23rd May 2025 – This month Kate Elysia, mental health practitioner and expert with lived experience of sexual exploitation, worked with artist Judy Kuo to illustrate the issues with current narratives on grooming and child sexual exploitation. Speaking with After Exploitation, Kate explains more about her creative work, combatting stereotypes and bringing the focus back onto survivors.
Kate Elyssia is an expert with lived experience of sexual exploitation. A passionate advocate, she works in mental health services and uses her skills to support others. In her role, she has encountered survivors of modern slavery, and recognises the challenges that stop others from coming forward. Personally and professionally, she is acutely aware of the harm that is caused when survivors and perpetrators are stereotyped.
“I have met children of colour, who I knew were victims, and never got that support. Emphasis on one ‘type’ of victim stops survivors coming forward.
[Portrayals of] children as the only victims of sexual exploitation has to change too… those exploited as adults end up feeling too embarrassed to come forward. I have met survivors who have never disclosed sexual exploitation because they were adults when it happened.”
In her view, comments by high profile commentators, focussing on the profile of survivors and perpetrators, overshadow the bigger problems of sexual exploitation in this country.
“Attitudes towards women and girls needs to change nationally, not just amongst one community.
If authorities only look for abuse against ‘young white girls’ they are blind to it happening to people of colour or people of all ages and genders.”
In amongst the discussions of what a perpetrator of child sexual exploitation (CSE) ‘looks like’, important conversations about survivor support have been drowned out.
In Kate’s case, accessing support was never easy, even after she disclosed her experiences to the police. Some professionals doubted her experiences, and getting specialist mental health support was impossible.
“If it wasn’t for another survivor telling me about the National Referral Mechanism [the system for identifying victims of trafficking and offering support] I wouldn’t have known about it.”
Working with After Exploitation, Kate developed a creative brief for the artist Judy Kuo, to bring to life her perspectives on the current climate for survivors of sexual exploitation and child sexual exploitation. Her goal was to show that victims and perpetrators do not always fit stereotypes, and that this is an all-encompassing, global issue. Kate and Judy’s work is published on the After Exploitation’s Instagram and Blue Sky accounts.
For support if you or someone you care about is affected by these issues, our website homepage includes information on charities who can help.
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