Alexandre remembers how at night he dreaded the man who abused him appearing in the doorway
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Alexandre’s mother was struggling to provide for her children so he was sent to a Catholic orphanage in the 1960s, where he was sexually abused numerous times by a member of staff.
Alexandre grew up in a large Catholic family. His father worked away a lot, and was an alcoholic. Alexandre says that when he came home he had usually spent all the money he’d earned and he mistreated his wife and children. He adds ‘He was quite a terrifying man … I actually witnessed him beat my mother’.
He continues ‘After my father beat one of my siblings my mother decided it was the last straw’. She took the children and they went to live with her parents, but the house was small and they were very overcrowded. Struggling with numerous jobs to try and provide for them, she asked the church for help.
As a result, when Alexandre was seven years old, he and two of his brothers were taken to live in an orphanage run by nuns. He recalls ‘We hated being there and being separated from our mother’.
They stayed in the orphanage for about two years, and during that time Alexandre was regularly sexually abused by a male member of staff.
Because he was scared of the dark, Alexandre didn’t sleep well and one night he realised there was a man by his bed. He felt the man crawl into bed, and pull down his pyjamas and start touching him.
Terrified, Alexandre relates ‘I pretended to be asleep … I don’t believe I was raped but I remember the bed became hot and sweaty’. He recognised the abuser, a man in his 20s, as one of a group of ‘helpers’ who came to work at the orphanage at weekends.
Alexandre says he doesn’t know exactly how long it went on for, but the same abuse happened ‘over and over again’. He remembers how frightened he felt at night, waiting for the abuser to appear in the doorway of the dormitory.
He never told anyone he was being sexually abused; he says he wouldn’t have known what to say about it. He says that as he grew older, he increasingly felt he was ‘different’ because of the secret he was keeping. He felt lonely, excluded and found it hard to make friends.
When Alexandre was in his mid teens, he went to college. He says ‘When I left home I wanted to be someone new and different’. He started work, got married and had children. He had still not told anyone about the abuse. ‘For many years I blotted it out of my mind’ he says. But some years later he finally told his wife.
Alexandre had built a successful career, but by his early 50s he was finding managing his work more difficult and he had a nervous breakdown. He has not been able to work since and he feels guilty about the financial difficulties this has caused for his family. He says the anxiety is ‘sometimes overwhelming’.
More recently, he has reported the abuse he suffered to the police and they are currently investigating Alexandre’s report.
Alexandre feels the Catholic Church was not qualified to provide care for children in his circumstances. He doesn’t understand why his abuser stayed overnight at the orphanage at weekends when he lived nearby, or why he was allowed to take children out in his car.
He feels that organisations caring for children should demonstrate they have the right expertise to protect them.