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

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

The special details that journalist Rachel de Leon found while winning the Emmy AwardCenter for Investigative Reporting and Netflix documentary Victim/Suspect: that hundreds of alleged victims across the country who report sexual assault often end up being 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, per de Leon.

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

After entering her guilty plea to providing false information to a law enforcement officer, she was sentenced to probation, court documents show, Register reported.

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

“Where was a person for Taylor?” says Book in particular.

Determined to prove that Henry had abused her, Cadle took pictures during a subsequent attack, snapping an empty condom box, a clock inside his vehicle and the suspect himself walking out of the truck, De Leon reported.

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When Cadle went to the authorities in 2017, she had evidence of what she claimed Henry had done to her. In 2019, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for sexual assault on a minor, Register reported.

Her charges were dropped, PBS NewsHour reports.

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

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

Speaking about the authorities she met who failed her, she says: “I want them to understand what they did and see clearly where they went wrong, really see what happened and fix it. Because no child should ever have to go through what I went through.”

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.