Gracey

Gracey was seen as her father’s ‘favourite’ child in the family.

But the reality that lay behind this was that he was singling her out for sexual abuse.

Gracey grew up in the 1960s and 70s. Her earliest recollection of her father abusing her was when she was about six years old. She knows that she had recently started going to school.

It began when her mother was in hospital giving birth to her sibling, and her father took her into bed with him.

After this, he continued sexually abusing and raping her until she was in her early teens.

Gracey remembers that her sister was jealous of the attention she got, but Gracey says ‘she was younger and I wanted to protect her’. 

She explains that initially, she didn’t understand what he was doing. ‘I didn’t really know, other than it wasn’t pleasant. Then at secondary school I started to feel shame and realise how wrong it was.’

Gracey adds that when she started hearing other children at school talking about sex, ‘I realised I knew too much … I felt “I know what that is, but I shouldn’t”’. 

She thinks she may have had a miscarriage when she was about 12. She had bad bleeding and severe pain, and she remembers her mother shouting at her father about what he had done.

Gracey told a teacher what had happened, and her parents were called into the school. She was taken to see a doctor, but he knew her father and she would not let him examine her.

After this, her mother took her to a hospital. She remembers her legs being in stirrups and being examined, and hearing her mother telling the staff that Gracey was promiscuous, and ‘had lots of boyfriends’. No one asked Gracey for her version of events.

Some time later, she told another teacher at school that her father was abusing her. The teacher said the only way to stop it was to go to the police. Gracey says ‘That was probably right, but it was too frightening’. 

She stopped going to school, and a social worker began visiting her. She remembers there was a discussion with her parents and siblings present, and she was told to draw pictures to show she was being abused, but she refused to do this.

Gracey’s father continued abusing her and she tried to find ways to stop him. ‘I used to sleep zipped up in a sleeping bag or I would fake sleep’ she says. ‘The days when he got drunk were worse.’

She did go to the police once. ‘But they just took me home in a police car … I just wanted to kill myself … I was desperate to leave home.’ 

A few years after she left home, Gracey became concerned that her father might be sexually abusing another young relative. This led to a confrontation with her father, who admitted that he had sexually abused Gracey when she was a child. 

She reported him to the police again, but was subsequently told there was not enough evidence for a prosecution.

Gracey’s relationships with her family members are fractured, and she feels that some of them still do not believe she was abused.

She feels she was judged by people, and let down by people in authority who should have protected her.