Daniel Taggart - Lessons from the Truth Project #BIGSPD23

The Mental Elf

Before his keynote talk at the 2023 BIGSPD conference in Glasgow, Dr Daniel Taggart, from the University of Essex, talks about mental health provision for adult survivors in the wake of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) - lessons from the Truth Project.

Dr Daniel Taggart, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology, University of Essex is a senior lecturer in clinical psychology at the University of Essex, and a chartered psychologist. Danny worked at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse from 2019-2022 where he was the principal psychologist and clinical lead for the Truth Project. Danny has worked as a clinical consultant and trainer for the Northern Irish Redress Board, the Scottish Redress Scheme, and the Jersey Care Inquiry Citizens Panel. His current research is focused on survivor participation in non-recent institutional abuse inquiries, the ways that childhood trauma impacts engagement with public services, and what value survivor testimony has in both facilitating recovery from trauma and creating change in institutional practices. Danny is a founder member of the 'Non recent child sexual abuse- Network for promoting change'; a group of survivors, clinicians, and academics who provide educational and training resources for practitioners, service leaders, and organisations.

The Truth Project was one arm of IICSA, running from 2016-2021. It offered all adult survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA) in England and Wales an opportunity to share their experiences with the Inquiry, discuss the impacts of sexual abuse on their lives, and make recommendations for change. Over 6,000 adults between the ages of 18 and 87 took part, making it the largest scale public participation in a UK inquiry. The Truth Project generated a wealth of testimony from CSA survivors about the long-term impacts that sexual abuse, the types of support that have been offered or denied, and what the secondary impacts of service responses to their abuse have been. Given that 90% of all Truth Project participants reported that their mental health was negatively impacted by the CSA, their testimonies have an important role in helping mental health services understand more about survivor needs.

While one of the notable features of Truth Project participants is their heterogeneity, clear themes emerge from the testimonies about service experience that can inform the development of treatment pathways. The importance of being believed, having their testimony taken seriously and validated was the most consistently cited reason for participating in the Truth Project, along with a sense of civic responsibility to protect future generations of children. While this need to be believed may appear axiomatic, the Truth Project reveals a strong thread of testimonial evidence that this is not how CSA survivors have been treated by public services, including in mental health. This paper will consider the lack of validation and belief CSA survivors report experiencing in mental health services in the context of the work of Hannah Arendt. Specifically, it will draw out Arendt’s arguments in her book the Human Condition, that scientific technology functions to usurp human collective action and undermines ordinary story telling and sense making about people’s lives. It will consider how the testimony provided by the Truth Project participants and the Inquiry’s emphasis on believing them, can provide a framework for mental health services developing treatment pathways for CSA survivors, in order to promote the value of testimonial sharing as a valid form of healing from trauma.

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