Amie gives a heart-rending account of a life destroyed by a brutal abuser
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Amie endured extreme sexual, physical and emotional abuse by a male member of staff in a children’s home.
She shares her experience of child sexual abuse with the Truth Project from a prison cell.
Amie does not say why she was placed in the children’s home, but she relates that her father regularly beat her, abused alcohol and took Class A drugs, and had a serious mental illness.
In the home, a male worker targeted Amie, gave her drugs, including cannabis and cocaine, and sexually abused her. The abuse included vaginal and anal rape. He was violent towards her, kicking her in the face and breasts, and he verbally abused her, calling her names like ‘slag’.
Sometimes he took her in his car to the countryside around the home to abuse her. On one occasion he told her he was taking her to meet a friend. He took her to a big house where she was plied with drugs and sexually abused by a group of men.
Afterwards, the children’s home worker gave Amie cigarettes, drugs and money. When he took her back to the home, she recalls how she ‘scrubbed myself in the bath, lay in bed and cried for hours’.
Amie sometimes left the home to stay with her nan, who she loved very much. Amie says ‘she was my rock’, but never told her nan about the abuse because she didn’t want to upset her. Added to this, the abuser exploited Amie’s love for her nan, saying that he knew where she lived and if Amie opened her mouth ‘she’s dead’.
When Amie was old enough to leave the children’s home, she spent some time with her mum. Amie says she only told her ‘a little bit’ of what had happened in the children’s home, because she didn’t want to cause her mum distress.
She believes that the abuser was sacked from the children’s home after another victim and survivor spoke out.
Amie has suffered significant mental health issues, including depression, anxiety and panic attacks. She has self-harmed and attempted suicide several times. She says she became involved with a ‘wrong crowd’, became addicted to heroin and was homeless for a time. Amie has been a patient at a medium secure mental health unit.
She has flashbacks and nightmares about the abuse. ‘Sitting in my cell I see his face again laughing at me’ she writes.
Amie has no trust or faith in males. She is a lesbian, but struggles to be intimate with her partner as she cannot bear to be touched or for her body to be seen.
She tried to seek financial reparation for the appalling abuse she suffered in the children’s home, but was told that it had happened too long ago for her claim to succeed. She adds it was much more important for her that the abuser was held to account for what he did. She says ‘That abuse wrecked my life. No amount of money will get rid of the nightmares’.
She has tried counselling but says it was not helpful. However, she is now finding some comfort in art therapy, and music and meditation.