Police Didn't Believe Teen Was Sexually Abused. Then She Collected Evidence to Convict Her Adoptive Father

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

"What did I do for you to punish me?" Cadle, now an adult, asks in a PBS NewsHour episode that aired on Tuesday, Oct. 29.

The special details what journalist Rachel de Leon found while making the Emmy Award-winning Center for Investigative Reporting and Netflix documentary Victim/Suspect : that hundreds of alleged victims nationwide who report sexual assaults often end up getting arrested themselves for lying to authorities.

Cadle was adopted by Henry and his wife after she spent 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 listened to her adoptive mother's advice to plead guilty "and get it over with," she told De Leon.

After entering her guilty plea for filing false information to a law enforcement officer, she was sentenced to probation, court documents show, The Ledger reported.

Florida State Sen. Lauren Book , who has been working 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 the special.

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

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? 's free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

When Cadle went to the authorities in 2017, she had proof of what she alleged Henry had done to her. In 2019, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for sexual battery of a minor, The Ledger reported.

Her charges were overturned, PBS NewsHour 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 from De Leon or to PEOPLE.

For Cadle, she hopes her story helps 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 to clearly see where they messed up, to truly see what happened and fix it. Because no child should ever have to go through anything that I went through."