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July 18, 2024 - David Icke
20:02
Child Abuse Survivor Emma Jane Taylor Talks To Gareth Icke Tonight
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Coming up on the show, former nurse turned motivational speaker and educator Kristin
Nagel is back on the show, this time to talk about 7K metals and how having precious metals
could be vital should there be an economic collapse.
And we'll be airing my conversation with 9-11 pilot whistleblower Captain Dan Hanley about what he believes really happened on 9-11 and how those same forces are behind current events.
But first, Emma Jane Taylor was just nine years old when she was assaulted by a restaurant owner whilst on holiday in Greece.
Just a few years later, Emma would be a victim again, this time at the hands of a family acquaintance, an older man who would go on to assault her for many years.
Emma has used these horrendous experiences to fuel her activism and charity campaigns.
She's also an author and a public speaker seeking to help people that have faced similar horrors so they know it's not their shame.
Emma, thank you so much for joining us.
Can you tell us what you remember about your childhood and what happened to you?
I'm just kind of thinking, with absolutely no experience, thankfully, that it's something that you may well have tried to block out.
Yeah, I think, you know, there's certainly significant moments that you remember through your childhood that you don't really realise were significant until you become, well, I'm 51 now.
And so it's really been the last 10 years that I've really understood the significance of them.
Being abused as a child is Just maybe one of the worst things that I think could happen to a child and physical abuse.
And by someone you know, because the 9010 stats suggest that 90% of people being abused are being abused by someone they know.
Layers on lots of complex conversations.
So when you start undoing it, you're trying to manage being violated as a child.
You're also trying to understand what it means To have been abused by someone you knew or loved, and the impact that that has on your childhood.
So maybe it's not so much at the time that you may remember what actually happened, it's the effect of what's happened that you remember.
So for me, my behaviour at school, I suffered, I was labelled a juvenile delinquent.
I was sent to psychiatry at school because of my behaviour.
I then went into various addictions, drugs, alcohol.
Solvents, anything that I could to feel better.
But of course, they were trauma responses.
They were coping mechanisms.
And I stayed in that sort of space for a good chunk of my young life, you know, managing what was being done to me, how I was coping.
And then obviously, when I got sort of into my late teens, I stepped away from the abuser.
But I was already now pretty floored by life and the years that I'd been abused.
So It was a lot to undo and a lot to understand.
And then when I got into my 20s, I went into therapy and then I started a new journey and started stepping away from my addictions and my trauma responses.
And that was a journey that sort of took me over the next 10, 20 years.
And then suddenly I was like, oh, actually, I want to talk about this.
I want to maybe give my story to help someone else.
And then my journey of becoming a campaigner and an advocate on this conversation Sort of really, you know, doors opened with that really.
I wrote my book, shared my book, and here we are today talking about, you know, my life journey.
It wasn't particularly nice.
There were some moments that will haunt me forever, but I've used those to be I guess, of good to the work that I'm doing today to help me unlock and unleash conversations to protect children in the future.
Of course.
Just thinking about it, you know, alcohol, drugs, solvent, abuse, they're all escapism, aren't they?
They're taking you, I guess, into an altered state where you don't have to face the reality.
Is that what the therapy did then?
It was a case of, right, for you to heal, you're going to have to sack off all these escapisms and you're actually going to have to face it.
So my therapist, it's interesting actually, my therapist never said to me, you need to stop drinking and taking drugs.
I thought I'd see a therapist for 12 weeks and I'd be healed.
But forget that.
When you're undoing trauma, it's a lot deeper and a lot more complex than that.
It was when I started the journey, and then I guess I started to really understand that I was drinking and taking substances and doing anything that I could to not have these conversations, to suppress the darkness of childhood abuse.
So my first therapist never told me to stop taking anything.
She just got me to talk, actually.
It was a 12 weeks talking therapy and I think I cried for probably 10 weeks of those as it all started coming out.
It was really when I started my business, when I was around 23, 24, that I didn't feel Going into fitness and dance, because that's my background.
Being a big drinker and a smoker didn't kind of work, so those two didn't work together.
And I was like, actually, I'm going to start stepping away from that, looking at my career differently.
Continued my therapy and continued that journey of different therapies.
And that's when I realised, actually, hold on a minute, I'm using this as such a crutch and it doesn't have to be that way.
And it was an amount of years as I undid that part of my addictions and disorders.
I also suffered terribly with bulimia, paranoia.
I was suffering with OCD, various sort of obsessions.
But again, they were all coping mechanisms.
to help me, I guess, stay in control of a very out-of-control situation.
They do say that, don't they, about eating disorders and things, actually, that it seems sort of an out-of-control thing to do, but actually it's the opposite.
It's the one thing you can control.
It's crazy, isn't it, what people are capable of doing to other people.
I mean, I'm 42 and I'm still shocked daily when I hear stories of what people are capable of doing.
Tell us about the charity work you do and how you're able to help others, because your story, your experience, it's far from isolated, isn't it?
Oh, it's interesting, actually, Gareth.
When I started this journey, you kind of think you're the only person in the world who's gone through such trauma.
And as you start stepping forward and speaking out, you realise you're one in millions, actually, one in millions of people who are suffering.
It's just that not everybody wants to talk about it because they're so afraid.
I think so.
I think so.
of their story, because of the shame and the embarrassment attached to it. So my charity
is called Project 9010 and this is based around the 9010 stat. 9010 is 90% of children being
abused, they're being abused by people they know, as I said at the beginning. Yet we adjudicate
10% stranger danger at school still and I'm 10 years older than you Gareth, but if I roll back
to my childhood, we were taught stranger danger.
They're still teaching Stranger Danger.
And the stat is really out of balance on that.
We really need to swing that around.
So the The charity is called 9010.
We have created educational programmes, which are resources for safeguarding teams for parents, for guardians.
And then through that resource, we also have an education programme for children, primary school primarily at the moment, as we're at embryonic stages.
But we're helping children understand words like You know, permission, awareness, communication, knowledge, and all in a way that's not scaring them by the story of, you know, the 90-10 stat and why we're here, layering them with protection.
I don't talk about my story in schools.
I don't talk about my story in front of children.
I do with safeguarding teams, but not with children, because I think I personally, it doesn't sit well with me.
And I think children are not equipped to handle this story.
Adults find it hard enough.
So you don't want to put that to children.
So we are layering education programs in schools, helping children to become much more aware of language.
What does permission mean?
What does awareness mean?
What does communication mean?
What does knowledge mean?
And having conversations around that.
So that's the charity side.
I also started the Not My Shame movement.
And that was when I put on a T-shirt, hashtag Not My Shame.
I'm not afraid to say I was sexually abused as a child.
I was just a child.
It isn't my shame.
Now, that was an accident, that movement.
I had been circulating around that conversation for about two years with some of the work that I was doing as a campaigner, with the awareness campaigns.
And then one day I thought, you know what, I'm just going to put this out because it helps me do the work that I do.
And I put it out there.
And then everyone was like, oh, this means a lot to us and thank you for sharing and being brave.
And then last year, the year before, I put it on a T-shirt and then it went.
Just crazy.
I mean, absolutely crazy.
People have been buying the T-shirts, wearing them literally all over the world.
And now we've got a gathering of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of survivors in a safe space on Facebook, where there is open conversations.
It's monitored by survivors, the people in the group of survivors.
You can only join if you're a survivor.
And it's a process that's been allowing others to find their peace, their hope, their voice.
And so, you know, I've found my way to this point.
And now I want to sort of push forward with the charity and the work that we're doing, and to ensure that we do what we can to protect children today, but also the generations to follow.
Of course.
I saw as though you're currently campaigning against the inclusion of Dutch volleyball player Steven van der Velde at the Paris Olympics this summer.
I must admit I saw this story and it kind of blew my mind a bit that it was even happening.
But for people that are unaware, Steven van der Velde was convicted of raping a 12-year-old child in England in 2016 when he was 19.
And he went to prison, went back to the Netherlands, and he's now about to be an Olympian.
Do you think this sends a really bad message that someone like this, who's raped a 12-year-old child, then gets on to go on and be an athlete at this level?
Thank you for raising this today.
I am absolutely disheartened by this story.
I'm a keen fitness person.
I love sport.
The Olympics is something that I look forward to every four years.
And this story, there's just a terrible rub.
You know, Vanderbilt was sentenced here in the UK.
He's a convicted sex offender.
He's on the child sex register here in the UK for life.
After a year in serving time in the UK, there was a treaty between the Netherlands and the UK.
He was sent back to the Netherlands, where at the time, the Netherlands law saw this as fornication.
So the case essentially was dropped.
And he became a free man to pursue his career as a sportsperson and now as an Olympian.
And of course, as we know, if you're in the Olympics, you're going for gold, right?
People are going to be cheering you on.
You're going to receive accolades.
You're a sportsperson.
That's why you're there.
You love what you're doing.
The Dutch law has since changed, and it would now be seen, as it is in the UK, as child rape.
So there was a convenient window, it seemed, for him to return, be let off, and to move forward.
If you want to be a volunteer at the Olympics, there is a screening process and application, and part of that says you cannot join or be but volunteer with a criminal record.
And so there's the rub.
You can be a sportsperson in the Olympics going for gold with a criminal record, but you can't be a volunteer.
He cannot join the Olympics as a convicted child sexual offender, in my opinion, because This opens a dangerous conversation.
This is now bigger than Vanderbilt.
This is now about protecting children.
You're going to have abusers looking at this case thinking, well, he's done all right.
He's done all right.
You know, he's going for gold at the Olympics.
And you're going to see a change in the conversation moving forward.
And children can't be protected that way.
They absolutely can't be protected.
So the case of Vanderbilt, is bigger now because of the greater problems around it of
keeping children around the world safe.
And this isn't it.
There's also different levels of a criminal record.
You might not be allowed to apply as a volunteer because your criminal record came from fighting someone in a nightclub, which isn't great, but there's levels of it.
And then you've got a guy who's raped a 12-year-old kid.
It does blow my mind, I must admit.
When I was watching that, looking at the telly like that, how is this allowed to happen?
Abuse like the kind that you've suffered and other people have suffered that you're helping, I mean, it's far from rare.
And as a man with daughters, of course, it is a concern.
How do you think we can defeat it?
Because I hear people talk about education, but do you know what?
For me, To know what kind of behavior is wrong, especially like this kind of behavior, unless you're a complete psychopath, that sort of should be inside you from birth.
And I think it is for most people.
So in terms of education, it just seems kind of like, how do you tell someone not to do something that they should already know not to do?
So I think with the education for young people is that, you know, we are living in the 21st century today where the world is crazy on social media.
The online world is out of control.
Children, I don't know how old your children are, but you know, children are in a very dangerous place because of technology.
So it's, I believe there's lots of ways we should educate children.
First of all, we should really look at where the world is today in the 21st century.
Yes, grades are great, right?
But to actually exist in a young life, to succeed in a young life, you've got to understand how to live that young life.
And no one is giving children and parents The right education to understand how to navigate lots of these conversations.
To most people, it would seem like the most, you know, straightforward teaching as a parent, but not for everybody.
And so you've got children looking at porn, you've got children sharing pictures, you know, naked pictures, you've got children, you know, looking.
Just looking at friends on the internet in a way that isn't healthy, the online bullying.
And so that already weakens the resolve of children.
And once you've got children in a weaker position, then it's easier to be groomed because they want to be liked, they want to be friends with everybody.
And so the process of trying to To get to know children becomes easier because they're already quite insecure and vulnerable because of not being aware and developed enough with their brains to understand what's right and what's wrong.
And the scientific part of that is children's brains don't really develop until late teens, some say early 20s, some say early 30s.
But in this, if we're looking at, you know, the way of the world today, you know, certainly by their late teens, we should help children be stable with knowledge about how to treat people, how not to treat more people.
Yes, it seems like the most normal thing for anyone to do, like you said, but it's not for everybody.
And so if you can help children understand what permission, awareness, communication, knowledge and And the internet and so on and so forth is then you potentially protect children from becoming victims.
But you also stop perpetrators because they'll start understanding a different education that they might not be getting at home because the world has really opened up the reality of these conversations in education for young people.
A bit long-winded, but I hope that made sense.
No, it made sense, yeah.
It's just funny, like, I think about the internet, like, we're talking on it now, it's an amazing thing, but it's got some real dark sides as well that people need to be aware of, absolutely.
Horrible sides.
Horrible.
And you know what?
I worked with this young girl, she'd been abused, and I said to her, you know, she was 16 now, now you're 16, what do you wish you didn't know or have?
And she said, I wish my parents hadn't given me a phone when I was seven years old.
Seven?
Seven.
Okay.
My eldest is six and she is not getting a phone next year.
That is no chance.
I think technology should be no phones till senior school and then just make it brick-like phones until you've trained them how to use the phones that we're using, the digital phones today.
Yeah, I agree.
I also think us adults could do without the digital phones a lot of the time as well, to be honest.
We might actually have a conversation with each other then.
Just finally, where can people find you and support the work that you're doing?
So the easiest thing to do is find me on my website, www.emmajaintaylor.com.
If you go there, you'll see all the links to my social media, choose your pick.
I tend to be everywhere around there.
And if you want to contact me, you can go through my contact page on my website, emmajaintaylor.com.
I receive those messages personally so I can reply in person and, you know, do what I can to either support, signpost you, on or get you involved with anything that you feel you want to get involved with with the work that I'm doing today.
Magic.
Thank you so much for talking to us and thanks for the work that you're doing.
There's much needed and you know I can see why you wearing the t-shirt went viral because actually there would have been so many people that are looking at you that are thinking I thought I was the only one or I thought was one of very few and now you know they're not happy to see that there's more people that have been through it but at the same time it's kind of you know actually yeah it's not my shame of course it's not you know and that's great what you're doing so thank you for that.
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