Bethan feels that on the outside she is calm but she says ‘there’s a hidden scream inside me’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Bethan was not encouraged to have counselling after she was violently sexually assaulted as a child.
She feels that not dealing with the trauma has had a huge knock-on effect on her.
Bethan grew up in a working class family with her mother, stepfather and two older siblings. She says her mum ‘gave me a long leash’ and allowed her to go out and play in the countryside, about 15 minutes walk from her home.
One day, when she was 11 years old, she was out alone with her dog and saw a man pull up in his car about 50 metres away. She remembers the colour of the car and what he looked like. He came towards her and asked if she was OK. She says she felt ‘the girl or woman fear’ that she was not safe.
Bethan started walking away but the man jumped on her and pushed her to the ground. ‘I was screaming, but I was more concerned he was going to hurt the dog’ she says.
The man pulled her trousers down and put his fingers inside her, which really hurt her. She screamed and he told her to shut up, and punched her in the nose. He then ejaculated on her.
Bethan can’t remember his exact words but he threatened her. She thinks he may have said he would kill her because she remembers thinking ‘this is how I’m going to die’. Then he ran off.
She pulled up her trousers and ran. She was in great pain where he had penetrated her, and with her nose, which turned out to be broken. She ran and saw another man and told him she had been raped. She says at the time she didn’t completely understand what rape was.
Bethan remembers asking the man ‘You’re not going to hurt me are you?’
He drove Bethan to her home, where she told her mother what had happened. She remembers sitting in a daze, relieved to be home but ‘in so much pain’. She recalls several local men coming to the house, some with farm implements, asking what the man looked like.
She says ‘I just needed to be cuddled’, but her mother was emotionally distant and never did this.
Her mother took her to the police station the same day to give her statement. Bethan says ‘I remember them asking the same questions over and over again and they said it was to make sure you give the right information’.
Her nose injury was treated at hospital, then she went to a rape crisis centre. ‘It was just the worst experience’ she says.
She was seen by ‘an old man in a white coat’. She had to undress and walk across the room to the couch. She felt very exposed and asked for something to cover her, but they only had some sort of board to offer her as an improvised cover.
Bethan was examined internally. She says ‘I know he didn’t mean to harm me but it felt like a violation’.
Bethan then spoke to a female psychologist, with a lot of other people looking on. She says she was ‘mortified’ having to talk about her private parts in front of all those adults.
Later at home, she had a bath, and saw the man’s handprints on her body in her own blood. Her mother left her alone to wash herself.
Later that day, the police took her back to the place where the assault happened. She took part in a photofit exercise and looked at photographs of possible suspects. She did not recognise any of them, and the man who abused her was never caught.
Looking back, she says, ‘It was really badly dealt with’. The police did ask if she wanted counselling, but at the age of 11 she was unsure about this, and when she said no, no one encouraged her.
Her mother did not comfort her and she can’t remember receiving any support from social services or anyone else. Bethan was off school for a time, and remembers a visit from a schoolteacher who was kind, but there was no other support.
When she was 15, a man flashed her. When she reported it to the police and described what the man was wearing, one of them commented ‘Bet that’s not the only thing you were looking at’. This was another experience that left her mortified.
Bethan feels she grew up quickly. As a teenager she rejected education and some of her peers. She attached herself to a girl who she saw as ‘a rebel’ and started taking drugs and drinking alcohol. She developed an eating disorder and depression, which she still suffers from. She got a place at university but did not complete her degree.
She met her partner and became a mother in her 20s. Her feelings for her first child gave her a different focus and identity that she says ‘saved me’.
Bethan believes victims of child sexual abuse should be encouraged to accept counselling. She describes her experience as a little girl at the rape crisis centre as ‘transactional’, with no empathy from the man ‘who was just doing a job’.
Bethan experienced a difficult birth with her second child and this was a trigger for her. The professionals involved did not listen to her and she felt pressured to accept a procedure she did not want. She says ‘This felt like abuse of my body again’.
She says that staff on maternity wards should be aware that a woman in labour may be a victim of sexual assault, and have suitable training.
She has had counselling to try and cope with her anxiety and depression but this focused on her day-to-day living.
Bethan suggests that there should be a system in place for victims of child sexual abuse to be offered a social worker or other long-term support. She says ‘I would have benefited from that massively. I was left alone to get on with it’.