Brandon’s report of child sexual abuse was not investigated, and he wants his account recorded
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Brandon was made vulnerable by his father leaving home and his mother being distracted with her own problems.
He was lured into a ring of child sexual abusers that he thinks included some high-profile figures.
When Brandon was five years old, his father left the family for another woman. Brandon adored his dad and was very upset by this, and remembers his mother was ‘broken hearted’.
When Brandon was aged about 10, he was out playing with another boy. They met a man called Lou, who asked Brandon if he would like to go to the cinema with him. Brandon’s mum gave permission. During the film, the man sexually abused Brandon, ‘playing’ with him.
Afterwards, Lou took Brandon home and asked his mother if Brandon would like to spend next weekend with him. Brandon’s mother agreed. ‘I think she liked the idea that I had some company’ he says. Over the weekend, Lou raped Brandon.
Lou offered to babysit, on the pretext it would give Brandon’s mum the chance to go out. But the reality for Brandon was ‘it was always sex’.
The abuser took Brandon on more trips away, and then to the city, where Brandon met a number of his friends and associates, all of them male. ‘He had a lot of dodgy friends’ says Brandon. He adds that one of these men told him ‘When you get to 13, he won’t want to know you’.
On one trip to the city, friends of Lou took him to a high-end department store and bought him shoes and clothes. Later, they drove him in an expensive car to a club. ‘It was very posh’ Brandon says.
He joined a group of about 12 other boys who were around his age, and one older boy of about 17. Brandon says this older boy seemed to be in charge, and the younger ones were sent to different rooms where they were sexually abused by men. He says ‘We were all interfered with in some way’ and comments that he recognised the faces of some of the abusers from the media.
Later, Brandon was given some money and taken back to the house of one of Lou’s friends.
He realised later that most of the other boys who were being abused were runaways, who had been picked up by predatory men when they arrived at mainline stations. They ended up in what was known several decades ago as the ‘meat rack’ – an area where boys were picked up for sexual abuse.
Brandon says he avoided this because he had a relatively stable home.
He was once taken on a trip abroad by a friend of Lou’s, and a lot of pictures were taken of him. Again, he was paid what was a lot of money at the time.
Brandon didn’t tell his mother he was being abused. He did tell a teacher when he was in his early teens, but no action was taken.
When he was in his 20s, he reported the abuse he had experienced to the police, but was not made aware of any investigation as a result.
Brandon finds it difficult to form lasting relationships. He says he is gay but adds ‘I don’t know whether I was gay, straight or whatever’ before the abuse.
He believes that there are now better systems to report child sexual abuse. ‘When I was a child there was nothing in place’ he says.
Brandon came forward to share his experience with the Truth Project because in the absence of any other action, ‘I want my testimony recorded’.