Delia would like to see a campaign telling people ‘the police are there to help’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
A trusted figure in the community saw that Delia was a vulnerable child and sexually abused her over eight years.
She had a positive experience with the police and the courts when she reported the abuse years later.
Delia was the youngest in her family. She describes feeling that the others were ‘indifferent’ towards her, and she felt bullied by them. She was often left in the care of her older sisters, who encouraged her to play with a neighbour’s children so they did not have to look after her.
By the time she was about six years old, Delia was spending a lot of time with the family of the parish vicar, John-Peter. She would stay overnight at their house. She describes this family as ‘very open’; they would walk around the house naked.
One night when she was staying over, Delia went to the bathroom. The vicar was in the bath and told her to come in to use the toilet.
John-Peter got out of the bath with an erection. He told Delia to look, then grabbed her hand and made her masturbate him. Over the next eight years, he abused her in this way many more times, once showing her his semen to teach her ‘where babies come from’.
The vicar and his family would take Delia on holiday with them and he took this as an opportunity to sexually abuse her. He would get into Delia’s sleeping bag at night on these trips and rub his penis between her legs. ‘I didn’t know what he was doing, I didn’t know it was wrong’, she says.
John-Peter emphasised to Delia that she must not tell her mother about the abuse. He claimed Delia’s mother had asked him to teach her sex education, but she would be embarrassed if Delia tried to tell her about it.
Delia also remembers John-Peter making comments on the physical appearance of other children, such as how pretty they were. She adds that he was intimidating and a bully, and he smacked her and his own children.
She doesn’t know why the abuse stopped, but thinks it was because ‘I probably didn’t go round as much’.
More than 20 years after the abuse ended, Delia reported what John-Peter had done to her to the police. She then learned that others had made allegations against him. ‘If I knew I wasn’t the only one, I would have come forward a lot sooner’, she says.
Delia says the police ‘were amazing’, and describes her experience with them as very caring and efficient. This also applied to her experience in court, when she was taken into a witness protection room as soon as she arrived, given options about how she could give evidence, and commended by the judge for her bravery. She adds that victim support was excellent.
John-Peter received a long prison sentence.
Delia comments, ‘I thought I dealt with it very well throughout my childhood’, but she did not recognise until later the mental and emotional impact of the abuse. Delia has suffered from depression. She has difficulty with trust and intimacy, and feels she is an overprotective mother. She did not receive any support from her family when she told them about the abuse.
Looking back, Delia is horrified that John-Peter, a trusted figure in the community, exploited a child who he knew was vulnerable, with little care or supervision at home. She finds it hard to believe his wife did not know about the abuse, along with some members of the congregation.
Delia feels there should be good education for children on safe and healthy relationships, and that communities and professionals should be trained to spot the signs of vulnerability and abuse in children. She would also like to see more encouragement for people to disclose abuse to the police.