A woman who suffered horrific sexual abuse as a young child has been awarded £250,000 in compensation after the trauma left her with psychosis and unable to work.
Chloe Brinn, now 28, endured repeated sexual abuse before the age of five, with the memories haunting her throughout her life and leading to severe mental health struggles and substance misuse.
The Childhood Trauma
Chloe revealed that her birth mother was just 14 when she had her and worked as a sex worker while battling crack and heroin addictions. Some of her mother's clients preferred children, leading to Chloe's repeated abuse.
Social services finally discovered the abuse when Chloe was five years old. A medical examination found internal damage to her vagina from repeated penetration, confirming the horrific abuse she had endured.
Chloe was adopted as a baby, but the trauma would resurface years later in devastating ways.
Flashbacks and Substance Misuse
At age 12, Chloe began experiencing terrifying nightmares that she later discovered were actually traumatic flashbacks to the childhood abuse. The flashbacks were so vivid and distressing that they caused her to wet herself, vomit, and even faint.
In an attempt to cope with these horrifying experiences, Chloe turned to cannabis and alcohol, developing an addiction to spice by age 15. It was during counselling in Yorkshire that she learned the truth - her nightmares were flashbacks to actual abuse she had suffered.
"When I'm having these nightmares, I'm physically feeling like it's happening to me," Chloe shared. "My counsellor then told me that they weren't nightmares, they were flashbacks to things that happened to me as a child."
Mental Health Decline and Diagnosis
Chloe's situation deteriorated significantly as her cannabis use escalated into drug-induced psychosis at just 18 years old. She later turned to cocaine and other substances including MDMA, ketamine and LSD, sometimes taking all three simultaneously.
Following the birth of her first child at 21, Chloe experienced post-natal psychosis and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where she was sectioned. She received diagnoses of bipolar disorder, BPD and CPTSD.
During her treatment, Chloe's birth mother died, plunging her into severe depression and triggering suicidal thoughts. "I was suicidal and if I had died during that time, I would have just thought it was the easy way out," she admitted.
The Path to Compensation
Chloe's counsellor suggested she contact the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) to seek compensation for her horrific experiences. With the help of her adopted parents and a solicitor, she built a strong case based on her medical records, police checks, and counselling documentation.
The case took five years to resolve, during which Chloe experienced a third episode of psychosis. Despite there being no criminal convictions related to her abuse, she was awarded the maximum single injury payout of £250,000.
The compensation is being held in a trust fund due to Chloe's inability to ever work again. Now 75 days sober, Chloe finally feels validated after years of struggling to be believed.
"After I won the money, I just felt heard," Chloe said. "I'd disassociated so much from it that I kept questioning if it even happened. I felt like someone had finally heard that little girl that was abused, and it made me feel less alone."
Chloe has undergone Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy to help her brain process the traumatic memories, and for the first time this year, she has been able to accept that the abuse really happened.
