Asked whether she was, in fact, afraid, the girl suddenly went quiet. She hung her head, looked down at her hands, and refused to say anything. Up until then, she had been making eye-contact and articulating very clearly what had happened.

She was speaking to The Daily Star in the privacy of her home, supervised by her aunt.

“Did you feel bad?” this correspondent asked. She gave a nod, her gaze still buried deep in her lap.

“Did they tell you what they were going to do to you?” she was asked. This time she answered. “No. They just asked me to close my eyes.”

In this correspondent’s previous experience interviewing survivors, children in particular were found to have a harder time articulating feelings of trauma. They tended to keep quiet when asked questions such as “Were you scared?” or “How did you feel?”

Just because the 13-year-old did not utter damning words decrying the physical examination, does not mean that the ordeal wasn’t traumatising.