30 – 60 minutes of authentic conversation around awareness and education of trauma and the journey of recovery, from a lived experience & professional perspective.
Imagine sitting around a table and having an open, honest and transparent discussion with your trusted friend. Nothing is off limits and the discussion is respectful, calm and insightful.
Welcome to #BreakingTheCycle #ToStepForward podcast with Chris and Beverley. Our special guest this week is the incredible Matthew McVarish.
Matthew is a Scottish actor, writer, activist, and survivor of childhood sexual abuse by his uncle. He starred in children’s television in the UK and now writes drama for BBC. Matthew walked 16,000km, visiting every EU government demanding the abolition of the time limit reporting childhood sexual abuse. He has chaired numerous discussions on children’s rights at the United Nations, and co-founded the BRAVE Movement, a global survivor-led initiative to end childhood sexual violence. Matthew now sits on the Lanzarote Committee at the Council of Europe. He has received a doctorate and the prestigious “Top Scot” award (previous Top Scots include JK Rowling and Andy Murray) His book, ‘The Truth That No One Tells Teenagers’, a guide to recovering from childhood sexual violence, is highly recommended by child psychologists.
Socials:
X: https://twitter.com/BeBraveGlobal
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/bebraveglobal/?hl=en
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brave-movement/
https://www.rethinkdrink.co.uk/
If you have any questions please contact us :
BreakingTheCycleToStepForward@gmail.com
Chris: Sobbtc@outlook.com
Beverley: beverley@stepforwardpractice.co.uk
Breaking the cycle to step forward authentic conversations from lived experience and a professional perspective in overcoming abuse with Chris tuck and Beverly Anne hi everyone and welcome to break in the cycle to step forward podcast with myself Chris tuck and hello I’m ban and we’ve got the really special guest today Matthew MCV
Have I said that correct yeah yeah come on bit English it was a bit English wasn’t it Matthew yeah it’s this like it’s bath and bath it’s um mcvarish so you say mcvarish probably all right no worries well I’ve said it once I said it wrong and you’ve corrected me so that’s that
Matthew from now on so we’re just going to explore Matthew um you as a person your work and also uh we will be treading into areas of conversation that people probably not going to expect us to go to today because you have got a very very interesting I would like to say story
But it’s not a story it’s your lived experiences so can we start right at the beginning with um a little bit about you your childhood your uh teenage years your adult years before we go on to any of your work is that okay yeah definitely uh so I grew up in a
Town called Eco bride it’s a suburb of Glasgow and uh Irish Catholic Family I’m the youngest of seven uh I always say I was born exactly nine months after Pope John Paul came to Glasgow so anyway moving on um yeah so very you know there’s nine of us in a
Three-bedroom house and it was a it was in many ways a wonderful childhood but um I was basically throughout primary school and for the first three years of high school also secretly being sexually abused by my my uncle who was my godfather um and he was actually also a
School teacher and he he used to football teams of young teen boys um and at that time in the west of Scotland in the 90s in a Catholic School in a Catholic household you didn’t speak about any of that you know so there was really there was not any Escape Route um
And no there was no one I could speak to to kind of get out the situation so um yeah so the abuse carried on till I was 133 on the um 24th of March 1996 is when I finally uh stood up to him I remember that day very clearly um and then that
Was it I I kind of said to him you can’t touch me anymore obviously I was nearly the same height as him at that point so um so that was it and then for for a couple of years after that I he was still in our lives he would come into
The house cuz he would he was old and he never married and he lived with my grand so he used to bring our grand over and I had to pretend for for years that everything was fine and had to I never spoke to him again after that day but no
One noticed which is incredible no one noticed that I never spoke to him I would bring him tea if he was in the house and stuff but I wasn’t just completely I became a master of acting like everything’s fine and then when I was 15 so I guess
Two years later my brother who was at University he had a complete nervous breakdown he ended up hospitalized with stress and I went to visit him I thought assumed that it’d be in a car accident or some kind of illness cuz you know I didn’t understand as at 15 that you
Could go end up in hospital with just overwhelmed you know so when I went to see him it was really frightening because he was in the the bed at the hospital and he looked perfectly fine he looked healthy but when he spoke he was talking nonsense and I realized that he
Was just mentally collapsed and um yeah he said in that state cuz I visit him with my dad he said oh I was abused by Terry which was our uncle and in that moment was the first time in my life I realized it wasn’t just me I’d assumed
It was always just me CU he was my godfather I thought and he used to say you know I was his favorite he would buy me all sorts of crap and Lego and take me cinema and stuff so I didn’t I never imagined until that moment that it was
It was anyone else and then of course it transpired that he’d actually abused me and three of my brothers which is incredible because it is it had been G on for decades and none of us knew because we were all trying to make sure nobody found out anything was going on
Yeah um quite a typical storyline that it that exactly happened in my family happened in Beverly’s family it’s just so common but now that we know that what are we doing about it what can we do about it yeah yeah I think I mean there was
Aspects of of that time I think Scotland has moved on in a lot of ways um especially with kind of LGBT progression I grew up in an environment where the worst thing you could possibly be was gay yeah so you know but that’s very different today Scotland is I think now
Has the most advanced equality legislation for lgbtqi plus um in Europe and I think in the world now so it’s a different we’re not there yet but there has been some yeah um you know when now in the work that I do when I when I meet people and
I talk about what I do now and um people kind of feel powerless when you’re looking at an issue like this because it’s so massive and it’s so prevalent and I say to people like you know you don’t have to you don’t have to you know
Get rishy sunak by the throat and scream at him you can just change the culture in your household and that’s as simple as tonight before your children go to bed you can say to them do you know there’s nothing you can’t speak to me about and a lot of parents kind of say
Well my children know that and I’m like well if that’s true that’s good but it doesn’t harm to keep repeating that you know and as simple as that you could start to change the culture and the the home and we could be the generation that stops this just by those simple things
That everyone has the power and capacity to do you know 100% I like that and that’s something we also have talked about in the past about consent yeah enable asking you know it doesn’t matter how small the the the child is would you like a hug and if they say no
That’s fine not you must hug goodbye or kiss such and such goodbye and that becomes such um you know that’s that happens in everyday life all the time and what we do we disable our children yeah so I think yeah what can we do about it that’s another thing is
Education of of what is consent and that needs to start from primary one right up through high school and we would because as as things look today at the moment there’s a there’s a real media for focus on the amount of abuse that’s happening within peers you know within schools and
Um and so we need to we need to up the effort to to re-educate our youth because they’re they’re inter the way they behave towards each other is different now and it’s massively influenced by technology of course we realize that but there but there is practical things we can do people like I
Was saying people feel powerless and like how could you ever stop something like this but actually when the government makes it a priority like like seat belts or or PL bags when they decide to get behind something and invest in it they can change public behavior on a massive scale so this is
This is preventable you know yeah so sorry my fa I said we were gonna do this so after that disclosure what what happened then Matt M well I kind of thought you know in my mind like now we’re going to go to the police and there’s going to be this whole courtroom
Drama that I was trying to avoid cuz I was I was keeping quiet thinking that you know there was an incident once where one of my brothers got in trouble and the police brought them home and I remember my parents being so traumatized by the police coming to our door and
What would the neighbors think that I I kind of knew that the worst thing I could do is bring the police to our door so with the situation that I was having to deal with with my uncle I knew that it was going to involve courts and it
Was going to involve police so I didn’t really want to be the one to blow the whistle cuz I didn’t want to bring all of that to our household when I knew everyone really didn’t want to go go through all that um which is a heavy
Thing to put on the young victim you know and it’s hard looking back I don’t think there was much else I could have done for me I was just trying to survive the situation uh and keep the paace and try and keep our family together in some
Form but um yeah so so what happened was nothing you know my my dad heard the disclosure um and and that was it really my uncle was banished from the house which was a relief because then I had to I could stop pretending that everything
Was fine and I never had to see him again but we didn’t really go beyond that everyone just went on with their life and we forgot about it so or did you Matthew did you forget about it yeah that was it you know just just tied it
Up neatly and threw it away but um no um I actually kind of ran away from home in a sense when I I finished high school at 17 and I I would have done anything literally anything to get out of there so I went to wolver Hampton of all
Places um I got offered a position there used to be this thing in the UK called CSV which was community service volunteers yeah still is is that still going because um they they came to our school and did a presentation and I always wanted to be an actor like I
Wanted to be working television and stuff so I knew that at 17 I was too young to get into drama school um especially cuz my brother who was older than me had been to drama school and you know hadn’t really enjoyed it and he was
Older than me at the time and he still was so ex said it so much pressure so I felt too young to go straight into uni after school so I thought I’ll take a gap here and CSV offered us they said if you apply we can give you a community
Project anywhere and I was I was imagining that I’d come to London and I’d work in a homeless shelter and I’d help people for a year and then then i’ got to UNI but they offered me uh it was a youth theater for underprivileged kids in quite a deprived part of w wolver
Hampton and so that that was my my route out and I left um and that’s where I met someone called Rachel she worked there at the youth theater and she’s one of these people you know she can just one of these people that just sees through the yeah all got one of
Them so you know I met her and she was she was about seven years older than me and um and she worked there with the young people and she part of her job was to take the young people from that area to go and see theater so we’ taken them
I think to see Westside Story at the Grand in wber Hampton and then we dropped them all back at their houses and she said do you want to go and get a curry and of course and W Hampton this Curry hous is open till 3:00 in the
Morning so that was fine so we went out and she was so so disarming that she kind of just I don’t even know how she did it she just got me to speak and it all everything came out everything that I didn’t realize I was running
From and um she immediately got me uh the card of this place called I think it was base 25 and it was a free therapy service for young people and it was all Anonymous kind of thing so I started there I think that’s still going um I
Went there and I was so terrified of of disclosing that they might I thought they might run to the police so I gave a fake name and stuff um and I started therapy and I think for me that’s one of the big messages I give to people like I
Started therapy when I was 17 and my brother who had never spoken about it when when he ended up in that hospital bed he was 25 at that and he he tried to carry this all on his own and eventually the weight of that just gets
Too much so you know even if you’re older than me I’m 40 now if you’re older than me um you know it’s never too late to begin healing you know but I feel that I’m 23 years along the road now of healing and it’s it’s not a a
Destination it’s a direction I’m just 23 years old that road you know and it’s you still have good days and bad days but um yeah it’s never too late to start whilst you was at school and there was all this silence going on around it how did you
Feel that you fared at school was you quite in insula was you quite outgoing how did you present yourself because of what you’d gone through yeah I think I was like safety by being conspicuous you know I think I was friends with everyone in the year
Like I wasn’t one of the sporty kids or the geeky kids but I was friends with all of them I could talk to anyone and I thought that made me safer I used to make people laugh a lot and that there was safety in that as well but um when I
Look at when I look back and I did recent see my school records in my I I would always get complaints from teachers in my reports about daydreaming and staring at the window remember particularly I think when I was about nine I remember one situation staring at a boy across the
Table and just wondering like does his uncle do bad things to him or is it just me and looking around the class and so for such a young child I always had so much on my mind yeah so I was always just kind of lost and and they’re
Wanting you to look at SS or whatever and I just couldn’t get head to do that you know 100% And then towards the end of high school even though like in some classes I would get we used to get awards for you know achievement or Excellence or
Whatever in some classes I would get awards for effort and um towards the end of school my attendance had dropped to I think below 63% I just wasn’t really turning up and nobody questioned this nobody thought why is that young person just not functioning you know which is
Sad but I think I I know that everyone in every school is so so overstretched every single Personnel in the schools they’ve got so much to do and you know we expect them to also have their eyes wide open and examining every child but I think there was um there’s one thing
That an anxiety disorder that I’ve had since a child which is basically like scratching my head and I’ve always scratched the same point of my head for years I’ve got a little cut there that’s never healed um and if you look at my school photographs there’s like there
Was a cut on my nose at one point that didn’t heal for at least 2 years and nobody again you would you would kind of nowadays go what’s going on there what’s that about um so I do say to parents or teachers if the young person if you
Notice a scar or a cut just write down the date that you noticed it and then just check back how long does that take to heal and if it’s an unusual length of time then start asking questions because that could be presenting an anxiety that they’re trying to hold it all together
You know yeah Bev you wanted to say something before I come in you’re on mute love oh yes listening to your experience Matthew you know thank you for sharing because it’s so important and I I find myself nodding my head because you know I go back to because being survivors
Ourselves there are some things although your experience is unique same as everybody’s there are some things that have S similarities and when you say about the responsibility on yourself as a young person God it’s so huge isn’t it and then we also then we not only
Victim blame but we we start to look at the the symptoms of behavior so if it’s deemed to be and I’m going to say bad behavior and I don’t like saying that but behavior that isn’t what an establishment is looking for like school so not functioning in class
You know not being in school and it get considered bad behavior it’s not that we want everyone to get away with things but I’d like to think now that we look at that more and we do step back and we ask the questions sadly it’s getting better but I’m in lots of different
Forums and it’s amazing how how archetypal behavior is still coming through and very judgmental yeah yeah and I think it’s important that you’re able to share what yourself you’re saying because thank you because anyone listening now if you’re in a place seeing certain behavior that you’ve heard from
Matthew ask those you know ask yourself as you said and I think that’s a great example that you you gave about listing down the date of what you’ve seen or what’s come to mind I also want to pick up on the disassociation so the the the daydreaming there’s so many people
Including myself that I’ve heard this from when your brain is in that overwhelm you’re in the survival brain you’re not in your thinking brain so that straight away means to me that everybody needs to be trauma informed when they’re working with children because if they don’t have this basic
Knowledge of actually if someone is potentially daydreaming are they daydreaming or is something else going on because a child cannot think and cannot learn when they’re in survival brain that that’s just fact okay so this daydreaming or dissociation or whatever you want to call it is is a sign and
Symptom potentially and the scratching I know my sister used to literally scratch her arms red raw and I used to say to her stop doing that stop doing it why are you doing that and I used to get quite I rate with her because I could
See how red raar her arms were and I’m like even back then I didn’t know the question why are you doing it you know I didn’t know to ask that question but I I said to her what’s going on for you because that to me is just a sign of
Distress what is going on and I asked that question quite a few times before she actually told me what was happening to her um so you saying about having something that you pick it or whatever biting the nails down to the quicks you know something it is a sign of distress
So those signs and symptoms could be looked at quite easily and the questions asked and you know the mandatory reporting recommendation that the government um are going to bring in what it looks like we don’t know but obviously um proper disclosures have to be put through the
System but signs and symptoms is also part of that if they go with it so I think us talking about just these basic things will be an eye opener to some professionals who potentially are listening to this so I’m going to shut up there and draw the line for a moment
Um how did your brother recover Matthew or not what how did his life sort of like turn out yeah um so he um he was fortunate in the sense that he he fell in love with a pharmacist so she was able to to help
Him in many ways um help him like cuz he has to he did a lot of therapy but he also he kind of Lent on medication to help him kind of come out of that that overwhelmed State um and so he manages his life now in that way um and he has
Had you know good periods and bad periods but I will say that he when he was very young when he was about 18 he did a thing called the pledge which is a Catholic thing where you decide that you’re never going to drink alcohol um and I think in his case that really
Saved his life I think um because yeah I personally have had periods where I’ve I’ve you know been really really heavily off the rails with alcohol um and the weird thing is because I’m I’ve been in therapy for 23 years or you know on and off I’m so self-aware that I I watch
Myself when I’m in periods of Maximum stress and I and I allow myself to to use alcohol or use a substance because I know that I’m going through something and I’m going the other side um but yeah I think yeah that for him that was that was a Saving Grace but I
Think like for many survivors there’s so much Shame about not being able to function when we’re so you know it it’s we hide the fact that we’re struggling from our partners and from people because we’re so sad that we can’t keep up you know well that’s been my
Experience uh a friend of mine started a company called rethink drink which is um one of one of the only companies in in the UK that does the slear method which if you’re aware of it I think it’s the world’s best kept secret um it’s so basically there’s in the 1930s they
Started AA which is alcohol anonymous Alcohol Anonymous um and at that point in the 1930s even the guy that created AA said at the moment there’s no solution to alcohol addiction one day Medical Science might solve it but at the moment you just have to stop and for
A lot of survivors they rely on substance abuse for you know to cope anyway in the 1990s they they found a thing that’s called the sinkar method and there’s a pill that you can take called nrex on you take the pill and what it does is it inhibits the
Alcohol uh dopamine receptors alcohol so you don’t actually get anything from alcohol so instead of stopping drinking completely you can keep drinking the rest of your life but your interest in alcohol is gone so very quickly it’s called rethink drink because what you you stop getting what you always got
From alcohol and you actually re change your relationship to it and it can really help with I mean it’s literally like getting your life back in control of yourself and control of your emotions so yeah if there’s any survivors who are struggling with alcohol I would first
Thing do is direct them towards that because I think um complete abstinence has hasn’t worked for a lot of people I think I don’t want to throw random statistics out but it’s quite high but until you deal with the root CS you’re not going to be able to deal with the um
The coping mechanism because it’s just like you always go back to your default which gives you a little bit reprieve or a little bit of um just like taking yourself away from all of the distress And the emotions that you’re feeling so you know it’s understandable that there
Is addictions different ones whether it be food exercise sex alcohol drugs you know they’re all coping mechanisms and we all will default to something because why wouldn’t you when you’re in distress you know yeah and I think like today with you know we’ll get on to that but
The work that I do now trying to convince people to do things or change things very often they’re not interested in the personal story they’re not really governments are not compassionate they don’t actually care on an individual they can’t care because there’s too many of us what they do care about is numbers
They care about money and so if you can show a government how much money are we spending every year on homelessness or alcoholism or even things like um of course obesity all these things have been tracked now since the late 90s in the adverse childhood experience study that I’m sure you’ve covered the
Study showed that all of these are outcomes from childhood sexual violence and other negative childhood experiences and all of those things would be drastically reduced if if we as a as a generation comprehensively focused on preventing childhood sexual abuse and exploitation yeah and it when you show
How much money they would see if they start to listen absolutely soe with you got so much to uh share with Matthew because obviously you’ve um I’m not saying you’re an alcoholic because you haven’t but you you you had a relationship where there was an alcoholic within the relationship
Didn’t you you had to deal with all of that so do you want to share just a little bit of how you were a Survivor but working with that as well well to be honest so that the other angle came from it so I have to be careful because of
Whose story I’m sharing so I’m just going to give overflow but um a person very close to me has an addiction and they were in rehab and when they came out they spoke about alanon I’ve never heard of alanon and for anyone listening it’s if um it’s for someone who someone
Around you has um not even an addiction if you feel that somebody is drinking too much to their detriment and I was advised to go by this person and what I didn’t know was my partner at the time sadly was an alcoholic and didn’t realize um went
Along to elen on and realized my parents were alcoholics and the pattern was there and it’s and what I was also doing was I was enabling not on purpose but what you think is love I was enabling so what I was doing was disabling yeah and you and this is something people don’t
Understand because the person who’s on drink you know it it it’s like a a ripple effect I will say that I’m going to call it drugs because drink is a drugs and and it for some people not for everyone but some people it goes on so
It’s I’ve seen it from the other side as well and I think because I’ve seen it as a young kid as well that was my reason for being very self-aware around alcohol so even as a youngster I didn’t drink for 10 years and even now I drink if I
Feel safe if I don’t feel safe I’ll drink more all night yeah so and I just wanted to share that as a different concept because it’s so important that we’re able to have these conversations without judgment but if we don’t have conversations about abuse about addiction how do we know yeah we don’t
Know yeah and I GRE up with sorry Bev no I was going to say my C you know my coping mechanism when I I get challenged is keeping busy keeping very busy so I now have to balance that and I work very hard to keep that balance with self-care
Like if I’m working hard what time have I put in the diary to take out because it otherwise it becomes an addiction doesn’t it so Matthew as well I grew up with um alcohol in a negative way um that’s when the vi the actual violence got worse and
I hated anybody and I know that’s a strong word to use but it was my reality I hated anybody that drank because I Associated it with violence abuse um and me just not being safe and I didn’t drink until I was probably about 45 I’m 53 now and I now can see
And feel safe in drinking a little bit myself um for pleasure not for you know handling distress or anything like that but I was so against anybody that drank alcohol because of the early associations so it’s really just us sharing what’s going on with us three
How different it is for each and every single one of us can I um say in coming up um living in a Scottish family alcohols and everyday thing is it or is that just a a myth is it a reality or a myth yeah I mean it is very much I mean
The The Stereotype is very accurate I think you know in Scotland we have the same bottle of wine will cost more in Scotland and L than in lles in England because we we had to raise the the the price of the of a unit of alcohol to try
And reduce people drink and you can’t buy alcohol in the morning before 10 10:00 a.m. um sadly and I I think like I thought that was unique to Scotland in fact you know I’ve worked across Scandinavia in all the countries where it’s dark for 3 months of the year and
The alcoholism is much seems to be much higher you know so I think is there’s a number of factors involved but for the work that I do now and the the travel that I do it every culture has its booze you know and Everywhere I Go everyone
Wants me to try their thing so it’s not possible for me to to not drink um without literally without upsetting diplomatic relationships in some situations so you have to go okay and try it so yeah so I’ve found the kind of rethink drink process for me has been a
Life a lifesaver really um so I would recommend it to anyone who’s struggling and I think that’s great and we will add that link as well underneath either the video if someone’s watching this or the audio because it’s so important because one situation doesn’t fit or one resolution doesn’t fit for everyone so
That’s fantastic yeah so obviously there’s loads to speak about and we don’t want to keep holding you back Matthew and can I just put in for the listeners I actually have Scottish Heritage as well and I’m married to my husband has got Irish um descent as well so we’re very Irish
Scottish yeah I mean literally I don’t I don’t see borders I think we are literally go back a few generations and we’ve all got the same great great great grandfather so you know what I mean um so yeah so basically I went to I went to
England to do a gap year started therapy and then I managed to get into uni to do to drama school to become an actor so and that’s what I did I went to I got in at Queen Margaret in Edinburgh studied acting for three years straight out of
Drama school I got an agent and I started I did tager you know that show yes oh my god did you I love tager yeah I was in that um and then I was in a kids TV show on CBB is called me too unfortunately um yeah it was on
Every every morning on CBB So within a couple of months of kind a drama school I was yeah I was kind of becoming a known actor in in some circles um and at that point no one had really spoken about her uncle and he was still registered as a
School teacher and he was still working with young wow and I think what happened was one of my brothers one of my other brothers who we never had a conversation about the whole situation with um his wife called me and said that he was struggling and and then I went okay this
Is you know this is what happens eventually it just catches up with you so yeah so I went over to see him he lives in Ireland and um and it was so difficult how do we begin the conversation you know we had to get blind drunk and we’re standing outside
His house in the rural Ireland where it was Pitch Black there was no street lights we had to have this middle of the night completely drunk uh circumstance before we could even approach it um and then I came home to Scotland and I was so Furious all over again because this
Brother was now collapsing and and the other one was kind of self-medicating and all of us all of our lives were really um difficult and the person who created all of this was still just carrying on yeah and that’s when it terrified me that our silence was quite
Dangerous by by not we were just allowing a very dangerous man to work in schools so again because it’s so difficult to speak to your brother about it at that point I worked in theater and television so I wrote a play a play called to kill
Aelp um aelp is like a a Scottish water creature it’s like a The Lochness Monster is a kelpy but there’s a legend around the kelpy which is that when you would see him at the side of the lock he would be he would appear as a Charming
Man to kind of lure you towards him wow when when you got close he would grab you and drown you in the Lo so that seemed like a good metaphor for yeah 100% and there was also um there was a thing also I watched this thing about phobia about phobias and apparently a
Phobia is your brain chooses something like if you’re afraid of spiders or snakes or rats you’re not actually scared of of spiders CU you know rationally that it’s not dangerous if especially in the UK but what you’re actually scared of is the reaction and the feeling and you’ve chosen this thing
As the kind of icon for that feeling yeah so cuz like famously Jade goody was scared of ketchup now you can’t be scared of apparently so I don’t know what happened when she was maybe three or she either saw someone covered in blood and thought it was ketchup or
She saw someone covered in ketchup and thought it was blood but some trauma happened before her mind could rationalize it and today or as she was apparently she was scared of ketchup it was in the documentary and it made me think what am I scared of and I’m really
Scared of getting into the water I don’t like the idea of standing in water and I realized that that I’m not scared of sea creatures or Kelpies it’s that feeling of lying there with your eyes closed and something can come at you from below and you have no power over that and so
That’s really the whole thing just made sense to me that that’s that’s what that was so I wrote the play about um about two brothers and who’ve been abused by the same uncle and all that happens in the place days that they talk about it
Um in reality there was four of us in the play it’s twin brothers because like in medical experiments they use twins so um one brother in the play had been to therapy and the other one hadn’t and it was just about showing how even though
The one had been to therapy seems to be like the emotional one and like he’s not coping because he cries a lot he’s actually processing everything and the one who doesn’t talk about it who’s stoic and he’s fine he’s the one in the play that doesn’t you realize hasn’t
Functioned at all so the play was performed in Glasgow in 2007 we invited um Sandra Brown OB she’s the founder of the Moira Anderson foundation in Scotland it’s kind of the the most advanced uh organization certainly at that time who help child and adult survivors of child sexual abuse I
Invited her to come to the show and to host a post show discussion and my brothers I warned them where what had written about uh they came to see it and then she led this conversation and that was the first time that we openly were
Able to sit around and just say what was what what had occurred and what needed to happen so within a few days of the play we decided to we we’re going to press charges and we reported them so after two decades of Silence within just
A few days of the play our uncle was arrested and then he was uh prosecuted and he plad guilty based on the weight of our evidence and uh he went to jail but um I I kind of realized that the play which was fiction it was based on real life
But it was it was a story it had created this massive important change in my family so I thought maybe it would work for other families so I collaborated with different organizations and we toured it um in the US and in different places in Europe and wherever we showed
The play people in the audience would disclose to me sometimes I would walk on stage and have a conversation and sometimes they would approach me in the bar and I would get a lot of disclosures and I would always couple the trying and invite the local service provider so
That people knew immediately who they could get help with but I would say to people you should press charges especially if your offender is still in contact with children and um many people in different nations would say we can’t because we’ve missed our chance because of the statute limitations is run out
And I’d never heard of that because we don’t have it in Scotland so I just assumed I had these Road Rose tinted specs that if you press charges the police come take him away Goes to Jail sorted that is not the case for the vast major be beautiful if it did to work
Like that hey but I think and it took me a long time to realize that my experience was you know quite unusual I was one of the the say lucky ones who actually got a prosecution but um so that’s when I learned about this thing called the statute limitations the time limit on
Reporting yeah and that’s when I kind of transition from being just someone who’s an actor and writer into someone who’s became a an advocate and an activist so I I had this idea the idea was very simple which was to show the play or the
Play we made a movie version of the play so that we could stop performing it cuz it’s quite exhausting so my idea was to show the film of the play everywhere and then speak to the audience I thought we’ll show it everywhere across Europe and I thought and then we’ll
Encourage everyone in the audience to to raise up against their government and get that law changed I thought it was simple concept we went to 200 concept yeah simp simple the simple idea good um went to 200 companies thinking someone will give us money we got nothing not a single penny So eventually
The decision was made that I was just I would just walk around Europe um instead of flying from City to City I would walk on on my own um and that’s how the concept of the the project began and so on May 31st 2013 I left London on foot
And I walked to Paris and then I walked to Luxembourg and then uh Brussels and I carried on until I walked to the capital city of every EU country um and so there was a a team around me about five organizations internationally collaborated to help me do this project
Um we had volunteers over the course of the whole it took nearly two years to walk around Europe but over the course of the whole project there was six different people that drove this van that um where I slept every night the van would drive 30 miles and I would
Sleep in the van at the side of the road then it would drive another 30 miles that’s very slowly how I moved around the continent um but when I got to the city um I would go to the British Embassy who were as as the project went on out there was bigger
And bigger profile of what I was doing and the British embassies were always really um accommodating they would help me get to the Press they would help me get to the governments so I met Justice ministers and family Ministers of all these different nations and I was able
To strangely just build this kind of momentum and what I was asking them to do was very simple and I was able to say if my uncle had sexually abused me and my brothers in this country you would not arrest them you would leave a dangerous child sex offender working in
The school because of this law and they would say no that’s not true and I would say well yes it is look at look at your Penal Code you’re not giving the survivors enough time to and you’re also not providing them with any emotional support for them to reach the point
Where they can speak about it so the chances of this ever stopping with the statute limitations is kind of bleak so yeah so I walked around Europe and in doing so I got invited to meet the pope and met Pope Francis I got invited to meet um to speak at the United Nations
And then eventually what happened was in Croatia I was speaking at the government in Catia and I said you need to remove this law and they said well we can’t abolish that because we’ve only just created it and I was like why why why have you just brought in a law that other
Governments are in the process of moving a dangerous law that stops victims pressing charges and leaves dangerous individuals in contact with children and they said to me when we ratified the lanzerotti convention we were required to bring in a statute of limitations so just to explain I’d never
Heard of that the lanzerotti convention was a treaty that was that all governments in Europe created on prevention and tackling childhood sexual violence it’s called in um in all European nations all governments have now signed it and so everyone in Europe is should be protected by this treaty
All governments are supposed to um align their National legislation with that International agreement and there’s an article that article 33 said your your statute limitations must be sufficient to allow victims time to come forward now that’s very vague it doesn’t say what’s sufficient that’s very subjective it was
Also written on the assumption that your country has a limitation and Croatia didn’t but because of the way it was worded they actually brought in a limitation and so a treaty that was supposed to improve child protection and then childhood sexual violence had actually inhibited the human rights of
You know I think four million a country of four million for generations of children yeah so I said well how do we fix that how do we change that that that that one paragraph which has created this catastrophic mistake and in order to change that you have to go to the
Center of Europe so to explain I was walking around the EU which was 27 countries but Europe’s obviously bigger than just the EU there’s also Norway and Serbia and um all in Switzerland all of the countries in Europe there’s 47 they all meet in Strasburg and that’s called
The Council of Europe and that’s who created this treaty and I think like I’ll be honest it was the week that Scotland voted no in the independence referendum so I was I was I was a bit mythed because I was like I really thought that Scotland would get it would
Go for Independence and they didn’t and I’d like I lived in England most of my life I’m not to be Pro Scottish independence was never to be anti-english I just think that the um I was walking around Europe in a kilt you know and I had a big Sal tire on my
Chest I was very identifiably Scottish yeah so I was quite in that point I was I was walking at that time from Geneva having just spoke at the UN I was walking to Madrid across the Pyrenees and I was so angry I just phoned up the
Council of Europe and I said I need to speak to whoever created that doc doent because we need to talk about what has to change now and the kind of you know that thing if you can keep a cool head whilst those around you’re losing theirs you probably haven’t grasped the
Situation think it was my blind ignorance as to the scale of what I was doing like I just thought I’ll phone up the Council of Europe um and somehow they opened the doors I think because I’d met the pope and I’d been at the UN they opened the doors and I managed to
Go up there and I I met the the Secretary General who was the in charge of the whole of I mean he’s the he was the chair of the Nobel Peace Prize committee um the highest kind of politician in Europe and I said to him
You need to fix this uh I need to speak to the committee in charge of that treaty and we need to change it so that was like he said to me well you know to get 47 governments in a room you can’t arrange it next week so he said come
Back and you’re like why not just um he said come back next year so I finished the walk um I I went then from Spain to Portugal back up through I went to Cardiff in um Dublin Belfast and eventually finished in Edinburgh in February 2015 and that was the end of that walk
Project but the my mission wasn’t ended so I went back to Strasburg and I addressed all those governments and I asked them to change that article of that treaty and they listened to me but they didn’t take any action at that point so after that I collapsed from
Exhaustion um and I kind of didn’t do anything for a while um and then I was invited to to the UN to kind of chair start chairing some debates on children’s rights as a Survivor just as just from what I’d observed because I’d worked with survivors in so many
Countries and I had such a unique kind of understanding of where everyone was at that time so the UN brought me into to chair some discussions and whilst I was doing that I was seen by the the CEO of eat International they’re based in Bangkok but they’re one of the world’s
Biggest organizations who fight childhood sexual exploitation so I ended up in Asia and they asked me to find all the other people like me all the other angry survivors who have had enough um so I reached out and we we did this event called the global Survivor forum and we brought together Survivor
Activists from as many countries as we could find and uh and we held this Congress and I think 80 governments listened in to that I remember at that point it was Obama’s administration was listening and we just it was all survivors and we talked about what needs
To change and how we could change it and we offered Solutions um and we wanted that to become an annual thing um That Was Then in 2017 we did that um but we went and applied for money to make this an annual thing and of course there’s a lot of
Logistical um things to think about if you’re bringing survivors together to to voice their experience in front of such a massive group of governments so so after that I collapsed from exhaustion again um just complete overwhelm and there was a pattern emerging which was me pushing and
Pushing and pushing and trying to change the world and it not happening fast enough and me just collapsing under the weight of it so can recognize myself in you right now sorry so I think after that Chris yeah I think there was a thing about and you you’ve probably seen this Chris with
With with exit I think when you’re trying to fix something on a national or International scale it feels so it feels so long between the conversation you’re having with one politician or government Minister between the conversation you’re having where a decision might be made and it might be months or even years
Before the conversation you’ve just had affects the people who need the help now and so I felt so distant that I wasn’t even though I was having all these stratospheric conversations I wasn’t really doing anything I wasn’t really helping any anyone so that’s when I
Wrote the book I wrote a book for young people um because I just wanted to speak directly to yeah to young people and and say this is how I this is how I got from where I was to where I am and um so yeah
So that was that was my attempt to speak directly to a young Survivor and say these These are the choices you can make and the things you can do to help yourself um and I think that so that was mostly what I did and then Co came along
Um and I got a phone call from Washington DC um from Dr Daniela leero and she’s she runs together for girls in Washington and she’s a Survivor and she wanted to do what we’ done with the global Survivor Forum on a much bigger scale bring all the survivors in the
World together and end uh all childhood sexual abuse and exploitation globally um and I just loved the ambition of that so she invited me to become part of this group called The Sage which was the Survivor advocate it’s globally empowered and together we created a thing called The Brave
Movement which launched in March 2022 the brave movement is I think the biggest Global effort of Survivor voices coming together to really this time to draw a line under this strange thing that happens in humanity so that’s the brave movement has been going for a year
And a half now oh no actually next nearly two years wow nearly two years and the weird thing is um I went back to Strasburg and I I got went back into that room who let me speak and I asked them again the same thing I asked
Them 10 years ago to change that treaty but this time I’m not Matthew on his own that Survivor from Scotland I represent the entire Brave movement which is a collaboration of all the Survivor voices and of course they couldn’t ignore us this time so they took action um and
They’ve now published a reinterpretation of article 33 which will change that legislation across Europe and now um it will have impacts because like Japan is an observer chinia has just joined the treaty um Mexico is about to ratify it so this this one thing will start to infiltrate and change positively entire
World so it’s it’s a real honor to be part of this work and it blows my mind where We’ve Ended up from where I started blow mind yeah I can’t say thank you enough for sharing you know that journey and that really is just quick synop can’t synopsis I can’t get my
Teeth back in um I just need to also bring to attention got five minutes and I know I’m the gatekeeper but um Matthew you know anyone listening what I’ve heard from you is and I love that that you want to change something and you you do the
Simplest of things and I really get that feeling though when you have a conversation and it takes takes forever to get to the the the person that really want would make a difference to but you know what I’m going to say thank you thank you for keep taking each step and
Following and that’s not a pun knowing that you’ve walked around Europe but like you say 10,000 kilom I know I wrot that down earlier 16,000 K kilometers that is amazing but by doing that you know you have just done it nationally you’ve done it in European you’ve done
It worldwide and and and bring in so many other people together is amazing so the links such as the brave movement as well you know anybody wants any more information after listen to this please contact us you can email us on Breaking the cycle twostep forward at gmail.com
We will put some links underneath but if we put every single link there won’t be enough space um your book we will definitely put your link on so let me just say it’s the truth that no one tells teenagers 10 facts every teen victim has the right to know by Matthew mcvarish that’s
It so Matthew in the last sort few minutes that we have we’d love to hear your thoughts you’ve done this so far what’s happened now you know how is going forward now what is it that anyone listening to you would want to guide them to you know this is your last few
Minutes to sort of find a way to just share where you are right now or what’s going to happen in the future what you’d like to see yeah so at the moment like the brave movement was a global initiative and what’s happening is we’re now in the process of making sure the brave
Movement has a solid presence in every country so I’m setting up Brave UK um and uh we’re also at the moment we have Brave France now we have Brave Japan so if you’re listening this to this from another country you know you can join the brave movement and all it needs is
Anyone can join you don’t have to be a Survivor it’s for survivors and allies and anyone who wants the world to be a better place for children um and any two members of the Brave movement can create a national platform so we want there to be brave everywhere um and there’s no
Pressure on anyone individual to solve this but together we can solve this so it’s it’s as simple as coming together so if you go into the brav movement.org you can join and then you’ll start getting more information about how to take action in your area no matter where you
Are yeah thank you and thank you so much what’s next for you though Matthew on a personal level what you want to do yeah um and it doesn’t have to be work yeah yeah I still I still write television I write for BBC Scotland I write a show
Called River City now and um I’ve got a new Christmas movie that I’ve written that I’m hopefully pushing it in production this year so I still do that part of my life which helps balance out the the heavy stuff um but I’m back in Strasburg um in three weeks and we have
The final vote on the new Amendment to the treaty and that feels like the full circle coming to the end of the the activism not the end of the activism but the end of that first push yeah um but again you know there’s it’s only the beginning there’s so much then to be
Done so yeah I think what’s next is yeah just take the next step keep going and can I ask one last question Matthew thinking back to your 15 year old self if you could stand in front of you know 15y old Matthew what would you want to say to him
Now um I think I say it a lot in my book I say um you’re going to be okay I think that was the one thing I didn’t know you know cuz you can’t see how that’s true but you are going to be okay and there there’s um yeah there is so much
You can do to get out of this so um yeah just keep keep um keep reaching out I think that’s the thing just turn I think in my book I say um if you’ve been abused it feels like a very strange gift because you can use it
To turn away from the world and say why should I care because I’ve been but the other thing you can do with that is you can use it as your reason to fully live the rest of your life if you turn towards the world and say I understand
Because I have been hurt too and I think if you do that you have such a a different life that’s beautiful Chris because sadly we are coming to an end as much as we don’t want to end it any last thoughts from yourself I just think we are in the
Presence of an amazing man and he probably doesn’t like me saying that but I’m just so humbled by who you are what you’ve achieved and I’m learning myself because I’m following in your footsteps Matthew I’m learning from you about what I need to do I see well it’s been an honor been on
Your show like I’m getting addicted to it walking the dog and I’ve got a lot of episodes to listen to so thank you so much for having me today it’s been a pleasure thank you very thank you you know thank you so much and as we said you know anybody listening or watching
Please self-care is always important that’s something we always say um but they were beautiful words that Matthew shared and I just want to say thank you it’s an absolute pleasure to meet you if anyone has any questions just reach out you can reach out to us you can reach
Out to the brave Movement we will be putting some links under but know that you’re not alone and if you’re not a Survivor but you want to learn more you’re always welcome as well that’s what this is all about opening conversations to educate and raise awareness thank you so much everybody
Thank you Chris thank you Matthew time to say goodbye bye till next time Bye