Jason Blyth: The boy who had to advocate for himself at nine years old

So at any one moment in time over a 13 or 14 year period, someone could have come in and helped you.

And yet no one did.

Yep.

So there was multiple different reports from different clinicians that had all the power in the world to protect me.

And one of my big bones of contention with the psych field is the treating of symptoms rather than a root cause.

So one psychiatrist, I've got my reports from when I was nine years old.

And in the reports to paint the picture for you, So in the reports, it said that my mum had admitted to hitting, strangling and scratching me and I'd turn up with injuries.

I'd told him she'd also stabbed me.

We did a lot of play therapy and his reports around my play therapy were that it was all about losing.

So I would bury toys, dig them up, chop them up, cut them up, hurt them.

And I'd laugh when we spoke about injuries.

I said that pain was funny.

And it said in my report that I had genuine fear for being around my mom and I begged to be taken away.

And I had this one session in the reports.

I yelled at this psychiatrist and I was like, why do I have to come to these appointments when I'm the one that's being abused? Shouldn't the person who's abusing me be coming instead of me? And imagine you're a psychiatrist trained to look at children At what point do you look at this and go, this is probably a dangerous situation.

We should probably take him out.

Nothing happened with that.

And that was just one person.

Others like this as well.

And so eventually, by 11, I shut my mouth because I knew that help wasn't coming.

And imagine trying to reconcile that in an 11-year-old's mind.

Hmm.

grave injustice would be how I would be feeling.

For sure.

Yeah, I mean, you believe that, you believe, like I said, this hero is out there, that the system is there to protect you.