Scorned by his father, Emmett was vulnerable to sexual abuse from strange men
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Emmett says he loved his father and saw him as a role model. Sadly, this devotion was met with derision and violent abuse. Emmett believes this treatment ‘set the scene’ for the sexual abuse he suffered.
From a young age, Emmett was regularly beaten by his father with a large leather belt. He describes how he had to ‘play dead’ to get his father to stop hitting him. His father was in the emergency services, and repeatedly put his son down, telling him that he could never do the same work.
When he was a young teenager, Emmett was approached by an adult man in a public toilet who suggested sexual activity. This was the first of many encounters with different men in public toilets, and continued into adulthood. He recalls recognising a teacher at his school as one of the men he had ‘an experience with’.
He describes how these experiences disturbed him, causing him to feel shame and to ‘bottle up’ his feelings. He began mixing with the ‘wrong crowd’ and drinking. He remembers feeling he wanted to hide away and ‘not look too far’ into his feelings about the abuse.
As a young adult he received a custodial sentence. Recognising that he was disturbed and needed some help, he sought therapy. He was offered therapy and says he found some of it helpful and some harmful.
When he was released from prison, Emmett says he was still ‘drifting’ and became involved in the drug scene. He consented to a psychiatrist accessing his therapy records from prison for a court report and feels that as a result, misinformation has been recorded about him in the system which has led to him being targeted and discriminated against by various agencies.
Emmett describes being labelled ‘disgusting’ by staff in a bail hostel, and finding a member of the domestic staff going through his personal records. He made a complaint regarding this.
In the hope of setting the record straight, Emmett approached the police to disclose the sexual abuse he experienced. He was told this would be passed to the police service in the location where it occurred. However when he chased this some months later, he was told the matter had been closed.
He pursued a complaint against the police regarding this, but his complaint was dismissed.
Emmett says that when he was a child, he did not realise the experiences he had with men were abuse. He remembers that the men who had sex with him made him ‘feel wanted’ while his father belittled him.