Aoife says ‘I didn’t even know when my birthday was until I was 12 years old’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Aoife was born in the late 1960s. Her mother, who had been brought up in care, was 13 when she gave birth to her, and Aoife was initially placed in care.
When Aoife was three years old, she was returned to her mother, who by this time was 16 years old and living with a man called John, who was in his early 20s.
Over the following few years, this man physically, emotionally and sexually abused Aoife. After he deliberately burned her on a stove, which has left her with permanent scars, her mother sent her to live with a relative.
Aoife remembers being told this would only be for a while, but her mother never came for her.
She says she never felt welcome or loved in her new home; she was physically beaten and sexually abused by family members.
She took to running away from the house to escape the abuse, sometimes at night. She lived in a large city and would try and find places to sleep but was touched inappropriately by strangers.
When Aoife returned home she would be given a beating. After a particularly severe punishment, she went to school without being fully dressed and the teachers noticed. She says that one teacher in particular tried to help her.
Aoife believes that social services were also aware she was running away onto the streets, but no action was taken until she was taken back into care.
At first she was moved around different children’s homes. Her clothes were tatty and she was bullied at school because the other children knew she was in care. To try and stop this, she would let boys at school touch her inappropriately. She also experienced sexual abuse in one of the children’s homes.
When Aiofe was 12 years old, she was fostered. She says her foster mother was a nice woman who treated her well, and she remembers celebrating her birthday for the first time.
However, her foster mother did not want to know about Aoife’s background or the emotional and sexual abuse she had suffered, and this has added to Aoife’s anger and sense of being let down.
In her mid teens, Aiofe left school and started work. Two years later she left the foster home and moved into a flat. She describes feeling distressed that she had been abandoned again, and she began going out on the streets again at night. She says she would deliberately start fights and now wonders if she wanted someone to kill her. One night she was raped.
Aoife is still living with the after effects of her abusive childhood. She has mental health problems, an eating disorder and has attempted to take her own life.
She says she has never had a normal relationship with a man, and feels great sadness that she has not had children as a result.
However, Aoife adds, she has maintained a work ethic since she was 16 years old and she says, ‘I always pay my way’.
Aoife was not and never has been ‘mad’, but she is angry that she was let down by the system that was meant to care for her. She recently gained access to her files and can see that there were people in authority who knew what was happening to her.
Aoife feels strongly that children should be listened to in a non-judgemental way.
She receives support from a specialist charity but finds it hard to trust individuals or institutions. She doesn’t think ‘the system will ever be punished the way I have been punished’ for its failures, but she hopes her account might make a difference to another child.