Jayson says ‘I always hope and pray all this trauma will go, but it just doesn’t’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Jayson was terrified of going to school, because he was being sexually abused by the caretaker.
He feels the abuse has affected every aspect of his life – from a lack of education, to the way he parents his own children and his continuing mental health issues.
Jayson grew up in a large family with several older siblings who had a different father to him. His mother suffered domestic abuse, drank heavily and was violent towards her children.
Jayson says his mother wanted to reconcile with her first husband and she saw him as an obstacle to that, so he was ‘passed from one household to the next’. His older siblings also blamed him for the fact their father had left, and they were very cruel to him. They would lock him in cupboards, and physically torture him. His mother knew, but did not protect him.
The school caretaker who sexually abused Jayson knew what his home life was like. He taunted Jayson with the fact he had a different father and told him ‘You are not one of them … you could be taken away’.
Jayson says that despite the abuse it was the only family he had, and he was terrified of being removed so he did what the caretaker wanted.
He says ‘I feared school … even now I can’t learn or take things in because of the fear’. Sometimes he was so scared and disturbed he would soil himself at school. He often played truant to avoid the caretaker.
Jayson recalls a social worker visiting the family, and one day when he got home the police were waiting for him. It turned out that the caretaker had abused another boy and the police wanted to interview Jayson and physically examine him.
He remembers screaming because he didn’t want to go, and his mother being too drunk to speak to the police. There was no follow-up by social services or the police, and Jayson doesn’t know if the caretaker was charged or convicted of abuse.
After this, Jayson’s mother moved the family to temporary accommodation. He thinks she may have done this because she was ashamed.
His mother left him to his own devices and he says ‘I more or less left school at the age of 11’. As a young teenager, Jayson says he began sniffing glue, self-harming and getting into trouble ‘to try and blank it out’.
He was regularly told by teachers that he was ‘thick’ and ‘backward’, but no one tried to do anything about the fact he couldn’t read or write, or that he often had accidents rather than go to the toilet.
Jayson says ‘The damage that happened to me … that was my make-up for the rest of my life’.
As an adult he still suffers with physical injuries caused by the sexual abuse. He struggles with poor mental health. He says he is triggered into ‘panic mode’ by many different situations and has suicidal thoughts. But he says ‘I cling onto that little bit of hope and I pull myself out of it’.
His GP has been very supportive and enabled him to access counselling, which Jayson says has helped him in many ways.
Jayson has children of his own and has done all he can to give them a safe and stable home. However, he feels he has often been over-protective of them because of his experiences.
He feels that professionals such as social workers and teachers have a responsibility to watch for signs of abuse and to ask the questions that will help to protect children, rather than turning a blind eye to difficult situations.
Jayson says he never envies people who are financially better off – he is not materialistic – but when he sees people who appear to be at ease with who they are, he wishes he could be like that.