Alwyn believes that the abuse he experienced will never go away
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
When Alwyn was not selected for his college football team, a lecturer took advantage and offered extra coaching, then sexually abused him.
Alwyn was 16 when he went to further education college. Because it was some distance from his home, he stayed in accommodation on the campus.
After he was not picked for the team, one of his lecturers, Paul, offered to give him additional one-to-one sports coaching.
The first session was in the gym, but then Paul moved the training location to a private locked room. Paul began grooming Alwyn for abuse with behaviour that the boy thought seemed normal. This included physically checking his abdominal muscles, and getting him to visualise certain situations.
But this developed with Paul telling Alwyn to think about sex. Alwyn says he thought this was ‘weird’, but felt he had to go along with it. The lecturer then started initiating even more inappropriate physical contact by putting his hands into Alwyn’s shorts.
Alwyn recalls one occasion when a friend had knocked on the door during a ‘coaching session’ and asked why it was locked. He says that Paul responded in a short and aggressive way to this intrusion.
After this, the lecturer insisted that the sessions had to be kept secret. Alwyn decided he no longer wanted to go, but when he told Paul, the lecturer threatened to tell the college football coach that Alwyn wasn’t working hard enough.
To try and escape the abuse, Alwyn stopped going to college for a few weeks. When he went back, Paul attempted to abuse him again in a locked room, threatening that if he did not comply he would fail the course. After this, Alwyn pretended to be ill and stopped attending college again.
A few weeks before the end of term, Paul was arrested. It turned out that he had abused another student in the same way, under the pretext of ‘coaching’, and this boy had told his parents. More students came forward and gave statements to the police. Paul received a prison sentence.
The police wrote to Alwyn about the case. He responded several times but they did not come back to him, and he feels this was remiss of them. He also feels let down by the college because they did not offer any pastoral support. He later discovered they had employed Paul after he had been ‘let go’ from a previous teaching job following complaints about his inappropriate behaviour towards boys.
Alwyn says that extra training or coaching should be allowed but should never be carried out one to one in a private place. He also thinks that vetting processes should be more thorough.
He did pass his college course but did not talk about the abuse to anyone for many years. He experienced depression, anxiety and feelings of self-blame. When he finally told his wife, he says it was helpful.