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

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To H,

I sat with your story today.
I sat with the pieces of you that were never protected, never heard, never held the way you should have been.

Piece by piece, you trusted me to walk with you through it — through the fear, the pain, the silence that should never have been there.

And H, you need to know this:
You were never invisible to me.

I saw the little girl clock-watching, heart racing, praying to be safe.
I saw the teenager thrown from home to home, betrayed by the very people who should have fought for her.
I saw the young woman, bruised but standing, trying to build a life from the ruins she was handed.

You fought battles no child should ever have had to fight.
You survived storms that would have destroyed others.
And still — still — there is a light in you that nobody, no matter how hard they tried, could ever fully extinguish.

I need you to know:
None of this was ever your fault.
Not the silence.
Not the abandonment.
Not the betrayals.
Not the losses that stacked up around you like heavy stones.

You were a child.
You were a young woman doing her best in a world that had already failed her.
You were — and are — so much stronger than you were ever given credit for.

As I carried your story today, it carried me too.
It reminded me why truth matters.
Why you matter.
Why survivors’ voices will never again be pushed into shadows if I have anything to do with it.

You deserved to be believed the first time.
You deserved protection.
You deserved love that didn’t come with violence attached.

You still deserve all of that.
And I see you, fully.

Not broken.
Not weak.
Not a cautionary tale.

But alive.
Fierce.
A walking, breathing defiance of everything they tried to destroy.

You are not what was done to you, H.
You are what survived it.

And that — that is something no system, no abuser, no ignorant voice can ever take away.

With all my heart,
Soph x

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