Kristen suffered cruelty from her foster mother and sexual abuse from her foster father
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Kristen was placed with a foster family because her mum had significant mental health difficulties and was unable to care for her.
She suffered emotional, physical, racial and sexual abuse while in foster care. Her social worker did not respond to possible signs of abuse, such as bruises on Kristen.
Kristen was fostered from a young age. When she was seven years old, she was placed with a family she thinks her mother knew. Her foster mother told her that her mother was a bad person and it was presented to her that the family were ‘saving her from a bad life’.
In fact, she was abused, demeaned and treated ‘like a slave’ by the foster mother. During the week, the foster father worked away from home. When he returned at weekends, his wife stopped abusing Kristen.
Kristen says she was his ‘favourite’ and she developed a close relationship with him. But his favourable treatment of her turned out to be grooming, and he went on to sexually abuse her. Kristen was also sexually abused by the foster family’s sons.
She had a female social worker, but she rarely spent any time alone with her. When her social worker visited the foster family home, Kristen was always sent up to her room. Kristen says that the social worker often noticed bruises on her but never asked Kristen how she had got them – she only spoke to her foster mother who lied about the bruising.
Kristen tried several times to speak to her social worker, but the social worker did not respond and Kristen began to think what was happening to her was ‘normal’. Because she had no one to talk to she would ‘sink back inside’ herself.
When she was younger, Kristen enjoyed school and saw it as a refuge from the abuse at home. Sometimes the foster mother kept her off school as a punishment. As she got older, Kristen says she became confrontational in school. The foster carers told her social worker that Kristen was ‘playing up’ but the social worker did not ask Kristen if anything was wrong.
Kristen began running away from home, but when the police picked her up, they simply returned her back to the foster parents without questioning her. She adds that because her foster mother was aggressive and got into fights, she was known to the police. She now wonders whether some people, including her social worker, were scared of her foster mother.
When she was 15, Kristen chose to leave foster care and moved into a bedsit with support from her social worker. At this point, she says her social worker acknowledged that the foster mother had not been an appropriate carer, saying ‘perhaps she wasn’t the right person to leave you with’.
Kristen is still living with the effects of all the abuse she endured as a child. She suffers from lack of confidence and she abuses drugs and alcohol. She has been drawn into abusive relationships and suffered domestic violence.
She thinks her social worker could have done more to protect her. She says ‘I just wanted some support – I had nothing’. She feels passionately that children should be cared for by people who are going to look after them, and that children should be listened to and believed. She would like to see children in foster care involved in an independent review of foster care.