We soon realised that the best way to help abused children was to lift their confidence to the point where they felt able to ask for help without fear. Those who rang ChildLine when they were young tell me now that the experience of talking to a stranger, safely and confidentially, made them believe that somebody cared, allowed them to feel that there was hope. They had frequently been threatened into silence: even if their claims were believed, they were convinced that speaking out would mean that their mother would be killed, their father would go to prison, their siblings would be taken away.