Diana would love to be free of the impact of her abuse but feels it is like an ‘internal tattoo’
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Diana was fostered from a very early age. She was put in a long-term placement with a couple who also fostered on a short-term basis.
Ill-treatment and abuse at the hands of the foster parents have caused her a lifetime of physical and mental health problems.
Diana says she quickly became a ‘mother figure’ to the other foster children in the home. During the day if the children were not in school, they were put in a shed in the garden with no comforts apart from a single chair. But when social services visited, Diana says it was ‘like a showground’ with toys put out in the lounge.
Until she was 16 years old, Diana never knew what age she was as the children never celebrated birthdays or Christmas, although the foster parents and their own family did. At Christmas, Diana and the other foster children would prepare dinner for the foster parents and then go back in the shed, where food was passed in on the floor for them.
Diana describes how the foster father ‘detested’ the children but felt he was doing ‘God’s work’. He claimed that the more that he drew blood from the children, the more that they would be cleansed.
She remembers being abused at a young age and that she self-harmed to get into hospital and escape. But there she was told to ‘be grateful’ that the foster family were looking after her.
At one stage, when she was trying to protect one of her foster sisters from their foster father, he punished her by plying her with tablets and alcohol and passing her to a group of men who abused her.
She became pregnant and knows that she had a ‘back street’ abortion although at the time she didn’t really know what that was. She remembers being brought back home and being shut in a cupboard in a lot of pain. Her foster mother said that she had ‘nearly let the secret out.’
After this, Diana says she started to rebel and have tantrums. The foster parents took her to a mental health hospital, where she was sectioned and sedated in an adult ward.
She describes how being abused made her a ‘people pleaser’ who felt constantly in a state of alert. When a nurse in the hospital asked her if she heard voices, she tried to please her by saying she did. From this point she was labelled as schizophrenic. She recalls being heavily medicated in the hospital and having no idea what was going on.
When Diana returned to the foster home, her foster father began taking her and other children to ‘parties’ where there was drink and drugs, and they were abused by men. She remembers the abuse was done in silence, and how the abusers treated the children ‘like animals.’ She says she saw money passing hands.
When she was still a teenager, Diana gave birth to a daughter, who was her foster father’s child. She says she tried to tell people that her foster father was the father, but no one listened. Instead she was given more medication and her baby was handed to her foster mother straight away. Diana had to please her foster parents to keep her daughter safe.
Scared for what might happen to her daughter, one night she took her and called the police and told them that she was hurting her so that they would take her daughter away, and away from her abuser. Her daughter was then adopted.
After her daughter was adopted Diane became very physically ill as a result of the years of abuse and neglect. She still suffers from ill health.
She is still very frightened of the people who abused her but feels there has been no help from social services or the police.
Diana struggles to secure mental health support. She feels appropriate support should be available straight away. She says she knows she can’t change what happened to her but would like to change what happens to other people.
She sums up how she feels by saying that the abusers stole her childhood and her whole being - who she was and who she was meant to be.