The man who sexually abused Brodie made her feel his behaviour was her responsibility
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Brodie had an unsettled childhood; the family moved a lot and both her parents were frequently absent and uninvolved with their children.
Brodie feels this made her insecure as a young girl, and vulnerable to grooming and abuse by a predatory man.
Brodie’s family moved from place to place until she was five, when her father was sent to prison. Her mum worked and studied, and was preoccupied with making ends meet.
The children were left on their own a lot and Brodie’s memory of her childhood was feeling like an outsider in the family, and very criticised by her mum. She says ‘I couldn't be right, I couldn't do right, everything was just wrong so I grew up quite insecure’.
Brodie began truanting from school when she was 10, looking for people she could attach herself to. Soon after starting secondary school she met a girl at a youth club, whose father, Jim, befriended her.
Jim was a social worker in his 40s. Brodie says he seemed ‘kind and nice’, adding ‘I needed a dad to attach to … he seemed to take an interest and care’. She started seeing him regularly and liked talking to him.
At that time Brodie was ‘dabbling’ with drugs, usually slimming pills. Jim would give her alcohol and cannabis. He started talking to her about sex, and encouraging her that she should have sex. She says she wasn’t interested.
One day he told her he was upset about a previous relationship and that she had to help him ‘get back to normal’. Brodie recalls ‘I felt like I didn’t have a choice … I had to have sex with him to make him feel better’, even though she didn't want to. She was only in her early teens.
After he raped her, she cried. For many years after that, she says ‘He basically trained me to do what he wanted me to do … he had to have his needs met and I was there to meet those needs’.
Jim would show her pornography and he took sexual photographs of her. He continued plying her with alcohol and drugs and manipulating her. If Brodie tried to break away, Jim always had a way of getting her back. He made her feel that she was responsible for his behaviour.
During this time, her relationship with her mum became more difficult and she was sent to live with her father. Brodie didn’t feel she knew her dad at all and says ‘he was out all the time’. After an argument with him, she left and became homeless.
Brodie found a place to stay. ‘It seemed to be a drug house, with lots of people coming and going’ she says. She woke up one night to find one of the males in the house with his fingers inside her. She says ‘I freaked out and he just laughed’. She used to ‘steal to order’ for the people in the house. One day she got caught, and the police sent her back to live with her mum.
She tried to commit suicide in her early twenties. After she recovered she went back to college ‘to try and make something of my life’ and managed to break away from Jim. She later discovered he had been convicted of sexually abusing a seven-year-old girl.
Brodie says she still finds it difficult to connect with people and to have ‘proper sexual relationships’. She suffers with various medical problems. She has recently started therapy but says she has not yet been able to properly talk about the abuse.
She would like all children to have a trusted person to talk to, and to receive more education about their rights.