to see more puppies?” she said.
Her voice was soft, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

I said yes.
Of course I said yes.
What child wouldn’t?

I looked back at my mother across the road, drunk, half-gone in her own world.
There was no one to stop me.
No one to pull me back.

So I followed the woman into the house.
Just to see the puppies.
That’s all I thought it would be.

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The door slammed behind me.
Hard.
Louder than it should have been.

She told me to go upstairs.
I still thought it was part of the game.
Maybe the puppies were up there, waiting for me.

I climbed the stairs, my little legs shaky but excited.
The hallway smelled strange — not like home, not like anything safe.
But I kept going.
Because that’s what children do when they’re promised something good.

She led me into a bedroom.
Told me to lie down on the bed.

I asked her again,
“Am I going to see the puppies?”

I remember saying it more than once.
Asking, hoping, believing.
Because I didn’t understand what was happening yet.

Because hope doesn’t die all at once.
It dies in pieces.

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She told me to lie there.

I kept asking,
“Am I still going to see the puppies?”
“Am I still going to see the puppies?”
over and over, my voice getting smaller each time.

But there were no puppies.
There was only her.

I remember the weight of her.
I remember the smell of the room.
I remember realising, in that awful, slow way that children realise,
that something was very, very wrong.

I didn’t have words for what she did to me.
I didn’t even know the words existed.
All I knew was that it hurt.
And it made me feel small and sick and wrong.

And that no one was coming to save me.

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At some point, I found my chance.
I don’t remember how.
Maybe she got up. Maybe she thought I was too small to fight back.

I ran.
Down the stairs.
Out the door.
My legs moving faster than my mind could.

I ran across the road to my mother, who was still outside, still drunk, still far away even though she was right there.

She asked me what had happened.
And I just said,
“No.”
That was all.

I didn’t tell her.
I didn’t have the words.
Maybe deep down, even at five years old, I knew she wouldn’t have been able to hear it.
Or help.

So I stayed silent.
And the silence swallowed me up, the way it always does when you learn too early that you’re on your own.

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Even at five years old, I knew.
I knew what wrong felt like.
I knew what evil looked like behind a soft smile and a gentle voice.

I knew enough not to tell.
I knew enough to run.
I knew enough to save myself when no one else would.

That kind of knowing carves itself into your bones.
It doesn’t leave you, even when you grow up and try to forget.
Even when you tell yourself it wasn’t that bad.
Even when you try to be normal, and safe, and whole.

It’s a heavy thing to carry —
the memory of the door slamming,
the memory of asking about the puppies,
the memory of realising that magic wasn’t real, and kindness wasn’t always kind.

But I carried it.
I carry it still.
And somehow, through all of it,
I am still here.

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