Rather than feeling he wants revenge on the man who abused him, Digby says that he feels pity
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Digby describes the sustained sexual abuse he was subjected to at a prestigious boarding school as ‘grim’.
However, he adds ‘It has shaped my life in a way that some good has come out of it’.
Digby was sent away to school when he was 12 years old. For the first three years, he was physically, sexually and psychologically abused by Mr A, his housemaster. The abuse occurred two or three times each week.
A couple of times each term, Mr A would wake Digby during the night and drive him to a house in another town where other men were waiting to sexually abuse him.
When the abuse began, Digby had not had any sex education, and he did not understand the things that were done to him and the things he was made to do. He says ‘I had no idea what it was, I did what he told me to do … it felt wrong and it felt shameful and dirty, even when I did not understand it’.
Mr A forced Digby to give him oral sex and raped him. The abuser also hit Digby with different objects and tied him up. He would say demeaning things to Digby, such as ‘You were made to do this to me’.
Digby says he felt ‘the only thing I existed for was for them to abuse me’. He adds that the abuse was painful but he didn’t fight back because he wanted it to be over as soon as possible.
In his distress, Digby started self-harming and overdosing on prescription drugs that he stole. He shoplifted alcohol and drank it. More than once, he was taken to hospital to have his stomach pumped and then returned to boarding school.
Staff at school saw the injuries on his body caused by self-harming and his parents were called to the school on several occasions. No one asked him what was wrong and he says ‘Maybe people didn’t think about these things then and what it might mean ... it was just covered up in terms of reputation’.
However, Digby believes he would never have told anyone about the sexual abuse. ‘I felt it was so taboo.’
Digby says that even now, nearly 50 years after the abuse ended, when he faces difficulties he still thinks about self-harming, but he does not do it. He has been diagnosed with PTSD and has experienced anxiety, depression and feelings of detachment and dissociation.
He describes feeling a loss of identity and that he somehow ‘deserved to have stuff done to me’.
Digby has been having therapy intermittently for several years. He has told very few people about the sexual abuse he suffered as a child. He comments that some people have made assumptions about how he must feel about the main perpetrator, assuming he wants revenge. Digby says he does not feel like that.
He says of the abuse, ‘I wouldn’t wish that on anyone’, but he feels that in some ways it has influenced his career in a positive way because he has devoted his working life to supporting, protecting and empowering others.
Although he struggles with intimate relationships, he has a good relationship with his children.