SHAME | EUROPEAN STORIES
A long-term documentary photography project about survivors of childhood sexual abuse and the consequences that abuse continues to produce throughout adult life. Developed across Europe, the project combines intimate portraits and personal testimonies to examine not only individual trauma, but also the silence, institutional failures and social mechanisms that allow abuse to remain hidden.
Rather than defining participants through what was done to them, the project presents them as people who have reclaimed control over their image and their story. Together, their experiences form a wider European account of survival, recognition and the struggle for justice.
EUROPE | 2022 - ONGOING | SOCIETY, PORTRAITURE, HUMAN RIGHTS
Shame – European Stories is a long-term documentary project. Through portraits, video interviews and first-person testimonies, it documents the lives of nearly 100 survivors of childhood abuse from 20 European countries.
The project addresses sexual, physical and psychological abuse committed within families, religious communities, schools, care institutions and other environments entrusted with the protection of children. It also encompasses forced separation from families, coercive adoption, exploitation and institutional neglect. Although the survivors come from different countries and social backgrounds, their testimonies expose a recurring European pattern: abuse taking place within relationships of trust, followed by silence, disbelief, institutional concealment and, in many cases, the impossibility of obtaining justice once the abuse is disclosed.
The scale of the phenomenon remains difficult to measure because a substantial proportion of cases is never reported. The World Health Organization estimates that 18 million children in its European Region have experienced sexual abuse. According to the Council of Europe, approximately one child in five in Europe is affected by some form of sexual violence, and in 70–85 per cent of known cases the perpetrator is someone the child knows and trusts. Disclosure may take years or decades, while statutes of limitation, insufficient support systems and fragmented national legislation continue to restrict survivors’ access to recognition and redress.
Padovani photographed and interviewed the participants through a survivor-centred process designed to give them control over how their identity and experience are represented. The images reject the conventional visual language of victimhood: the participants are not reconstructed through the abuse they endured, but portrayed in the present, as individuals living with its consequences and reclaiming ownership of their stories. Their testimonies describe not only what happened during childhood, but the life that followed—trauma, isolation, disrupted relationships, economic vulnerability and the long struggle to be believed.
The title refers to the displacement of shame that frequently follows abuse. The person responsible often remains protected by authority, family loyalty or institutional reputation, while the child carries secrecy and self-blame into adult life. By appearing before the camera and speaking in their own names, the survivors reverse this mechanism: shame is returned to perpetrators and to the systems that ignored, concealed or failed to prevent the abuse.
Created within the European Justice Initiative launched by the Guido Fluri Foundation, Shame – European Stories developed into a travelling exhibition, a multilingual book and a wider public-awareness and advocacy campaign. Since its first presentation during the 2022 Venice Biennale, the exhibition has travelled to more than 15 European cities and has been hosted at the Council of Europe headquarters in Strasbourg. It received the patronage of the Council of Europe and has been shown in public institutions, museums, cultural venues and civic spaces across the continent.
The project accompanied a broader campaign calling for European states to investigate historical abuse, formally recognise survivors, provide access to reparation and strengthen child-protection legislation. In January 2024, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted Resolution 2533, urging member states to conduct independent investigations into abuse committed in public, private and religious institutions, acknowledge the harm suffered, provide redress and ensure that such crimes are not erased by institutional silence or inadequate legal frameworks.
Shame – European Stories is therefore more than a collection of individual testimonies. It is a collective portrait of a European failure and of the people who have survived it. At a moment when European institutions are reconsidering legislation, statutes of limitation, historical accountability and reparations, the project offers journalists direct access to survivors’ experiences and a visual framework through which to examine how Europe confronts, or continues to avoid, the consequences of childhood abuse.
