“I don’t like his game.”
No child should have to tell it perfectly to be protected.
Children tell with the words they have. This project helps adults listen for what a child means without leading them, protect them properly, and connect survivors to credible support and lawful paths to accountability.
What brings you here?
A child may be telling the truth without having adult words for the truth.
A young child describing sexual abuse has to reach for whatever vocabulary they already own — words for pain, games, secrets, bedtime, bodies, being bad, or not wanting to go somewhere any more. They do not have the words for coercion, for anatomy, or for crime.
The adult mistake is to judge a child's sentence as though it were testimony from an adult who already understands all of those things — and to relax when it does not hold up.
The question to hold on to
What if the child is telling you exactly as well as the child is capable of telling?
Listening for meaning is not filling in meaning. Do not supply acts, people, places or explanations the child has not given you. That is not your job, and doing it can harm both the child and any investigation.
The TELL Protocol
Four steps, short enough to remember while your heart is pounding. It is a first-response framework for the adult who happens to be standing there. It is not a forensic interview protocol, and it never will be.
Take it seriously
Do not dismiss concerning communication because the wording is confusing, partial or hard to follow.
Encourage their own words
Use minimal, open invitations. Do not supply names, acts, places or explanations the child has not given you.
Listen without leading
Stay calm. Avoid repeated or suggestive questioning. Your job is not to establish what happened.
Link to protection
Follow the safeguarding and reporting duties that apply where you live, and connect the child to qualified help.
Status: expert review pending. This framework has not yet been reviewed by child-protection and forensic-interview specialists. We say so here rather than let you assume otherwise.
No Perfect Words
A public campaign built on one repeated line: children tell with the words they have. It pairs an ordinary, ambiguous sentence with a single instruction — listen, don't interrogate, protect.
“He said it’s our secret.”
Listen. Don’t interrogate. Protect.
“My tummy hurts at bedtime.”
Listen. Don’t interrogate. Protect.
“I don’t want to go any more.”
Listen. Don’t interrogate. Protect.
The words shown here are hypothetical composites written for teaching. They are not quotations from a real child, and none of them is evidence of anything. No single phrase or behaviour proves sexual abuse. Concerning communication should prompt calm attention, protection and appropriate professional guidance — not amateur conclusions.
You do not have to tell us what happened.
Most services ask a survivor to describe the abuse before they will help. We start somewhere else: with what would actually be useful to you right now. No account, no form, no story, no credibility scoring.
Seven programmes, and honest labels on all of them
Most of this organisation does not exist yet. Rather than describe plans in the present tense, every programme carries its real status.
In development
No Perfect Words
Public-awareness campaign built on the recall line and hypothetical child language.
See it →
Expert review pending
The TELL Protocol
Four-step adult first-response framework. Drafted; awaiting specialist review.
Read it →
Planned
Survivor Justice Navigator
Choice-first guided pathways through support, reporting, rights and records.
What it will do →
Planned
Survivor Record
Private, survivor-controlled documentation. Nothing is stored until an independent security review is done.
Use the paper version →
Planned
Second Injury Index
Anonymised measurement of how institutions respond. Not an accusation database.
Methodology →
Planned
Witness Archive
Consent-driven survivor testimony. Deliberately last: it needs mature governance before it is safe to build.
Planned
The First Tell Institute
Research, policy, professional education and convening.
Research & policy →
In development
Training
Scenario-based learning for schools, sport, faith communities and health services.
Pilot with us →
Live
Resource directory
A small, checked set of services. Each record shows the date it was last verified.
Browse →
Founded by a survivor, on one specific failure.
Not the failure of a child to explain themselves. The failure of the adults around that child to treat imperfect words as worth taking seriously.
Help build it
This project is in organisational development. The most useful things you can give it right now are expertise, an institutional pilot, and money — roughly in that order.
The First Tell Project is not currently a registered charity and does not issue charitable tax receipts. Contributions support development of our public education, survivor-navigation, research and safeguarding work. Please do not contribute if you require an official donation receipt.