Rantzen reveals childhood abuse

TV personality Esther Rantzen, who founded children’s helpline Childline, has said she was the victim of child abuse herself …

TV personality Esther Rantzen, who founded children’s helpline Childline, has said she was the victim of child abuse herself as a schoolgirl.

As the charity approaches its 25th anniversary, Ms Rantzen admitted she was molested by a relative in the 1950s.

The former That's Life star, who campaigned to become an MP in Luton last year, made the disclosure when being interviewed about the creation of Childline in 1986.

Ms Rantzen founded the service after a one-off BBC TV programme Childwatch was inundated with calls by children desperate for help.

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The charity now offers a 24/7 helpline for children in danger or distress.

Today Ms Rantzen said she decided to talk about what happened to her when she was asked by a journalist if any one moment in her own childhood had influenced her decision to want to set up Childline.

“I went to talk about the beginning of Childline and how it happened and then he said, ‘have you ever experienced something like this in your own life?, and you’ve got the decision at that moment, you either refuse to answer or you tell the truth.

Ms Rantzen said what had happened to her did not spark her efforts to launch Childline but may have contributed to them.

“From my point of view I don’t feel that it in any way prompted the creation of Childline although there may have been, at a level, a sensitivity in me, an understanding of how children feel when somebody within the family circle treats them badly.

“But in those early days, in our very earliest times, I thought children would be asking us to put them in touch with social services, I didn’t realise that that’s the last thing that most children want.

“What they want is to talk safely about their own feelings, often the feeling that they are to blame for what has happened, and our job is to raise their feeling of self-esteem and confidence so they recognise that abuse is never the child’s fault, never.

“And then we explore options with them, like who they can talk to safely in their life.

“And if they want us to refer them to social services and the police, we do, but we work at the child’s pace because what we don’t want is for a child to be so frightened that they never call us back.”

PA