I'm Sally and I live in a flat, which I'm paying off, in sunny Nelson. It's a proper flat, not a modern apartment thing, with space for a garden and my dog and two cats. Now I work as a teacher aide for Chris, a super-smart 14-year-old who is wheelchair bound as a result of a birth accident.

I have moved from intermediate to secondary school with Chris. I'm his second mum and, as I'm 55, he's as close as I'll get to a son. We learn together, he's an internet whiz. At the moment I have to do a lot of the physical connect stuff but this year is DragonDictate or voice-activated software year. I think it is going to be hard for the computer to adjust to his voice as his speech is slurred so a lot of patience will be needed, and that is not always Chris's strong point. When he masters that there will be no holding him back. We are told the voice-activated software is improving all the time but I really hope this will be a success, not a 'try again in a few years' situation, because there is something very special in him waiting to be said or written without anybody's assistance. With full computer literacy I think the sky is his limit, but I'm biased - that's what second mums are allowed to be, and I know it will need hard work for him to achieve the dream.

I have a limp and people often offer me help when I'm out with Chris - but we don't need it. Up until eight years ago I had a hidden disability that I did need help to manage I am a childhood sexual abuse survivor - sort of at the bad end of that scale. My hidden disability and my differences to other people, much as I tried to act and to hide them, made people move away.

Me and ACC sort of managed my situation until I was around 45. I was a real angry person, particularly at one time of the year. I had bad nightmares etc. As a teenager and in my 20s there were times of self abuse - self-mutilation, oblivion in drink and drugs, but not too much. My stubbornness got me out of that, I had enough 'something' to want more.

As I grew older I spent my time acting, the great pretender I was, covering up my driving anger and sadness as best I could. My chance of being in a relationship was about zero because, quite rightly, your partner would like your mental presence during intimacy and I couldn't offer that.

Me and ACC, we covered it, with weekly counselling and good acting I got by. I worked in supermarkets, a good job because if it's all too much and you are going to lose it you can always leave, get control of yourself and find another supermarket.

I had some close anger shaves with customers and managers though. I knew I couldn't risk having children, it would have destroyed me if I didn't keep them safe from myself.

It was getting worse though, I needed to have more time off each year. I had a mortgage on my wee flat. Oh, by the way, do you know if you acknowledge that you have had childhood sexual abuse and have ACC help insurance companies won't offer you insurance protection for mental illnesses. It was a blanket exclusion - no case-by-case consideration - so no looking at me and my situation. Kind of sad to think you've stuffed your mental insurance future by the time you're six. I've got mortgage protection insurance without mental health cover. It's hard because, although I've been through a number of jobs, I've never had a benefit. I've worked since I was 15.

Anyway I got lucky. My ACC counsellor and case worker realised I was not resolving anything with 'talk counselling' and I got into a trial intensive rehabilitation programme. One month of intensive therapy with a child therapist, a body therapist and a psychotherapist.

One month of hell, one month to recover, paid for by ACC. It worked because skilled people made a therapy programme just tailored to me, to pick me up where I was forever stuck and move me on. It was 'new woman territory', not a miracle fix-it, but new ways to live. There are still things I need to deal with, but I'm not overwhelmed by my past. When I'm angry my anger is in the present and I can manage it. I've got new ways of coping, I don't always react like a trapped six-year-old, I can see ahead. I don't have to act to fit in with people, I can find me and be me. I don't have to run away and hide during bad times, because the worst of them, like recurring nightmares, are gone for good.

"I am alive in the present not the past. There's space for lots of fun in my life. It's not a bed of roses now, but is anyone's life truly like that?"

My school and Chris's parents knew all about me when I got the teacher aide job. I had done some paid care-giving for the elderly before, and they trusted me and gave me a new start, and that has helped. But without my intensive therapy I could not be living my life like this.

I know that ACC are not offering the intensive therapy treatment at present. I hope it's not because of cost, as I know it was very expensive, but if you added up my 10 years of 'talk counselling' fees it was cheap.

I'm no longer an ACC client. I wish I was strong enough to advocate so others can have the chance I had, but it's still too close and personal. This is why I jumped at the chance to be interviewed. I just wish I was strong enough to put my name and photo behind it. I'd like to be able to stand up often and tell the world what a difference intensive therapy made, and please, please offer it to other individuals who are trapped in their abuse past and for whom 'talk counselling' does not work.