Why Russians are fighting against Russia: ‘Putin’s ruined my country’

Working as an agent for Ukraine and attacking Russia’s railways was pretty easy, says Lazzy – a Russian fighting against his own country.

“It’s not that complicated. Anyone in Russia can freely buy gasoline – for now, while some refineries still work – and set the railway on fire,” he explains.

“Of course, you need to prepare the exit routes. To plan the operation, so to speak. You can’t just go for a walk and decide to do it. First, recon, then action. But in fact, anyone can do it.”

The saboteur burned “several” railway-switching and electrical systems in arson attacks in Russia’s Volga region.

The truth, though, is that it was dangerous and ate away at his nervous system. Which is why he walked across Russia’s border and joined Ukraine’s army to fight against Vladimir Putin.

For the last year, he has been a frontline soldier battling in the shattered rubble of what is now known as the “dead zone”, because it’s so thinly populated by soldiers from both sides, all hiding from enemy drones – with occasional sneak attacks in person.

“I think it’s easier for me here. Because in Russia, I constantly felt fear for my life,” he says. “Here in Ukraine, FSB and GRU [secret service] networks are not so strong. In Russia, it’s much more dangerous. Also, [in Russia] there are many people who support the regime. Say the wrong word and they will rat on you.”

Lazzy chose to fight Putin’s regime because of what he saw as cronyism, corruption and the destruction of democracy: “Russia must have a future.”

As he talks, his face is hidden and he’s known only by his military callsign. The Independent met him just a short drive from the front lines where he’s fighting in Ukraine’s south.

“Here, in Ukraine, I can defend myself with weapons. Yes, it’s scary on the positions. They want to kill you. But it’s clear: either you or them.”

He is part of Ukraine’s Freedom of Russia Legion, which operates under the control of Kyiv’s military intelligence services like other foreign volunteer units. The legion claims to field several hundred men. They are all Russians. In Moscow they would be executed as traitors.

In Ukraine, they have fought in Sumy province, lost heavily in the bitter battle for Bakhmut, and say they have been involved in driving back recent Russian assaults on the front line of the southern battlefields.

Ukraine has stepped up its campaign both inside occupied territory and in Russia itself. In its most spectacular strikes, Ukraine managed to disable Russian bombers in the covert Operation Spiderweb, involving multiple targets and agents on the ground.

Russian refineries and power stations are regularly attacked by Ukraine’s new long-range drones.

But the Freedom of Russia Legion has eyes on defending Ukraine locally. And then fighting in Russia to topple Putin altogether. The latter would be welcomed by Kyiv but is not a stated aim.

Ceasar, a veteran Russian fighter in Ukraine’s army, began his opposition against Putin with what he calls “terrorist attacks”. For at least the last three-and-a-half years he has been in Ukraine’s army. He is driven by religious fervour and monarchist dreams of the return of a tsar to Russia.

Originally from Sochi, he says he does not worry about killing fellow Russians.

“I do not feel bad for killing my own citizens, because they’re doing very bad things here and I saw how they killed civilians, how they raped, how they robbed and they want to destroy Ukraine. Putin has ruined not only Ukraine, he’s ruined also my country,” says Ceasar.

He is armed, like Lazzy, with a modern M16-type rifle, originally an American design. It is rapidly replacing the AK-47 in Ukraine’s armoury.

Ceasar describes the reality on the front lines of a war he has chosen to join.

“There’s not a lot of military personnel at the front like it was two or three years ago. We are all dispersed. We are now about two or three men, at most, sitting in a bunker. Because if we will put there, a dozen men, they will be killed,” he says.

“It’s very dangerous to move in and move out. It’s the most dangerous part of the operation.”

Soldiers are forced to spend weeks, sometimes months, in foxholes and bunkers, trying to survive constant artillery and drone attacks.

Referring to Lazzy, he continues: “On the last operation he was about 45 days on the position. I was about three weeks. It’s really hard.

“Every day, every time you dig in, dig in, dig in and again, dig in.”

Over the last few weeks, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky has been touring the West seeking long-range missiles and air-defence systems.

Putin has stepped up attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure, focusing on energy and transport systems ahead of the winter freeze.

Russian troops have also advanced in small bounds at huge cost east of Kharkiv, and already committed murder in Pokrovsk against local civilians left behind by Ukrainian withdrawal. But drone warfare has kept the Russians back.

Ukraine’s problem is that drones cannot fly in high winds, rain, fog or when it is snowing. Putin’s forces are likely to exploit bad winter weather and attempt to break through Ukrainian lines when drones are grounded.

That is when Lazzy and Ceasar will face their toughest test.

Eze scores against old club Palace as Arsenal extend lead

Eberechi Eze scored the winner against his former club as Arsenal extended their lead at the top of the Premier League table to four points.

The summer signing scored a sublime volley from a recycled Declan Rice free-kick shortly before half-time to put the Gunners in front against Crystal Palace.

Despite an end-to-end second half Mikel Arteta’s men clung on to take all three points at the Emirates, while their day was further improved by title rivals Manchester City dropping points in a 1-0 loss to Aston Villa the day after reigning champions Liverpool slumped to a fourth straight league defeat, against Brentford.

Oliver Glasner’s side had chances to spoil the league leaders’ party but could not take them and remain ninth in the top flight.

Follow live updates here:

Bellingham puts Madrid ahead in frantic start to El Clasico

Real Madrid could extend their lead at the top of LaLiga as they welcome fierce rivals Barcelona in what may prove a crucial El Clasico come the end of the season.

Los Blancos have emerged as the early frontrunners for the title, with league top scorer Kylian Mbappe having already hit 10 goals to power his side to eight wins from nine.

Barcelona, meanwhile, come into the game in the midst of an injury crisis, with Raphinha now joining the likes of Dani Olmo, Robert Lewandowski and Gavi on the treatment table.

Xabi Alonso’s side will surely see Sunday’s matchup as the perfect opportunity for Real Madrid to break their losing streak against the Blaugrana, having not produced any sort of result in El Clasico in their previous four meetings.

Follow live updates from Real Madrid v Barcelona here:

At least two arrested over Louvre museum diamond heist

A number of people have been arrested over the theft of jewels from the Louvre, the Paris prosecutor has said.

The priceless crown jewels were taken from the museum last Sunday, when four thieves wielding power tools broke into the building in broad daylight. The heist is reported to have occurred at 9.30am local time and lasted several minutes.

Two suspects, from Seine-Saint-Denis, a department of the northern Paris metropolis, were arrested on Saturday evening, according to Le Parisien.

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau did not confirm the number of arrests. Her office said one of those arrested had been about to leave the country from Charles de Gaulle airport. A source close to the investigation told BFMTV he was heading for Algeria. Another person was arrested in Seine-Saint-Denis, according to French media.

A group of four thieves entered the Galerie d’Apollon, which holds the remains of the French crown jewels, and made away with nine pieces of jewellery, using a scooter to escape.

Interior minister Laurent Nuñez described the incident as a “major robbery” involving “jewels that have genuine heritage value and are, in fact, priceless”.

The culture ministry confirmed the stolen items included a tiara, necklace and a single earring from a set that had belonged to Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense; an emerald necklace and a pair of emerald earrings from the Empress Marie Louise set; a brooch known as the “reliquary brooch”; and a tiara and large corsage bow brooch belonging to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.

According to the museum’s website, the tiara from the set belonging to the two queens is “composed of five articulated elements, each topped with a large sapphire. In total [there are] 24 sapphires, 10 of which [are] very small, and 1,083 diamonds.”

The Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense sapphire set belonged to King Louis Philippe’s wife, while the Empress Marie Louise emerald set was a gift to Napoleon’s second wife.

The Empress Eugénie tiara, corsage brooch, and “reliquary brooch” were made in the 1850s. The brooch alone contains 2,438 diamonds.

The culture minister, Rachida Dati, said the robbery lasted less than four minutes. She said footage of the operation revealed that the thieves “don’t target people, they enter calmly in four minutes, smash display cases, take their loot and leave”.

“No violence, very professional,” she was quoted as saying by TF1.

The Louvre, which draws tens of thousands of visitors daily, was closed last Sunday for “exceptional reasons”.

Inside looming NHS winter crisis as hospitals face ‘armageddon’

As hospital beds fill up, seriously sick patients are sent to makeshift wards – cupboards, offices and corridors – to be treated by a doctor. Others are left languishing in waiting rooms, sometimes for days on end. In one particularly hard-hit hospital, a Costa Coffee cafe is turned into an emergency ward as medics struggle to cope with rising demand.

It’s only October, yet the picture across NHS wards up and down the country is one of concern, with medics telling The Independent they fear a winter crisis on a scale only seen at the height of the pandemic. One A&E consultant warns the health service is facing something akin to “armageddon”.

Every year, the NHS is under huge pressure at winter – a result of longstanding problems, including under-funding and an ageing population. But hospitals are already battling an “astonishing” number of flu and Covid patients this year, in part due to a “hugely concerning” early flu season, alongside a surge in A&E demand and staffing cuts.

On Tuesday, health secretary Wes Streeting admitted the NHS faces a “challenging” winter but insisted it was “already running hot” ahead of the season. But top medics have told The Independent that the government has failed to adequately plan for a potentially devastating few months.

Dr Vicky Price, president of the Society of Acute Medicine, told The Independent: “This winter, I’m more scared than I’ve ever been. We are in a state of dread going into these winter months.”

The concerns come off the back of a “bad” summer, which crippled wards and emergency departments, and has set the NHS up for an even worse few months ahead – even before a planned five-day strike in November, announced by the doctors’ union this week.

Analysis of NHS data by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, shared with The Independent, shows that from June to September, 500,951 patients had an A&E stay of more than 12 hours from their time of arrival in England. This is more than the entire winter period in 2021-22, during which the UK experienced one of the worst Covid waves.

Dr Price warned that patients were regularly held in corridors during the busy summer months, while hospitals across the country were put in OPEL 4. Previously called black alerts, they are the highest alert level within a hospital, meaning the trust is “unable to deliver comprehensive care” and patient safety may be compromised.

This situation will only worsen as flu cases soar, she said, with hospitals already out of corridor space and forced to treat patients in waiting rooms.

“There’s a real worry here,” said Dr Price. “What we’re hearing is that patients are in corridors. But when you don’t have space in corridors, we’re increasingly seeing patients languishing in waiting rooms [while being treated]. So then you have patients who need to be in a bed [who aren’t] for really long periods of time – as in days – receiving intravenous treatments, then being sent back out to wait in the waiting room.”

Another senior emergency care consultant, working in the North West, told The Independent their hospital was already running out of corridor space. “I worked the weekend, and I was astonished at how many flu patients we had in,” they said.

Their hospital is also facing soaring numbers of Covid patients, as well as new cases of measles in A&E – all while staff are off sick with a raft of seasonal illnesses.

Figures published by the UK Health Security Agency show cases of Covid significantly rose in September, hitting 3,206 in the week up to 16 October. Meanwhile, flu cases are higher in October 2025 than they have been for the last three years.

Duncan Burton, chief nursing officer for England, said it was “hugely concerning” that flu – which he warned can “spread like wildfire” – had hit earlier this year, with a worrying increase among children.

As a result, NHS trusts are urging staff and patients to get their flu jabs, with data from Australia showing it is struggling with the second-worst flu season for a decade, prompting fears for the UK.

The A&E consultant told The Independent that their emergency department is so packed it’s “like a massive game of chess.”

“We’re not just running out of cubicles; we’re running out of corridors. And we‘ve run out of trollies,” they said.

“At any given time in my department, we will have more than 50 patients waiting for beds in the hospital as a minimum, and they will wait frequently over 48 hours for a hospital bed. What that means is every cubicle is permanently full and essentially blocked with people that are waiting to be admitted into the hospital.

“It feels like [December and January] is going to be armageddon, to be honest. We are already full.”

Last month, it emerged that patients were left to be treated in a Costa Coffee after an overwhelmed hospital in Kent – the William Harvey Hospital – was forced to turn the cafe into a makeshift ward.

A recent survey by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) suggests corridor care “has sadly become an everyday reality” for medics, with three in five doctors caring for patients in temporary spaces during this summer.

Dr Price said staff were now being asked to give patients a shorter stint of IV medication so they can send them back out into the waiting room while they’re waiting for treatment to finish.

She added that she was “very concerned” about the number of makeshift wards that have “popped up under various spaces under different names, which are just a way of getting people ‘off the clock’.”

“Off the clock” is a colloquial term for when a hospital can stop measuring the time a patient is waiting for hospital admission, thereby effectively fudging the figures.

Clinicians have also warned that doctors’ shifts are being cut due to the “financial squeeze” on the NHS, warning this will be a “disaster” for hospitals who will not have enough staff to cope with pressures.

The same A&E medic told The Independent that cost-cutting within their trust has meant cuts to doctors’ shifts within the emergency department. Doctors across the country have also reported “recruitment freezes” and shifts being cut within emergency departments.

Dr Helen Neary, the British Medical Association consultants committee co-chair, told The Independent: “We’ve got an absurd situation, not just in emergency departments, but across the board, where it’s clear more doctors are needed to treat a rising number of patients, but we’re hearing of trusts being told they cannot spend any more money on staffing.

“This can mean recruitment freezes, reduced overtime on offer, or even worse: job cuts. In the short-term, as we approach winter, this is obviously disastrous.”

Meanwhile, experts have hit out at the government’s planning ahead of winter, with particular concerns about Christmas, during which NHS services often drop to a minimum.

Dr Ian Higginson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said the government and NHS leadership had failed to adequately plan for this winter, adding: “It’s too late now, this winter, to do much – they’ve missed the boat.

“Summer is now bad and winter is worse. There’s been a frustration at the lack of appreciation of this at government levels. I’m increasingly frustrated over the lack of meaningful action by those who have the power to make decisions that can make a difference.”

A care home leader also claimed NHS executives are “refusing to engage” and buy up space in homes to discharge patients into, which could help free up beds in hospitals and avoid the use of corridors.

Chief executive for Care England, Martin Green, told The Independent that last year was a “complete and utter self-inflicted disaster for the NHS” as it did not buy enough care home capacity ahead of winter.

The number of care home beds commissioned by the NHS ahead of winter went from thousands in previous years to just a handful.

He warned that this year the healthcare system faced making the same mistake.

“Every year the NHS finds itself in a winter crisis and despite the fact that they have had extra money, they are refusing to engage properly with social care,” he said.

“Social care could deliver a long-term and sustainable discharge pathway, as long as the NHS was prepared to pay for it and use the huge amount of extra money they’ve been given by the government to avoid winter pressures and bed blocking.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “This government inherited an NHS in critical condition, and it is shocking that patients are being treated in corridors.”

The spokesperson added: “To increase capacity, we are building 40 new same-day emergency care centres, 15 mental health crisis centres, and buying 500 new ambulances across the country – backed by an extra £450m.”

The Independent has asked the Department of Health and Social Care when these plans would be completed but has yet to receive a reply.

The department said that its winter planning began in July and that it set out clear timelines for NHS trusts to develop “robust plans”. It added: “Last month the NHS launched its winter vaccine programme to ensure vulnerable people are protected from Covid and flu, and we encourage all eligible patients to protect themselves, their families, and the NHS.”

The spokesperson said the department had also written to local councils and adult social care services and was implementing “war game” exercises for the NHS.

Enriching escapes: find your perfect luxury break

Britain faces cold snap after weekend snow warning

The UK is set for more cold weather and a sprinkling of snow after cold Arctic air brought wintry conditions over the weekend.

Temperatures have dipped into single digits thanks to a “cold northerly airflow this weekend” after Saturday and Sunday were predicted to be the “coldest pair of days so far this season”.

While Sunday morning got off to a chilly yet sunny start across central and eastern parts of the UK, clouds over Northern Ireland and Scotland are set to bring outbreaks of rain moving southeastward throughout the day, with some colder air moving across Scottish mountains, with the chance of a little snow.

Greg Dewhurst, a Met Office meteorologist, said: “We’ve had a cold northerly airflow across us so far this weekend, but all eyes to the northwest as this next weather system brings cloud and rain in from the northwest and sweeps it southeast across the country over the next 24 hours.

“It remains blustery into the beginning of next week, but signs of a bit more Atlantic weather coming in, allowing temperatures to rise a little further as the week goes on.

He continued: “But this morning a chilly start, particularly where we’ve got the sunny skies across central and eastern parts, but it quickly clouds over across Northern Ireland and Scotland, with outbreaks of rain moving in here and pushing slowly southeastward through the day.

“The rain could bump into some colder air across the Scottish mountains to give a little snow here, not unusual for the time of year, and the rain by the afternoon reaching the higher ground of Wales and the southwest of England, the southeast of England, generally staying cloudy, but perhaps thick enough by the end of the afternoon for some light and patchy rain developing here.

Temperatures are set to remain similar to Saturday’s, which ranged from eight to 12C, with cloud and wind coming in from the northwest as it gets colder into the evening.

The latest forecast comes after Storm Benjamin battered the UK this week with heavy downpours and winds over 70mph. Four yellow weather warnings were issued by the Met Office for Thursday, while over 40 flood alerts were in place in the morning.

Today:

A mainly dry, chilly but bright start with a few showers in the west. However cloud and rain will gradually move in from the northwest, pushing into eastern areas by the afternoon. Feeling cold once again and staying breezy.

Outbreaks of rain clearing followed by clear spells and scattered showers, with further bands of rain in the south. Milder than previous nights, but still windy and cold in Scotland.

Monday:

Sunny spells and a scattering of showers to start. These easing with sunny spells through the afternoon, but cloud increasing in the west with rain arriving by the evening. Breezy.

Tuesday to Thursday:

Remaining changeable with some further rain or showers at times, especially in the northwest. Always driest and brightest towards the southeast. Temperatures recovering to near average for most.

Three years since child abuse inquiry, nothing has changed

Russell Specterman broke down in tears and hung up the phone when his sister called to tell him that there was going to be an independent inquiry into child sex abuse.

“I just broke down,” he tells The Independent. “I knew the pain and trauma that it would bring up in me.”

Mr Specterman, 59, had grown up in the care of Lambeth, the council which became a core case study in the Independent Inquiry (IICSA). Findings would later detail the council’s institutional failings as it “retained in its employment adults who posed a risk to children” and “failed to investigate its employees when they were suspected of child sexual abuse”.

It’s been more than a decade since IICSA was first announced after posthumous investigations into the Jimmy Savile scandal revealed widespread child abuse.

It cost a staggering £186.6 million and more than 7,000 survivors were involved in the inquiry over the course of the seven years it ran. Three different panel chairs were forced to resign before Professor Alexis Jay, already a panel member, took up the mantle in August 2016.

Panel members were paid a day rate of £565 for their participation in the inquiry, according to financial reports. Dame Lowell Goddard, chair panel before Professor Jay, was paid an annual salary of £355,000 for the financial year 2015-2016.

Monday was the third anniversary of when IICSA’s findings were published in a damning final report, shedding light on the institutional nature of child sex abuse in the country. The report was unhelpfully overshadowed at the time by the resignation of Liz Truss, 44 days after her premiership began, but 20 key recommendations were made in order to protect children.

Three years on, none of the recommendations have been fully implemented and campaigners and survivors remain dissatisfied with the inertia. A further review by Baroness Louise Casey this year urged the government to act on the recommendations.

Mr Specterman didn’t give live evidence, but he was a core participant and submitted a statement, something he found hard to do.

“I struggled to put pen to paper at the best of times, but it was something that needed to be done,” he says. “I wanted to help the kids.”

Years later, Mr Specterman has grown frustrated as nothing has been done. He feels there has been “no justice” and expressed concern that a lot of people involved got “fortunes out of it”.

Looking back on the inquiry, Professor Jay tells The Independent that she recognised the limitations of the sort of justice it might bring.

“A lot of people tend to think that they will gain justice from it, but if you take justice to mean criminal investigation and prosecution, a public inquiry can’t do that,” she says. “It can accurately describe what happened, and it can make recommendations for improvement in the future.”

“I was never in any doubts about the limitations of a public inquiry, but people so desperately wanted to have a public inquiry,” she adds. “I was always clear about it, but you tend to think this is not a court of law, it’s a quasi-judicial process.”

For Professor Julie MacFarlane, the fact that the recommendations have not been implemented is just further proof that there’s no political will for change.

By the time the inquiry was in action, Prof MacFarlane, now 67, had moved to Canada and already come forward as a survivor of child sex abuse from the Anglican Church in Chichester. As a prestigious legal academic, she had sued the Church in 2015, the same year that the inquiry began, and the police went on to successfully prosecute the church minister who sexually assaulted her over the period of 15 months when she was a teenager.

Already accustomed to speaking about her experience, she travelled from Canada to the United Kingdom in 2018, especially to give her testimony for the inquiry.

“By then I’d had a certain amount of practice,” she says. “I wasn’t particularly afraid of telling that story; I was ready to tell it. It seemed important to tell it, especially when I realised that there was going to be a focus on Chichester and I was going to find out all of this stuff that I had no idea… It made sense that he [the minister] was doing this in a community where there was an incredible amount of tolerance for this behaviour.”

The inquiry found that over 50 years, 20 individuals connected to Chichester Diocese were convicted or pleaded guilty to sexual offending against children. The diocese’s “neglect of the physical and spiritual well‐being of children and young people was in conflict with the Church’s mission of love and care”, according to the report.

“I felt like it was my responsibility. It would be more straightforward for me to do the actual testifying than it might be for somebody doing it for the first time or someone who was unfamiliar with doing that kind of presentation,” she adds. “This could be helpful for other people to do this.”

Prof Macfarlane remembers sitting in front of the panel and feeling “less than hopeful for what would come out of it” when she was questioned.

“I wanted them to ask me more questions, and sometimes what I tried to do in my answers was go further than they necessarily asked in their question,” she recalls. “What I felt that they didn’t necessarily quite get is… the vulnerability of people, especially younger people… to the fact that the power of the church is a very hierarchical institution and if you’re a believer, then you believe this person is next to god in your life.

“This was an accident waiting to happen when you put somebody who has God given authority in a situation in which there are younger people.”

Prof Macfarlane doesn’t think the key recommendations go far enough. One core change that could help victims is taking the ability to investigate allegations of abuse out of the church’s brief.

“What the recommendations do is they describe better processes, more training etc,” she explains, adding that one change, to broaden the category of person of trust to include clergy in the Sexual Offences Act would take 15 minutes.

“Given how simple that is, and sometimes legislation is more complicated than that, [it’s clear] that there’s not a lot of real political will to do anything about this.”

With an estimated 500,000 children sexually abused every year, with fewer than one in five ever disclosing their abuse, campaign group ACT on IICSA has continued to highlight how the government hasn’t acted on what it calls a “clear blueprint for change”.

Professor Jay has warned that if the final 20 recommendations are not committed to and fully implemented within a timescale, the future for children is incredibly bleak.

“In 10 years’ time, people will be there saying the same things, and children will still be being sexually abused in the most appalling ways,” she says: “I am concerned about the growth internationally, and locally, of the use of the internet and where that takes online abuse. And it is serious, the speed with which that is changing and getting worse.”

Lucy Duckworth, policy lead for the Survivor’s Trust, said: “The importance of Baroness Louise Casey’s report was that IICSA would be done and it’s really clear all the way throughout.

“We absolutely need to be looking at the individual cases of child sexual abuse like grooming gangs, like abuse in boarding schools, like in cover-up of social workers’ institutions.

“There’s so many different places that it happens and each one comes with its own complexities and nuances and certainly cover-ups.

“But for the moment, our main point is that all child sexual abuse needs to stop and we’re not at a place really where we’re even understanding how widespread this is. And that’s what IICSA was for.”

Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said: “Baroness Casey’s report revealed the unimaginable horrors that some of the most vulnerable people in this country went through, and how victims and survivors were failed. This will remain one of the darkest moments in our country’s history.

“Earlier this year, I set out how we are taking action on the recommendations Alexis Jay made in her inquiry to root out failure wherever it occurs. This includes creating a mandatory duty to report child sexual abuse, establishing a new Child Protection Authority for England that will make our children’s safety a priority, and making it easier for victims and survivors to pursue claims in the civil courts.

“But there is more to be done, which is why we are launching a new statutory inquiry into grooming gangs to direct and oversee local investigations. In parallel, policing has set up a new national operation, overseen by the National Crime Agency, which has already flagged more than 1,200 closed cases for review. This will open the door for further convictions, and there will be no hiding place for those who abused the most vulnerable.”

If you are a child and you need help because something has happened to you, you can call Childline free of charge on 0800 1111. You can also call the NSPCC if you are an adult and you are worried about a child, on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adults on 0808 801 0331