Laoise told her social worker she didn’t want to get hurt any more
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Laoise’s mother often had to stay in hospital, and Laoise would be sent to stay with foster parents.
She was sexually abused by an older girl in the foster family.
Laiose explains that her mum, who was a single parent, worked hard to provide for her children. But she had complex mental health issues and sometimes stayed in hospital for months.
When this happened, Laoise and her siblings were placed in foster homes, usually separately. When she was seven years old, Laoise went to stay with a woman her mum was close to, who had a daughter called Lisa. Lisa was in her mid teens.
On the second night of Laoise’s stay with the family, Lisa got into bed with her and started touching her, then penetrated the young child’s vagina with her fingers.
After that, Laoise says the abuse became more violent. Lisa was rough and would make Laoise touch her in the same way. Sometimes the older girl would use different objects to penetrate Laoise and make her bleed. If Laoise tried to resist, Lisa would grab her neck and squeeze it.
Laoise saw Lisa as two different people. At night she found her ‘terrifying’ but by day she was polite and kind.
The abuse stopped one day and Laoise never understood why.
Because Laoise’s mum was good friends with Lisa’s mum, even when she was not in hospital, they would sometimes all go and stay with the family during the school holidays.
Laoise would tell her mum she didn’t want to go, and have tantrums. She didn’t talk about the abuse, and her mother dismissed her protests. Laoise says she does not blame her mum.
She told her social worker that she hated Lisa’s family and that she didn’t want to get hurt anymore. She asked them to find her somewhere else to stay during the holidays but was simply told they weren’t her foster family anymore.
Laoise finds it difficult to trust people in positions of authority. She has bad dreams about the abuse and she doesn’t like being touched or hugged.
She says it is vital that children are listened to and believed and that even subtle signs of possible abuse should be looked at. She thinks there should be more regular checks on foster placements and that fostered children should be placed with their siblings. She says, ‘there’s safety in numbers’.
Laoise shared her experience with the Truth Project in writing. Before this, she had only disclosed her abuse once before.