Several professionals did not pursue indications that Ellie-Mae might be suffering abuse
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Ellie-Mae’s stepfather was known to the police as a domestic abuser. Ellie-Mae’s sibling was given their own accommodation because of the stepfather’s abuse.
However, no one seemed to question whether it was safe for Ellie-Mae to remain in the family home.
Ellie-Mae says that her early childhood in the 1990s was ‘pretty much idyllic … everything that you could want out of a childhood’ until her parents got divorced.
She and her sibling lived with their mother, who after a few years became involved with a man called Joe. He moved into their home when Ellie-Mae was under the age of 10.
Within a few weeks, Joe started being physically violent to those in the house, and also began sexually abusing Ellie-Mae. He would get into bed with her to abuse her.
When she was 12, Ellie-Mae told her mother what was happening, but her mother dismissed it, saying Ellie-Mae had an overactive imagination and was jealous. Her mother also told her that if she reported it, it would ‘ruin our family’.
‘So I kept quiet after that’ Ellie-Mae says.
She remembers that Joe would make very inappropriate comments about her sibling’s developing body and she saw him brushing up against her sibling. Her sibling left home when they were in their teens and was given accommodation by the local authority.
Ellie-Mae had no one else to turn to. She later discovered that Joe had destroyed the letters her father had written to her, and would put the phone down if her father called. ‘I didn’t realise’ she says. ‘I thought he had just cut me off.’
She says she put on a good show of being fine at school. ‘I am a master of hiding stuff’, but she adds that she was self-harming ‘because I couldn't talk about the stuff that was inside’.
One day Ellie-Mae’s friend saw that she had cut herself. The girls talked about it, and Ellie-Mae’s friend tried to make her promise to stop self-harming, but didn’t tell anyone because she didn’t want to get Ellie-Mae into trouble.
Ellie-Mae says that at school she sometimes had bruises and was often obviously tired. Joe frequently made her stay out with him and her mother until the early hours of the morning. One teacher noticed that she was looking tired and told Ellie-Mae that she should get more sleep.
Nobody in school noticed that Ellie-Mae was unhappy but this was not surprising because she made herself ‘invisible’. She says ‘I didn't feel like I was worth anything so why would people want to notice me?’
Ellie-Mae did go and see her doctor about her depression when she was in her early teens. She was prescribed medication but not asked any questions about possible causes. She felt it was written off as ‘teenage angst’ and the attitude was ‘It’s a phase’.
The police attended the family home several times because of domestic violence. Joe was arrested more than once and the police interviewed Ellie-Mae because she had been injured. But her mother would not press charges and Ellie-Mae does not think social workers were involved.
Her mother divorced Joe. Ellie-Mae later went to university where she had some counselling. She says ‘It was a release valve to stop me having to hurt so much’ but adds that when she left, she just ‘dropped’.
She feels that she is in a constant state of hypervigilance. She finds it very hard to trust people. She has been on a waiting list for therapeutic support for more than four years.
Ellie-Mae wishes that she had had more support as a child, from doctors, the police and the local authority. She can’t understand why her sibling was given a place to live because of the situation at home, but no one followed up to see that Ellie-Mae was ok.
She thinks that it should have been noticed at school that she was not engaging with anyone and always wore long-sleeved clothes, even in hot weather. She also feels there should be better monitoring of people who are known to be abusers. After her mother divorced Joe, he moved in with another family.
Ellie-Mae managed to gain a degree and now has a professional career. She considers that she was very lucky to go to university.