VCUG Survivor, 20, Speaks Her Truth in South Carolina

“VCUGs aren’t treatment; they’re purely diagnostic, and no child should have their vagina torn in the process.”

Ashley M., a VCUG survivor from South Carolina, graciously sat down with Unsilenced founder Shelby Smith to share her powerful story for the first time. Her revealing testament is bound to change minds about the so-called “painless” voiding cystourethrogram (VCUG) test.

[00:30] For Ashley, the effects have been detrimental and lifelong, even before finding out about her test in October 2022. Like many others, Ashley developed dissociative amnesia after her procedure at age 2, leading to 18 grueling years of severe mental health issues, avoidance of medical care, disordered eating, and self-harm.

Ashley sets the record straight from the get-go, explaining, “The VCUG ruined my life. It turned my childhood very dark.” She describes herself as “a very mute and anxious child” who was terrified of any person in authority, from doctors to teachers to therapists.

[00:45] She even recalls threatening to kill people in her preschool and home if they came too close. “I didn't want anyone to come near my body,” Ashley says. “I believed that at any point, someone can just violate my body. And that when they do, I just have to deal with it. I have to just let it happen, because if not, I'm going to be held down.”

[01:30] Growing up, Ashley remembers feeling “so broken and defective and violated, all the time.” The bodily experiences she was forced to relive every day from the VCUG procedure eventually landed her in an eating recovery center—an exhausting and emotional journey that ultimately that offered zero insights into her suffering.

"I believed that at any point, someone can just violate my body. And that when they do, I just have to deal with it. I have to just let it happen, because if not, I'm going to be held down.”

[01:45] “I just wanted to die,” Ashley says. “I didn’t want to exist anymore. I wanted to feel like I had some control over my body.”

[02:00] Her confusion and pain led her through a revolving door of specialists in young adulthood. “I just remember going into therapy, begging these therapists,” Ashley recalls. “Like, ‘There’s something wrong with me; there’s something wrong with my body. Can you please help me figure it out?’”

When her parents began to micromanage her diet, Ashley had no choice but to turn to self-injurious behaviors. What began as childhood skin-picking—a body-focused behavior that left Ashley with bleeding heels and a perpetual limp as a little girl—evolved into a more dangerous coping mechanism.

“My parents were watching what I was eating…obviously I couldn't starve myself anymore, so I moved on to cutting,” Ashley says, adding that there were many times she almost needed stitches.

As someone with complex PTSD (CPTSD), the intense dissociation that Ashley experienced for many, many years led to more memory loss, as she recalled some mornings “waking up, covered in blood” with no memory of what happened.

“I hated my body,” Ashley says. “Because my body felt so broken, and no one could help me figure it out. I felt so violated all the time.”

Things became all the more haunting when her therapist assigned her a simple exercise—to write how her body felt using her left hand instead of her right. The seemingly simple assignment would ultimately move mountains for Ashley, leading her to the truth and empowering her to take back control of her narrative.

“The left hand is controlled by the right side of our brain,” Ashley explains, “which holds trauma memories. And so I did that every day until we met again, and I handed her the paper I had written. It looked like a kid wrote it, because it was with my left hand.”

On the page, in childlike handwriting, Ashley scrawls her greatest childhood secret: On the inside, I felt like I was crumbling to pieces. I felt [like someone] sexually abused me. Everything felt wrong.

Ashley adds that her VCUG experience as significantly worsened by a subsequent pelvic exam at 5 years old, retraumatizing her immensely. The pelvic exam was only necessary because Ashley’s vagina was torn during her VCUG.

Horrified, Ashley’s mom immediately declined another VCUG when the doctor tried to coerce her, claiming that two-year-old Ashley would certainly die without another VCUG.

“VCUGs are not treatments; they're purely diagnostic,” Ashley points out. “And no child should have their vagina torn in the process.”

When Ashley’s mom refused to consent, the hospital blackmailed her. Not only did they threaten to call Child Protective Services (CPS), but they also withheld the life-saving antibiotics that Ashley’s body desperately needed to fight a kidney infection.

“VCUGs are not treatments. They're purely diagnostic. And no child should have their vagina torn in the process.”

Despite the doctor’s cold promise that her daughter would die within weeks without another VCUG, Ashley’s mom chose to take her daughter home without antibiotics, praying that God would heal her daughter and that the condition would resolve itself.

It did. Ashley’s VUR—which, Ashley points out, was “very severe”—spontaneously resolved, proving the doctors wrong about the alleged life-saving powers of VCUG.

“They tore my vagina, which was not supposed to happen,” Ashley says. “I just replay my mom screaming back at them, over and over in my head, and how terrible that must have been to be in her position, as a young parent.”

While her relationship with her mom is improving, the road to recovery has been anything but easy. “When these repressed memories kind of came back, obviously there was a lot of hurt and anger, sadness and confusion,” Ashley points out. “The younger part of me was so angry at Mom, you know?”

When it comes to how VCUGs are performed (an empty concept, given that there is no standardized protocol to this day, in 2023), the lack of vaginal penetration is a common and crude argument employed by those who lack an understanding of sexual trauma and childhood PTSD.

Ashley isn’t alone in experiencing a form of vaginal penetration during her test. Other women recall similar experiences; one survivor recalls the doctor accidentally inserting the catheter into her vaginal canal instead of her urethra multiple times. And yet, there is zero dialogue around the obvious potential for sexual abuse in the VCUG exam room.

[11:30] “My mom was blackmailed and lied to,” Ashley states. “She also recognizes that they sexually abused me in that room.”

When asked what advice she would share with fellow survivors, Ashley replies, “I would say, ‘You are not broken. You never were broken. You’re not alone…It is not your fault what happened.'”

"You are not broken. You never were broken. You’re not alone…It is not your fault what happened." -Ashley, 20, South Carolina

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