Episode With Richie Sadlier: Mia Döring

A message for listeners: today's show includes discussions of themes that some people may find distressing from the outset and throughout, including sexual violence, sexual abuse and the sex trade. When Mia Döring was sixteen years old, she was raped, a hugely traumatic experience she couldn't speak about for two years until her mental health reached a crisis point. In the aftermath of that assault, a man in his thirties began to groom and sexually abuse Mia. Her abuser would pay her each time he saw her, making the situation even more psychologically complex for an already vulnerable, traumatised teenage girl. By her own description, Mia began to equate the money with her own self-worth, and the idea of her value as a human being tied to these payments led her to enter the sex trade as a college student. Now a psychotherapist specialising in sexual trauma, she speaks to Richie about making the decision to talk publicly about her experiences, how the people running the industry in Ireland and the punters propping it up tried to intimidate her as she campaigned for the purchase of sex to be made illegal, and the road to recovering from trauma. Episode is a Second Captains production. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.