One of the best promises I have ever made in my life was to a friend of mine a year ago. She shared something with me, that for many years throughout her youth she had been sexually abused by a good friend of her parents. She told her parents but they didn’t believe her and it was only years later, at university, that she finally spoke with a counsellor, who helped her find ways to recover and reconcile others to the truth. At the stage in her life when we met she had begun the painful process of bringing that man to justice, or whatever justice could be gained so many years on. She asked me to do something as a writer: to write strong girls in my books in the future. She said she wished she had read more about strong women when she was growing up. It is a promise I made and will keep in mind always. It is a small promise that cannot change what she suffered, but can somehow honour the courage she has shown in sharing her story in an attempt to protect others.

Another friend got in touch with me about another promise this week. Robyn Boosey has asked me to share her petition on Opening Lines, a petition that calls upon the UK government to keep their promise to help end violence against women and girls by ratifying the Istanbul Convention.

Read more of Helen Patuck’s blog on the ICchange campaign here.

Helen Patuck is a British writer, ghostwriter, photographer. Helen has had fiction shortlisted by Bloomsbury’s Writers & Artists and the BBC, and now works between the UK, Switzerland, and Lebanon as a freelance ghostwriter, writer and photographer.

@hvpatuck