The Note That Changes Everything — And Nothing

3rd June 2025

Today I received confirmation from our daughters health records that the Leader at the Early Years setting did, in fact, log a note of our daughters disclosure. This should feel like a breakthrough — I thought for so long it would come down to my word against hers. But instead of relief, I feel a deeper kind of pain, confusion, and sorrow.

For months, I’ve been terrified that no one would believe what our daughter said — or what the Leader told me that day. Now I know she did record something, and yet the disclosure still wasn’t reported. A MARF wasn’t submitted. Social Services weren’t informed. And our daughter was left unprotected.

This leaves me with a painful question: Did she truly believe that logging the comment in her notes — without reporting it or escalating it through proper channels — was enough? If she thought she was doing the right thing, then there’s a serious failure in training and accountability. But if she knew it wasn’t enough and chose to do nothing anyway, that is an inexcusable betrayal of trust — both to our daughter and to us as her parents.

And what exactly did she log? Did she include the conversation we had outside the door to the setting, where she told me she wouldn’t report it because of her friendship with my sister in law? Did she document her reasoning? Or did she simply log my daughters comment and leave out the most crucial context?

I don’t know the answer to that, and that uncertainty is haunting.

I can’t help but feel that the system is still circling to protect itself. The Leader at the setting may now avoid any real accountability simply because something was written down. But writing it down is not the same as safeguarding. It’s not enough. Our daughter is a four-year-old child who found the courage to speak up — and the adult she trusted to act on that trust let her down. What message does that send?

To make things even more painful, I now have to face the reality that these people will likely be protected. They may not face public consequences. Their reputations will stay intact, while ours — and our little girl's — have been quietly dragged through the mud. Our family has carried this burden in silence for so long, and now that the truth is finally beginning to surface, it’s still us who are left broken, scrutinised, and doubted.

I am grieving not just what happened — but the world’s response to it. The inaction. The complicity. The silence.

We did everything we could to protect our daughter, and we continue to do so. If the Leader or the Responsible Individual for the Setting had acted at the time, maybe things would be different. Maybe our girl would have been believed. Maybe the Police would have had a better chance to step in while she was still actively talking. Instead, everything was delayed — and every delay came at our daughters expense.

I will continue to speak up, not just for justice for our little girl, but because I can’t bear the thought of another child making a disclosure and being ignored in the same way. It’s not enough to have safeguarding procedures. They need to be followed. Every time. By everyone.

And if they’re not — then someone has to hold people accountable. That is what I will keep doing, even when it hurts.