A teacher said she knew Emmie was ‘having sex’ at the age of 15, but commented she seemed ‘happy’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Neglected and uncared for by her mother, Emmie was vulnerable to sexual abuse by several men.
When one of the men who raped her left, she felt she had been abandoned again.
Emmie describes a difficult relationship with her mother who was controlling and manipulative when she was small, then became absent and uninterested in Emmie as she got older.
Not long after Emmie started secondary school, she came home to find she was locked out of the house and it took her a long time to find her mother.
One winter day, Emmie was waiting for a bus when a man who worked in an office nearby asked her if she wanted to come inside and wait, to get out of the cold.
Emmie says ‘This is where the grooming began’. The office worker, George, was in his twenties. The following summer he raped her. She was 12.
George continued abusing Emmie regularly for about six months. The abuse took place in his office on the day it was closed. She remembers ‘He told me I had looked like a scared rabbit the first time, then he went ahead and did it again’.
The abuse ended when George left his job.
As an adult, Emmie says she understands that she had issues with abandonment because of her mother, and these were compounded by what happened with George.
Because she was being neglected by her mother, she went to live with her father for a while. One of his friends targeted her for sexual abuse. After a while, her father introduced Emmie to more of his friends who sexually abused her in different locations.
When Emmie’s father found out about this he put a stop to it.
When Emmie was 15, one of her teachers told her that she was aware that Emmie was having sex, but she added that Emmie seemed ‘happy’ with this and took no action.
‘She was wrong, I was not happy’ says Emmie, adding that she thinks that her teacher should have intervened.
Emmie did report some of the abuse she suffered to the police, but is not sure that any action was taken, and says that at the time she did not feel ready to take part in any court case.
She thinks that the abuse by the second man affected her less than the abuse by George, ‘because I was older … but it’s still not ok’.
Emmie suffers with anxiety, depression and flashbacks, particularly when she consumes a lot of alcohol. She frequently has thoughts of suicide but does not think she would act on them.