Jeramiah says ‘I’ve only known one thing, and that’s how to survive’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Jeramiah describes a childhood of deprivation, neglect, sexual abuse and physical and psychological abuse from his mother.
He felt relieved when he was taken into care, but unsupervised visits from his mother allowed her to continue abusing him in a way that had damaging and lasting consequences on his life.
Jeramiah lived with his mother, brother and sister in squalid conditions. There was no lighting or heating and they used a bedroom as a toilet. His mother was abusive and neglectful of him and his brother, but treated his sister better. He remembers being forced to eat cigarettes and soap, beaten with a belt and locked in a room.
He knows that his grandma contacted social services several times, but they only became involved after his mother accused him of sexually abusing his younger sister. He was at junior school at the time, and he was removed from the family home and placed in a children’s home. (Later, his mother’s partner was sentenced to eight years in prison for the sexual abuse of Jeramiah’s sister.)
At the children’s home Jeramiah was pleased to have regular meals, have his own room and attend the local school. But when his mother was allowed to visit him unsupervised, she repeated to other boys in the home her claim that Jeramiah had abused his sister. From this point, Jeramiah was assaulted and sexually abused by boys in the home. For his protection, he was moved to a separate room but the abuse by one much older boy continued.
This boy began taking Jeramiah into the town centre, public toilets, the bus station and local forest to meet older men. He threatened Jeramiah and told him that he had to ‘do everything’ the men wanted. Jeremiah was still in his pre-teen years at this stage.
He explains that he knew he was gay from an early age. On several occasions, he ran away from the home and when he was picked up by the police he told them he was being forced to be a prostitute. But no action was taken, and he believes the attitude of the police was ‘he’s gay ... he wants it’.
He was moved to another care home but was coerced back into prostitution. He remembers being taken to a house in a big city where he was sexually abused by a group of men. He believes staff at the care home knew what was happening.
Jeremiah was still a young teenager when he was moved to a secure care home. Although he was often unhappy, he describes the two and a half years he spent there as ‘the best’ and says some of the staff were ‘lovely’.
He says that one effect of the abuse he experienced is that he was drawn into violent relationships. It also affected his working life and at one stage he resorted to prostitution, for financial reasons. He has not had any therapy.
However, he now feels he has been able to move forward. He is happily married and running his own business. He comments ‘There’s a fine line between surviving and letting it overcome you’.
Jeramiah believes that people who work with looked-after children need to have sufficient experience to increase their empathy and understanding. He thinks that access by parents to their children in care should always be supervised.
He adds that before sharing his experience with the Truth Project ‘I’ve never had the opportunity to go through this from start to finish’.