As I was considering the ethics of this series, I realised if I’m going to ask others to share their stories of moral injury, I have to start with one of mine. I begin with my story not to centre myself, but to honour those who have already offered to share theirs. If I’m going to ask others to speak from the weight of moral injury, I have to begin from the same place. This is the first step. Together, we will build what comes next.

Content warning: This piece contains references to child sexual abuse, institutional betrayal, and systemic responses to trauma. It may be distressing for survivors, frontline professionals, or those working in child protection, policing, or legal systems. Please read with care.

This story is not easy. It’s about what it cost to do the right thing. About paying a price the system never asked of the man who harmed me. About what I carried afterward.

But it’s not just my story. It’s for the survivors, and also for anyone connected to safeguarding children: the police, prosecutors, caseworkers, counsellors, families—anyone who has acted with integrity and been met with betrayal.

Episode One: “Three Months”

I was 21—a new mum, care-experienced, and still raw from what had been done to me when I was a child—when I wheeled my daughter in her pram into a police station and gave my first statement.

When I was 13 and had first disclosed and reported the abuse, I had been advised by police not to prosecute as the system would only harm me. And for years, I believed them.

The decision to prosecute was made in a lounge room, 8 years later. I was watching the news—another case, another child, another report of an offender finally being held to account. It looked, for a moment, like the system had changed. And I realised: I could no longer morally tolerate the silence I had been told to hold.

At first, I was told that all I’d need to do was make a controlled phone call (where police would record). If he confessed, that would be enough. So, I did. I called him. He confessed, and I asked him why.

He said: “I don’t know.”

No apology. No resistance. Just cold, flat indifference.
It meant nothing to him.
It meant everything to me.

And then, after that phone call—after the emotional cost was already paid—they told me it wasn’t enough. I’d need to go into his home. I had never been there before. But now, I was told to walk into his space, alone, wearing a wire, while undercover police waited in a car outside.

I did it. I got the confession.
I gave them what they asked for.
And still, the system asked more.

We never went to trial. A plea deal was struck.
I felt pressure to agree to drop half the charges.
He was sentenced in 2006 to two years.
He served three months.

I left that court humiliated, re-traumatised, and disillusioned. I spent years recovering from PTSD.

And then, in 2010, I found out—through the national media, not the police—that he had reoffended. He was caught with over 160 artefacts of child sexual abuse material. His MO had not changed: befriend a family with children, for access to the children.

A repeat offender, on suspended sentences with minimal jail time.

The system’s math was clear.
Its values were not.

I can’t describe the depth of betrayal I felt—not just as a survivor, but as someone who did everything right. I spoke. I cooperated. I sacrificed. And still, the harm continued.
That’s what broke me.

What I came to understand later is this:
I wasn’t the only one carrying the wound.

Moral Injury Is a Collective Condition

What is Moral Injury?

Moral injury is the emotional, psychological, and spiritual distress that occurs when a person either perpetrates, witnesses, or is subjected to acts that violate their deeply held moral beliefs, or when they are betrayed by systems or authorities they trusted to do what is right.

Unlike trauma, which is often caused by fear, moral injury is rooted in ethical violation—a rupture in one’s sense of justice, integrity, or duty. It’s important to note that moral injury has symptomology similar but not the same as PTSD.

Moral injury can occur when someone:

• Is forced to remain silent in the face of wrongdoing
• Acts in a way that conflicts with their values due to institutional constraints
• Is punished for doing what they believed was morally right
• Is betrayed by leaders, institutions, systems, or communities they depended on

How it shows up

• Shame, guilt, or self-blame
• Anger, bitterness, or a deep sense of betrayal
• Loss of trust in self, others, or systems
• Disconnection from values, community, or purpose
• Spiritual or existential crisis

Moral injury is not weakness

It is a signal of your moral strength—the pain that comes from valuing justice, care, and responsibility in systems that often do not.

Moral injury can happen when people act in accordance with their deepest values—protection, justice, truth—and are met not with support, but with betrayal. It can also happen when people are forced to be complicit in acts that violate their values, or are forced to remain silent when they have seen or experienced acts that fracture their values and beliefs.

It isn’t just a survivor’s wound.
It lives in the bones of systems—and in the people who try to do good within them.

Specifically, in this story’s context: it lives in the detectives who sit with children through disclosure after disclosure, only to see charges dropped. In my case, detectives who did their best to secure evidence for prosecution, knowing the sentencing would be weak.
In prosecutors who know the odds but fight anyway.
In caseworkers who hold survivors through the system’s cold machinery.
In support workers who witness re-traumatisation.
In digital forensic teams who review CSAM daily and go home forever changed.
In the quiet, exhausted frontline of people who believed they were here to protect others—until they realised the system was not built for that.

They carry it too.
We all do.

Systemic Values in Plain Sight

When I later became a research assistant supporting research on child protection systems, I studied the Seriousness of Crime Index.

And what I found confirmed what I had felt intuitively all along:
Offences of sexual violence—particularly against women and children—were consistently ranked below financial crimes and violent crimes against male victims.

Our pain had been statistically discounted.

The system wasn’t failing.
It was functioning as designed.

This Is Why I Speak

This story is not why I do the work.
But it is the ground I walk on while I do it. Doing the work is my way to fight from within the system. For me, action is healing.

The moral tension for me existed in the silence, the action, the betrayal of the system, and then the futility of it all. And at the end of it, it was me who had to hold the moral injury. It is why I now fight for relational accountability, for trauma-informed systems, for justice that begins with listening.

It’s why I speak about moral injury—not as an academic concept, but as lived reality, reverberating through the lives of survivors and those who try to help them.

If we want to create change, we need to stop asking people to be resilient in systems that are morally disfiguring.

We need to start listening to the frontline—to survivors, yes, but also to the prosecutors, the police, the caseworkers, the counsellors, the families—who have seen too much, held too much, and are still standing. I want to be really clear: all our voices matter.

We cannot heal in systems that require our silence.
And we cannot transform them until we name the harm they cause—not just to individuals, but to all who step into their halls hoping to do good.

If you’re reading this as someone who also stood up for what was right, or suffered in silence—and were met with silence, punishment, or betrayal—you’re not alone.

Over the coming months, I’ll be interviewing others to share their own experiences of moral injury: what it cost, what helped, and what still aches.

Each story will help us surface what narrative therapy calls ‘insider knowledge’—not just what moral injury is, but how people live with it, carry it, make sense of it, or resist it.

If you’d like to share your story in this series—anonymously or openly—reach out.

We’re building a curated resource library for survivors, care-experienced people, and professionals affected by moral injury. This will include tools, research, narrative frameworks, and ways to access peer-led or trauma-informed support. If you’d like to contribute or suggest a resource, please get in touch.

By Rebecca Cort, Narrative and Trauma-Informed Consultant