Leila is 25 and migrated to Australia from Iran with her parents and younger sister when she was seven. Her family left because of conflict and instability in their homeland. Her parents arrived traumatised, with limited English and few supports.
Leila and her sister had to adapt quickly.
At school, they learned English while experiencing bullying and trying to navigate an unfamiliar culture. At home, they were expected to maintain the customs, values and expectations of the country they had left behind. Leila found herself caught between two worlds: expected to behave according to the traditions of her family while simultaneously trying to fit into Australian society.
As the English speaker, Leila was also required to take on adult responsibilities well beyond her age. She filled out forms, translated correspondence, accompanied her parents to appointments and advocated for them. She became, in many ways, the person who navigated the outside world for her family.
She was also expected to contribute financially. At 13, Leila began working after school in a bakery.
The grooming and abuse
Leila’s employer quickly recognised how vulnerable she was.
He was an adult who appeared to be helping her and her family at a time when they had very little support. He was familiar with Australian systems, spoke confidently and had access to resources that Leila’s parents did not. He gave Leila extra money and positioned himself as someone who cared about her and was looking out for her.
He began creating a private relationship with her and told her that what was happening between them was a secret. He blurred the boundaries between employer, trusted adult and intimate partner, gradually making Leila believe that she was in an adult relationship rather than being groomed and sexually abused by someone in a position of power.
For a 13-year-old who had already been forced into adult responsibilities, this confusion was particularly powerful. Leila had been taught to be independent, to solve problems and to manage without relying on her parents. Her employer exploited that independence.
He also introduced her to ice.
The person who appeared to offer her care, money and belonging was simultaneously exposing her to sexual abuse and substance use.
Leila did not tell her parents. She believed they would be angry with her and, given their limited English and unfamiliarity with Australian systems, she did not believe they could protect her or know what to do.
Once again, she carried something enormous alone.
A lifespan and intersectional perspective
It would be easy to look at Leila’s history and see an AOD problem beginning in adolescence.
But her story begins much earlier.
Leila experienced the disruption of migration during a formative period of childhood, took on adult responsibilities within her family, experienced bullying and social exclusion, navigated conflicting cultural expectations and then experienced sexual abuse by an adult who deliberately exploited her vulnerability.
She had already learned that she was responsible for managing difficult circumstances and protecting the adults around her.
Her employer then exploited those vulnerabilities. He offered the things Leila lacked — money, confidence, belonging, adult attention and apparent protection — while simultaneously grooming and abusing her.
Her subsequent ice use cannot be understood separately from this context. The substance was introduced to her by an adult who was abusing her and became part of a pattern of escaping feelings and experiences she had neither the safety nor the developmental capacity to process.
Now, at 25, Leila has been free from ice for two years.
For the first time, the substance that helped her suppress and survive overwhelming emotions is no longer doing that job.
The feelings are beginning to surface.
Anxiety, grief, anger, shame, memories and trauma responses that were previously numbed by substance use are becoming harder to avoid.
This is a critical point in Leila’s recovery. Without appropriate trauma support, the emergence of these feelings can increase the risk of relapse. What may look like a new mental health crisis may actually be the delayed emergence of trauma that has never been safely processed.
How Stepping Out can help
Stepping Out can provide Leila with specialist CSA-informed support alongside her AOD recovery.
Rather than viewing her history as a series of separate problems — migration, family stress, bullying, AOD use and sexual abuse — Stepping Out can help her understand how these experiences have interacted across her development.
Stepping Out can help Leila:
- understand the connection between her childhood experiences, grooming, CSA and AOD use
- recognise how parentification and forced independence affected her vulnerability to grooming
- understand that the relationship with her employer was grooming and abuse, not an adult relationship
- work through shame and self-blame associated with the abuse
- understand why she did not disclose to her parents
- develop strategies to manage the feelings emerging now that she is sober
- build emotional regulation and relapse-prevention strategies that recognise her trauma triggers
- explore her identity between cultures and the conflicting expectations she has carried
- develop healthy boundaries and relationships
- experience connection with other women who understand the impact of CSA.
Stepping Out does not replace specialist AOD treatment. It adds the missing trauma lens.
For Leila, two years clean is not the end of her recovery journey. It may be the point at which she is finally safe enough to begin addressing what she had to survive.
Her AOD use was never the whole story.
It was one part of how she survived a childhood in which she was repeatedly asked to carry far more than any child should have had to carry — and then exploited by an adult who recognised exactly how vulnerable she was.