Keyla says hospital staff suggested she’d been sexually abused. ‘They wrote a letter, but nothing was done’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Keyla’s family were Catholics; they went to Mass twice on Sundays and sent the children to Catholic schools.
But behind the scenes, her father was a brutal and sadistic abuser, who made her pray for ‘forgiveness’ after he raped her.
Keyla grew up in the 1970s and 80s. She and her siblings were subjected to extreme physical and emotional abuse from as far back as she can remember. Keyla’s father beat them and made them stand naked for hours, sometimes forcing them to hold heavy objects at arm’s length.
If Keyla wet the bed he would make her sit wrapped in the sheets, and she was not allowed to wash before going to school.
He also sexually abused the children. Keyla’s older sibling would try and protect her from their father by sleeping nearest to the door in their shared room, so when he came in at night, he would take her sibling first. But, Keyla says, ‘It didn’t always work like that’.
Keyla thinks her mum was aware of what was going on. She says ‘I’m not making excuses for her’ but she feels compassion for her mother because she was also beaten by her father.
Keyla adds that it was obvious that staff at school knew she and her siblings were neglected. She says ‘They asked if we had eaten and had clean underwear on … if we didn’t go to school, we didn’t get fed’.
The sexual abuse began with her father making her touch him, and perform oral sex on him.
Keyla can now see how confused and conflicted she was, feeling that she was complying with the abuse because she craved affection from her father. She says ‘I would go onto his knee because I wanted someone to love me, so I would sometimes do what he wanted’.
She describes how her father also twisted her religious beliefs as a child to make her feel responsible for the abuse. ‘After he abused me, he made me kneel for hours and beg for forgiveness.’
She continues ‘The first time he had sex with me I was 11’.
This happened the night before a school trip that Keyla was desperate to go on, where he anally raped her. The next day, bleeding and in pain, she padded her pants with cloths. She could hardly walk and when a teacher asked if she was ok, she said she was bleeding from her backside. The teacher insisted it was her period.
When she got home, Keyla told her sibling what had happened. Her sibling tried to fight their father, and got badly injured. When her sibling returned from being treated at the hospital, her dad tortured them. She was not allowed to go to school for quite a while.
Even before that, Keyla says, her dad often kept her off school because he didn’t want anyone to see her injuries. Once in a PE lesson, a teacher saw belt marks on her back. When the school contacted Keyla’s parents about this, they blamed her siblings for the bruising.
The abuse stopped when Keyla left home at the age of 16. She met a man and had children. Although he was manipulative and controlling, she is still glad that she married him because it helped her escape.
She trained for a professional career and for several years was kept busy by her work and family. But when she was forced to take time off due to illness, she had a breakdown.
Keyla was able to access therapy. She had stayed close to her siblings, but says this was the first time she spoke to anyone else about the terrible abuse she suffered as a child.
It took a few attempts to find a counsellor who was right for her, but when she did, ‘she was brilliant … it was like someone wrapping a blanket around me and holding me’.
As an adult, Keyla has read her medical records. She was admitted to emergency departments for injuries several times, and discovered that hospital staff had alerted her GP that they suspected physical and sexual abuse in the family.
But the GP took no action. She says he had looked after three generations of her family and was ‘old school’, but she adds ‘If a hospital is saying they have concerns for a child … that should have been acted on. I was angry when I read that as an adult’.
Based on her experiences, Keyla has a number of suggestions to help keep children safe in the future, emphasising the importance of education for children and adults. She says that health, social care and education professionals need to listen and be aware of the language and signals children may use to communicate that something is wrong, and always act if they have suspicions about abuse.
Keyla raises the difficult and delicate point that for some children, aspects of abuse may be seen as pleasurable because they mistake it for affection. Keyla says that more openness about this would help victims and survivors feel less guilty.
Keyla adds that children need to know who they can safely talk to at school, and this should be somebody separate from their teachers and who will not tell them off. She suggests they should also be given the option to write down their concerns in confidence.
She says she still struggles with the physical side of relationships, but she married for a second time and he is a ‘lovely, understanding man’.
Keyla concludes that after sharing her experience with the Truth Project, ‘I’d like this to help lots of children, but just one would be enough’.