Kai says the priority should be to protect children, not organisations
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Many jokes and comments were made at Kai’s school about the inappropriate tendencies of the teacher who sexually abused her.
But when this teacher was charged with abuse, Kai says many staff and pupils defended him.
Kai identifies as female now, but at the time the abuse happened, everyone, including her, saw her as a boy.
She attended a mixed boarding school where the boys and girls were separated into single-sex accommodation. Each house had a master and a tutor who had their own rooms.
Younger boys shared dormitories, but as they got older they had their own rooms.
Kai joined the school when she was about 14, and had a room of her own. The house tutor, Mr Smith, used to come to the doorway on the pretext of checking how she was settling in. ‘We had normal conversations about whether I liked my new school’ she says.
Over the course of a few months, Mr Smith started coming into Kai’s bedroom, then sitting on the bed. ‘I had no understanding of grooming’ says Kai. After a while Mr Smith began touching and groping Kai.
One day Kai told the tutor that what he was doing was wrong. Mr Smith made out that he was shocked at this suggestion, and insisted he was just showing Kai affection. But after this the abuse stopped.
Some time later, Kai shared what had happened with a school counsellor. The counsellor told Kai she would have to report the abuse. Mr Smith was suspended and a police investigation followed.
Kai comments that it was ironic that many people in the school had previously made comments about Mr Smith being ‘creepy’, but when he was arrested lots of them seemed not to want to believe he was an abuser.
During the trial Mr Smith denied all charges but he was convicted of sexually abusing several boys, including Kai. Mr Smith received a long prison sentence. Kai says that up to the point she heard the other boys giving evidence, she had tried to minimise the abuse she experienced.
Kai struggles with feeling that everything is her fault, and has very strong emotional responses to some situations. She is highly vigilant about any kind of predatory behaviour and hates feeling in any way out of control or that anyone is crossing boundaries with her.
She firmly believes that too often, people having solitary access to children leads to breaches of trust, and that residential schools should be very careful about staff having access to children's rooms.
Kai adds that organisations should operate under the assumption that it is possible abusers are already among their staff, and not simply focus on checking new arrivals.
She creates art that deals with the issues of abuse and mental health, and feels proud of how she has dealt with her experiences.