The Truth Project is part of the ‘Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’. Its purpose is to provide insight organisations that have failed to protect children from sexual abuse.

It offers survivors of CSA the opportunity to share their experience, be believed and speak unquestioned without the fear of judgement. Survivors can share their recommendations to protect children in the future. Survivors will be heard and some for the first time.

But 2 years after commission, awareness and understanding of The Truth Project’s purpose was extremely low.

Our brief was to:

1. Raise awareness of The Project purpose, amongst survivors and the public

2. Build survivor trust to …

3. Drive participation through expressions of interest

This project presented monumental challenges for which there were no precedents. How could we;

- Find the right tone for the first time that historical CSA would be mentioned (and spoken out loud) in commercial air-time?

- How could we balance hard-nosed response driving comms to engage participation with sensitivity about the subject matter?

- Targeting our core audience in research and live media presented ethical questions and safeguarding risks. How could we be accurate without triggering trauma?

Nothing can replace building relationships and speaking to people directly, to ascertain deeply emotional responses and nuanced insights.

Our research involved over 70 hours of consultations with a survivors, the public and collaboration with Behavioural Insights Team.

Through quantitative surveys learnt that CSA is the topic people are least comfortable talking about; some way after mental health issues, terminal illness and sexuality. Word of mouth awareness would be a significant struggle.

At the same time, many survivors had never disclosed their abuse or had been shamed for speaking up. The idea of sharing their experience with an unknown organisation - not a charity , a cold institution or a support service, the Truth Project, might be too great an ask.

But we sensed that speaking up would be impossible for some without the support of family, friends and the public. Without it, the initiative’s credibility would be significantly limited.

We needed to balance a personal appeal and nuanced messaging with broad reach and awareness.

We created a sense of both direct call to action and a rallying cry with the campaign proposition

“It’s time to be heard”

We instilled trust in our audiences by bringing to the surface the testimonies

We utilised our insight led principles including survivor-led narrative, powerful symbols (mouths and speech bubbles) to acknowledge that survivors CSA have ‘never been heard’. Our launch creative featured close-ups of survivor’s faces, focused on their mouths, with the end line ‘I will be heard’.

We found that survivors felt more comfortable sharing private experiences with people who have had similar experiences. Our campaign needed be a social norming, first-person, testimony-led with positive Project experiences.

Inspired by theologian David Augsburger, we used language of hearing survivors. Whilst ‘listening’ lent connotations of a support service that confused our audience the opportunity TO BE HEARD put participants in a position of power.

TV followed with hovering blank speech bubbles. This allowed is to speak to a broad audience, offering a sense of optimism and to illustrate CSA’s indiscriminate nature, across entire nations!

Understanding of the inquiries remit amongst the ad aware were almost double vs. all adults.

People became more comfortable talking about CSA; we saw a statistically significant impact on Ad aware vs. all adults, to levels on a par with survivors.

Interested organisations and individuals began to break the stigma and support us in social media.

For many, the effects of child sexual abuse are significant and can be long lasting, continuing into adulthood. Adverse consequences can include acute feelings of betrayal, stigmatisation and guilt, as well as difficulties in relationships; physical and trauma-related mental health problems.

Costs to society estimates range up to £3.2 billion annually.

7,000 CSA survivors expressing an interest has the potential to deliver savings of c.£7.5 million, more than covering the minimal campaign spend (budget confidential).

A conservative estimate is that over 3 million people aged 18 to 74 in England and Wales have experienced CSA (7%).

We use the language of 'survivors' rather than 'victims' in this instance as a result of feedback from our research participants