'He was the helpless one now.'

She sits at the table, head bowed, hands clasped around a cup of coffee, seeking warmth.

Her slender body quivers, though the room is warm. She's 18, but looks more like 16.

Raising her head, she says, "I didn't come to you for attention or sympathy."

She continues, "I want to let other little girls and boys out there know that as hard as it is when you are raped or molested, you can step up and say: ‘This is what happened to me and I want to lay charges'."

"Who knows, maybe my story will inspire somebody else to step up."

In halting words that grow stronger as she proceeds, she tells her story. Her mother sits across the table, silent except when her daughter turns to her for help in the telling.

Her courage in coming to terms with repeated sexual abuse that spanned much of her childhood and adolescence is remarkable. Understandably, she wants to ­preserve what's left of her ­privacy, so we'll leave her real name out of this and just call her Lucy.

Born into a large family, she spent her first year in an outpost camp. Back in Iqaluit, her parents separated when she was three, leaving her unsure of herself, and with a sense that she was different.

Then, at seven, came the first sexual assault, when Lucy was walking home from school in the January darkness.

A man whose face she never saw "took me behind a house and proceeded to rape me," she tries to say matter-of-factly But her eyes grow moist, and she has to stop for a moment, a catch in her throat.

It won't be the last time in telling her story that there are tears.

Before the rape, she says, "I could tell my mom everything." Afterwards, she says, "I was scared. I didn't tell anyone. I began pushing people away. I didn't open up to anybody, especially my mom."

She even began to feel angry with God. "I thought if there was a God, none of that would have happened to me."

What is certain is that there were, in her life, men with the most evil intentions.

For there were other sexual assaults, on several occasions after that first one.

And then, when she was 12, a member of her extended family assaulted her, right in her own family kitchen.

She kept it all hidden, especially from her mom, whom she was afraid "would freak out." But the emotional toll was leading Lucy to begin hurting herself.

"Why am I even living?" she wondered. "I'd rather be dead than go through this misery."

One day, still only 12, she thought, "I can't do this anymore. I took a knife and cut myself – right here," she says, pulling up a sleeve to reveal her badly scarred arm.

The worst scars came later, when she started cutting herself again at 16, and this time she didn't even try to hide it from her mother.

"I wasn't happy with what I saw in the mirror," she says. "I just wanted to feel something else besides the pain I was feeling. That's why I did it."

Her anger took other forms. She punched holes in the walls of the family home. Some of them are still visible today.

A few times her mother had to call the police. "It was for her own safety," her mother says. Lucy "understands that now. She was taking knives, and she was so destructive. I thought she would hurt herself."

The police took her to the hospital where she was put on suicide watch. "I would freak out every day," she recalls. "If I got too wild, they would put me to sleep."

It became a cycle, and her mother took Lucy to the hospital more than once. "Young kids don't act out because they want to," her mother says. "They act out because they are asking for help."

Finally a boyfriend who "showed me something I thought only happy people could have," got through to Lucy. He convinced her to try the counselling that both her mother and the hospital had been urging on her.

The counselling went well for a while, but then the mood swings would cycle back and she would break appointments.

The counsellor, her mother and her friends were by now suggesting Lucy tell the police about the sexual assault by her family member. Although she kept resisting, "I knew when she was ready, she would go ahead," her mother says, "so I didn't really push."

About two years ago, she was ready, and she and a cousin who had also been molested by the same man went to the police together, and began a gruelling two-year process that finally brought her face-to-face with her assailant in court late last year.

When her court date finally arrived, she thought: "Yeah, I want him to see me. I'm still here and still standing, and I'm as close as I can ever be with my family. I want him to know that even though he did that to me, I'm not going to back down. I want him to see who I've become today."

And when their eyes met in the courtroom, for the first time since the assault more than six years earlier, she recalls, "it was like this time he was the little one. I wasn't the helpless little girl I once was. He was the helpless one now."

But then she heard the judge reveal that her assailant had once been abused by Ed Horne, a former teacher who pleaded guilty to sex offences committed between 1973 and 1982 in Sanikiluaq, Cape Dorset and Iqaluit.

"He must have felt the same way I felt," Lucy says. She actually felt sorry for her assailant, something she'd believed could never happen.

But at the same time, she will never excuse what he did. "I would never wish what happened to me on my worst enemy. It makes you feel worthless."

Her next thought was, "I need to break the cycle."

In the end, because there was no physical evidence so long after the assault, the convicted relative got five months of jail time, and two years probation.

At first, she was "mad at the whole world for being as screwed up as it is. He gets a slap on the hand and I get a lifetime of this feeling of being alone in the world. I started hating the world again."

But then she realized how much better she felt that at least she'd been heard. And her assailant would have to take mandatory counselling, and his name would go on the national sex-offender registry.

"The waiting process is long, I'm not going to lie," Lucy says. "But once you get through the court case, it's like a big weight is lifted off your shoulders."

"I find myself smiling more, knowing I'm the one who stepped up."

Lucy's aim now is to learn to be happy and at peace with herself, and to live life to the fullest. "I'm trying one step at a time, one day at a time. I still have a lot of anger in me, but I know one day that will change."

"I wake up every morning and thank God for giving me such an amazing mom, and an amazing family that's behind me, who I treated like crap. I have a lot of people in my life who I have to thank; they helped me so much."

A friend has brought her to the small Baha'i community in Iqaluit, where she is rebuilding her faith. Two weeks ago, she went to the police with details of two of the other sexual assaults she suffered, launching two more investigations.

"I want to move on with my life," Lucy says. She plans to finish high school, go to nursing school, "move out of this town, make a new life for myself."

With a newfound optimism, she's even thinking of writing a book. "Look for it on the bestseller lists," she says, actually smiling now.

"In light of all this, I just realize that life is beautiful, as hard as it is."

"It's been many years, taken day by day," Lucy's mother says. "But she is on the road to recovery. She is a survivor, a very strong girl."

Don't be ashamed; get help

There is no shame in being sexually abused or assaulted. It's not your fault, no matter what the molester may ­suggest.

Getting to a health centre for medical care should be your priority. Medical staff can also help document what happened to you, aiding the police investigation, and can help arrange follow-up counselling.

The quicker you report the assault to the police, the better chance of getting the perpetrator convicted and off the street. But even years later, it's still worth reporting.

The assault itself is traumatic, but following events can be stressful and invasive too. Find support you trust, whether from friends and family, or professionals such as school counsellors, clergy or medical staff.

The Kamatsiaqtut Help Line is available seven nights a week from 7 p.m. to midnight. In Iqaluit call 979-3333. Elsewhere, 1-800-265-3333.