Denise was sexually abused by her family and in care, and failed by her school
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Denise’s father was a violent man who was physically abusive towards her mother and her siblings. He played no part in her life after he was sent to prison when she was a baby.
After a period in care, Denise was returned home only to be abused by her mother’s new partner.
Denise and her siblings were placed in a children’s home after their mother had a breakdown. She says she adored her housemother but was aware that her siblings were treated very cruelly. From the age of three, Denise was visited by her mother and her partner Ted. Later Denise was taken home for weekends, but her siblings never accompanied her. During these visits her mother would persuade her to go into the bedroom with Ted, who would touch her inappropriately.
Denise would return to the children’s home upset and withdrawn. She told her housemother what was happening and her mother was confronted, but she denied what Denise had said. Subsequently her mother made a complaint and she remembers that she wasn’t allowed to have cuddles with her housemother any more.
The sexual abuse continued, and Denise remembers going away on a trip with her mother and Ted, where the touching became more intrusive. Shortly afterwards, Denise and her siblings returned to live with her mother and Ted.
She says: ‘Life frankly was absolute hell. Ted used to walk around with his trousers open and his bits hanging out.’ He began to commit regular anal rape on Denise, threatening her that if she told anyone it would ‘kill’ her mother and he would ensure she would be put back into care in an awful place.
Ted also seemed to take pleasure in physically assaulting her, creating excuses to chastise her. Later in life an X-ray identified significant damage for which she had to undergo surgery. She remains on painkilling medication and has mobility issues.
Her mother became aware of Ted’s behaviour towards Denise when one of her school friends told her. Denise’s mother initially said that she would leave Ted, but then said to Denise: ‘Please don’t tell, it will kill me not to have him.’
At school, Denise became very disruptive, labelled ‘a disgrace’ by teaching staff who gave up on her. She now knows she is dyslexic, but this was not picked up when she was young. She loved sports but refused to take showers because she was so ashamed of the marks on her body. Even when she wasn’t injured she was ashamed of her body and had a sense that people would be able to tell what was happening to her. She says that none of her teachers questioned why she was behaving as she did, instead she was regularly excluded and finally expelled, missing out on her education. She left school illiterate.
By her mid-teens Denise’s siblings had both formed an incestuous relationship with her. She began to self-harm. To escape the sexual abuse she ran away to another part of the country and because she was hungry, stole something. She was arrested and taken to court. Denise told her probation officer about the sexual abuse she had been subjected to but was told to forget about it and get on with her life.
Denise says of herself at this time: ‘I was quite mad.’ She was sent to a psychiatric hospital where she did not have therapy but was prescribed medication which left her ‘almost comatose’ and electroconvulsive therapy was forcibly applied. On one occasion a male member of staff took her back to his home where she was gang raped. Denise told her mother and the hospital, but no action was taken.
Eventually Denise returned home. She was not visited by the probation service or a social worker. She married young to escape her situation and had children but later had a breakdown and began to self-harm again.
She was admitted to a hospital which ran a social rehabilitation unit and for the first time Denise says she met professionals who seemed to care. She spent a substantial period of her early adult life in therapy. Despite her husband being told that she would never recover, Denise went on to obtain professional qualifications.
Looking back Denise finds it hard to understand why professionals were so blind to her predicament. She says: ‘I told people in actions and as I got older I told them verbally, but it still didn’t make a difference.’
She thinks that professionals working with children should receive better training to equip them to pick up on behaviour that indicates sexual abuse. When a child talks about being sexually abused, professionals should always take action, and children identified as having issues should be better supported and given timely access to quality therapy. Therapies and specialist units should be available to adult survivors of child sexual abuse.
Denise also believes that institutions should be legally required to retain records, which should then be readily available so that they can be accessed by individuals in later life.