Keri says ‘The worst thing was the amount of adults I spoke to who did nothing’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
As a young teenager, Keri was subjected to continual sexual abuse by her father and a male neighbour.
Several adults, some in authority, knew about the abuse, but no one protected her.
For as far back as she can remember, Keri’s father was physically and emotionally abusive, and very controlling towards her and her mother.
When Keri was in her early teens, she heard her father outside her bedroom. He had made a gap in the door, and she could see that he was masturbating outside her room. She tried different ways to deter him, even changing her clothes in the wardrobe and once confronting him, but she says ‘he made no effort to hide his behaviour. My room was not my sanctuary’.
Keri’s father began touching her, and rubbing himself against her in narrow spaces in the house. He left pornography where she would see it.
She thought about telling her mum, but knew that she was equally frightened of her husband. Keri says ‘He was angry all the time. He had a terrible temper and me trying to thwart him made it worse, so it was a choice between one version of abuse or another’.
When she was in her mid teens, Keri started babysitting for neighbours who were friends with her parents. One evening, the husband, Kriss, came home early, pinned Keri against the wall and pushed his tongue in her mouth. She recalls ‘It was disgusting’. She adds that she couldn’t scream because she didn’t want to scare the children, but she managed to break free and run home.
Keri told her mother she didn’t want to babysit any more, but her mother told her not to be stupid. Over the following year, Kriss continued sexually abusing her every time she babysat, sometimes even in front of his children. Sometimes he forced her to masturbate him.
She describes how she dreaded the weeknight that she always had to go to Kriss’s house. One day, she plucked up the courage and told a youth leader at her church about the abuse. This person told the pastor and his wife, who made Keri pray, but took no other action.
Keri says this ‘reinforced my belief there was something wrong with me’.
Some time later, Keri discovered that the youth leader had also contacted a national children’s charity, but was told it had to be Keri’s decision to report the abuse.
Keri says that her behaviour at school must have altered, because her form teacher spoke to her. Keri gave some details of the abuse, and this was passed to a senior teacher, who called Keri’s father to see him, and then let him take Keri home.
She remembers what a terrible mood her father was in. ‘He couldn’t tell mum why, but just lashed out at all of us’ she says.
Keri continues ‘The next day, the teacher told me quite proudly what he’d done, as if he had solved the situation. I started to feel that no adult would defend me’.
Some time after this, Keri told her mother that her father and the neighbour were sexually abusing her. Her mother said she couldn’t stop babysitting because it would be embarrassing as the neighbours were friends.
Keri’s mother claimed she had spoken to Keri’s father, that ‘it’s all sorted’ and that there was no need to mention it again. Keri is sure that this wasn’t true, and her mother started drinking heavily after their conversation.
The abuse ended when Keri left home to train for a career.
Keri married a man who abused her for a number of years before she left him. She says that she used to lose her temper with her children over small issues that she saw as a ‘lack of respect’. When she had counselling, she was able to understand the reasons for this, and address them.
She suffers with feelings of guilt and shame about the abuse. Despite the abuse she endured, she says ‘it wasn’t that bad’, but she worries that Kriss may have abused his own daughters. Even though she did tell several adults she was being abused, and none of them helped her, she feels she should have done more to stop the perpetrators.
Keri says that when she was a teenager, ‘no one talked about abuse’. She feels strongly that children should be listened to, and allowed to ‘set the pace’ if they want to talk about their concerns or possibly disclose abuse.