David says ‘Though I hide it well most of the time, I died a little in my childhood’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
David was sexually abused for several years while he was in care.
One of the lasting effects of this is that some situations remind him of the abuse and can trigger an extreme reaction in him.
David was born in the 1960s in a deprived inner-city area. His parents separated when he was a toddler and a year or two later, his mother met a new partner, Joseph.
She and her two children went to live with Joseph in a small town.
When David was nine years old, his dad came to visit. With his mother’s permission, he took David, but David ended up staying with him for a few months.
After this, David writes ‘He dumped me back on my mum's doorstep’.
He continues ‘Joseph and I never got on and after being away for months with my dad, things just got worse’.
Joseph became extremely physically violent towards David, once hurling him against a wall.
The family GP advised David’s mother to put him in care, and within weeks David was placed in a children’s home. Here, a member of staff called Andy began showing an interest in him.
David writes ‘He took me out to places, bought me toys … as an adult I now realise I was groomed’.
Within a short time, Andy started taking David out of the home. On several occasions he pulled down the boy’s shorts and underpants and took photographs of him. He started coming to David’s dormitory at night, and touching his genitals and performing oral sex on him.
This sexual abuse happened once or twice a week. By the time David was about 13, the abuse escalated and Andy was taking him to his bedroom along the corridor. Andy showed David pornography. He tried to make David give him oral sex and when David refused he lay on top of him and ejaculated on him.
David describes how he ‘cried and begged him to stop because he was so heavy and was hurting me’. Afterwards, Andy threatened him. David says ‘He grabbed my arms and told me that I was to say nothing to anyone and even if I did no one would believe me as I was a lying little bastard and that's why I was in a children's home’.
During a holiday with his mother, David tried to tell her what Andy had done and begged her not to send him back. But his mother told him not to be so silly.
Andy continued sexually abusing David for another year until he stopped working at the children’s home.
David returned to live with his mother when he was in his mid-teens. About a year later, the police arrived at their home and showed them a pile of photographs that Andy had taken of David.
He relates ‘My mum was sat on the sofa crying, and with a lot of venom in my voice I spat the words out “Now do you fucking believe me?”’ He adds that one of the police officers hugged him and reassured him he had done nothing wrong.
A detective asked David to make a statement. He says ‘I refused, I was not interested as I had been trying to block it out for over a year, and made the excuse that my exams were coming up’.
David says he could tell the police were frustrated by this. They told him Andy had abused several other boys around the country, and had used false references to get jobs with different social services and institutions.
Eventually David did give a statement about the sexual abuse he had suffered, but was disappointed at the lack of outcome. He explains ‘They then left and to this day neither I nor my mum have heard a word from the police, whether a case went to court, or if a conviction was made’.
David would like to see stringent vetting done on everyone working with children. He says that children making allegations of abuse should be taken seriously and that care services should apologise for failings. He believes that prison sentences for child sexual abusers should be longer.
David describes the effects that being sexually abused has had on him. The man who sexually abused him was gay, and he says this has left him with strong homophobic feelings.
He suffers with nightmares and outbursts of uncontrollable temper. This once led to him being arrested. After this he sought counselling, because he says ‘I am not a violent person in normal circumstances and could not understand why these things had happened’.
David says the therapy has helped him understand what sort of situations may trigger his memories of the abuse, and now he walks away from them to avoid conflict.
But, he adds, ‘I have also come to the conclusion, that though I hide it well most of the time, I died a little in my childhood and nothing I ever do will erase that thought’.