Alessia says ‘I carry the pain of my abuse but no longer the shame’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Alessia told her mother and a teacher at school that she had been sexually abused, but neither of them helped her.
After years of suffering with the impacts of abuse, and anger towards her mother, Alessia feels she has reached a stage where it no longer defines her.
Alessia grew up in the 1990s. She is of dual heritage and describes herself as a quiet and well-behaved child who played on her own a lot.
Her parents’ marriage was troubled; her dad worked away a lot and her mum often went out in the evenings. On these occasions, Alessia was left with a ‘babysitter’. Sometimes the babysitter looked after Alessia in her home, and other times in his house.
Alessia says ‘As he was known to my family I thought he was trustworthy … I had no reason to feel unsafe around him, at first’.
One evening, the babysitter took Alessia to his room, made her lie on the bed and got on top of her. He heard someone coming into the house and panicked, pushing Alessia roughly under the bed. After that he sexually abused her every time he was supposed to be looking after her.
The abuse involved him touching Alessia, making her masturbate him and raping her. It began when she was five years old and continued for two years.
Alessia remembers hiding her blood-stained underwear but she says ‘and yet I wasn’t alarmed. I thought that was normal, what boys do’.
It was only when a male relative looked after Alessia that she realised. She relates ‘He fed me, took care of me. That’s when I knew my abuser was wrong for what he did to me – that was not normal behaviour’.
Once Alessia understood that the abuse was wrong, it became more painful and distressing for her. She began misbehaving, and tried to talk to her mother about it, begging her not to go out and leave her with the babysitter.
Alessia explains ‘She never asked why, showed no concern. She finished getting ready and left me with him … in that moment I knew I couldn’t trust anyone. If my own mum didn’t care someone was hurting me, no one would’.
The abuse ended after Alessia whispered something about it to the babysitter’s older sibling. She remembers that the sibling never hurt her and she felt safe with them, and thinks this is why she told them. Soon after that, Alessia and her mother moved to a different area.
As Alessia got older, she became withdrawn and depressed. Her mum verbally abused her and both her parents physically abused her; sometimes they kept her off school until her bruises had healed.
Alessia moved to a secondary school where she made a few friends, but says ‘I didn’t flourish … I couldn’t focus, I was too depressed’. She suffered with anxiety and began self-harming. ‘Homework, friends, normal teenage stuff wasn’t on my mind. Trying to survive each day was.’
When Alessia started her period and saw blood in her underwear, it triggered memories of the sexual abuse. As her body developed, boys in school began sexually harassing her and groping her, which added to her distress. She told a teacher about this, but no action was taken.
Alessia explains how this sexual abuse from her peers in school made her feel. ‘I was robbed of my dignity, respect, trust … my right to say yes or no … I felt I was abused all over again.’
She says that things became a little easier after her parents finally separated, but they both continued verbally abusing her. Soon after, she managed to tell another teacher at school about the sexual abuse she had experienced, and they called the police and social services.
Alessia’s mother was called into school. Alessia says her mother cried ‘crocodile tears’ while insisting she knew nothing about her daughter being abused. Alessia finds this hard to believe, because of all the times her underwear had blood on it. Another family member told Alessia her mother had known, but was afraid social services would intervene.
Alessia describes how nerve-racking it was for her to give a police statement at this age. She adds that being mixed race, she didn’t think the police would care.
She continues that after the interview ‘Mum never told me the outcome. All she said outside the police station was “Never mention it again”’.
Alessia was not given any support. A few years later, she was distressed to see her mum hugging the babysitter who had sexually abused her. ‘She didn’t believe me … all the pain came flooding back to me.’
She found it hard to trust anyone, developed an eating disorder and sometimes felt that she wanted to die.
Alessia left home when she was in her late teens. She met the man who she now has children with, and says he helped her recover.
When she had children, Alessia says it became even more shocking to her that her mum had not protected her. She felt angry and resentful for years, then decided ‘I was never going to heal unless I let go of it all’. With support from her partner and friends, she has managed to do this.
She says ‘I haven’t self-harmed since we met; my depression barely affects me now … I am a survivor no longer a victim’.