Teen gathered evidence showing she was sexually assaulted after police didn’t believe her

Taylor Cadle sought help from police when her great-uncle and adoptive father, Henry Cadle of Lakeland, Florida, sexually abused her. Instead of handcuffing him, Cadle, then 13, was charged with lying to authorities.

“What have I done for you to punish me?” asks Cadle, now an adult, in one PBS News Hour episode that aired on Tuesday, October 29.

The special details what journalist Rachel de Leon found during the making of the Emmy Award-winningCenter for Investigative Reporting and Netflix documentary Victim/suspect: that hundreds of alleged victims across the country who report sexual assault are often arrested themselves for lying to authorities.

Cadle was adopted by Henry and his wife after spending a year and a half in foster care, De Leon reports. She stopped living with her mother when she was 7, de Leon said.

Scared and unsure of what to do, Cadle listened to her adoptive mother’s advice to plead guilty “and get it over with,” she told De Leon.

After entering her guilty plea to submitting false information to a law enforcement officer, she was sentenced to probation, court documents show: The ledger reported.

Florida State Senator. Lauren’s Bookwho has worked to protect victims of child abuse for more than 20 years, is concerned that Cadle had no one to help her through her ordeal.

“Where was a person before Taylor?” Boek says in the special.

Determined to prove that Henry was abusing her, Cadle took photos during a subsequent attack, photographing an empty condom box, a clock in his vehicle and the suspect himself walking outside the truck, De Leon reported.

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When Cadle went to authorities in 2017, she had proof of what she claimed Henry had done to her. In 2019, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for sexually assaulting a minor. The ledger reported.

Her indictment was quashed, PBS News Hour reports.

The detective who interviewed Cadle and had her arrested for allegedly lying to police and Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd did not respond to comments made by De Leon or to PEOPLE.

For Cadle, she hopes her story will help other children who are victims of child abuse.

Speaking about the authorities she encountered who failed her, she says: “I want them to understand what they did and see clearly where they made the mistake, to really see what happened and they solve the problem. Because no child should ever have to experience what I did.”

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the crisis text line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.