Claudia and her siblings were subjected to extreme violence, sexual abuse and control by their father
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
After the violence, control and sexual abuse was reported, several adults said they were ‘not surprised’.
Claudia grew up in a very large family. She says that her father kept his children isolated from friends and family, telling them that ‘the only safe place is home’.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. He controlled and abused his children and their mother in just about every way possible. Claudia says her mother must have known what was happening to the children but she was not able to protect them.
Claudia explains that she saw her role in the family as ‘the quiet responsible elder sister’ who tried to look after the others. Her father told her that she was ‘enticing’ him. He took her to his bedroom every weekend and told her, ‘This is love … you make me do this ... you are the evil one’, as if he was the victim. The sexual abuse incuded rape.
She says her father’s control over the family was ‘absolute’. He made some of the older children watch graphically violent films and then forced them to assault and abuse the younger ones.
She adds ‘this was the only life we knew ... it was our normality’.
Claudia says she and her siblings showed different behaviour at school; some were quiet and withdrawn, others were much more rebellious, and one was expelled. All of them showed signs of the violent abuse, including bruises, cuts and broken bones.
There were interventions from social services over the years, and Claudia says that later, once the abuse had been reported, teachers and members of her extended family said they ‘had stories to tell’ of what they had seen.
The abuse ended for Claudia about 10 years ago, when she left home. She reported the abuse to the police in the area she moved to, and they referred it to the force where her family lived. Her father was charged with a number of offences, but the case was dropped. She felt despair at this decision, and says she and her siblings ‘lost faith in a system that failed to protect’.
Claudia and her siblings suffered many serious and long-lasting impacts from their horrific childhood experiences. Almost every one of them has tried to take their own life. She has self-harmed, had an eating disorder and misused drugs and alcohol. She has been diagnosed with PTSD and has difficulty with intimate relationships.
At one stage, she was with a partner who raped and abused her, but after some time she recognised what was happening and left.
Claudia considers there are many ways that she and her family could have been protected better by responsible authorities. She feels there was too much emphasis on the importance of contact between her father and the children. She adds that institutions should share their information more effectively, so that children are not further traumatised by having to keep repeating their account.
She emphasises that the main focus should always be on the wellbeing of the child and making them safe, before collecting evidence. She would like to see more training for all professionals working with children to identify who may be at risk.
Claudia says that she has concentrated on her education and supporting her siblings as a way of coping with her past experiences, and that some of the others do the same. ‘We are all hard workers’ she says, adding that the family has support from health services and local voluntary agencies.