Saruti

And this was another turning point for Katie because after becoming a mum, she found it even harder to understand how her own childhood had panned out the way it did.

Today, Katie Beers is determined to turn her experience into something positive.

She gives motivational speeches, works with survivors networks and advises social services and psychologists on how to support kids who have suffered abuse and neglect.

Katie, there is no doubt, she is honestly an absolutely incredible woman who is living proof that survivors can break free from the victim mould and go on to live happy, productive, fulfilling lives.

And most amazingly of all, Katie actually describes her kidnapping, and this is a quote from the book, as the best thing that ever happened to her.

I don't know how I feel about that.

Why does she say this?

She says it's because she knows that if her case hadn't made headlines in December 1992, she may never have escaped the abusive cycle she was trapped in.

Ironically, being locked up for those two weeks is what Katie credits to having freed her from a lifetime of captivity and into a whole new world.

Wow.

I think Katie is naturally a kind of person who is able to look on the positive and look at a horrible situation in front of her and be like, what can I dig out that's the positive from this and how has this bettered my life?

It's horrible.

And I think she is right.

I think she is right.

If she had never been abducted, she would have just remained living under Linda's roof, being abused by Linda and being abused by Sal probably until she was well into adulthood.

I think.

It's a fucking tragedy that she had to be abducted by another paedophile and raped for two weeks in his underground bunker before anybody paid attention to her plight and pulled her out of that and put her into this loving home where she then managed to have the life that she now has.

And she's had to build that for herself.

Nobody gave it to her.

It's not like, oh, I got abducted and then I won the lottery.