Warnings from her parents about ‘stranger danger’ did not protect Lara from sexual abuse by a man she knew
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
During the time Lara was being sexually abused by a music teacher, she didn’t have the knowledge or the words to understand what was happening.
As an adult, she realised the implications of his behaviour, and was horrified at the thought he probably abused other children.
Lara describes her family life as ‘normal’. She started secondary school in the 1970s. She wanted to learn to play an instrument, and joined a group of children who had lessons with a peripatetic music teacher, Mr Donald.
She says she was really keen on playing and worked hard practising, but some of the school teachers complained about her missing their lessons for music tuition.
Lara’s mum suggested she ask Mr Donald for private music lessons. He agreed, and arranged to teach her sometimes at home and sometimes at school. He offered to drive her home after the lessons in school.
Before long, he suggested Lara should have more lessons so she could take an exam, and that it would be better to have the lessons in the school music department. This was in a separate building on the school site, and the practice rooms were sound-proofed.
The lessons took place after everyone else had gone home. Lara says ‘At first it was fine, but fairly quickly it changed’. Mr Donald started standing close to her and touching the inside of her leg as she played.
Lara recalls ‘For me as a kid, there was a sense of knowing something was going on which I knew wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what to say or how to stop it. I was very quiet and I never challenged an adult’.
As the weeks went by, Mr Donald began touching her genitals and masturbating her. She says ‘At 13 I had zero sexual experience and no idea what it was about. I just felt I had to put up with it in order to do what I want … play music’.
She adds that she also had a sense that no one would believe her, and that she would get into trouble if she said anything. Mr Donald started making her masturbate him, and she remembers him telling her ‘You don’t tell anyone what’s been going on; it’s our secret between the two of us’.
Lara says she wasn’t frightened of him at first. But the older she got, the more aware she became that he was quite arrogant and opinionated, and seemed ‘powerful’. She remembers feeling relieved when the day of her lesson had passed, and anxious as it drew closer.
The abuse continued until she left school at the age of 18. Mr Donald, who was in his 30s and married with a child, asked her to continue having lessons with him, but she said no.
Lara went to university and did try talking to a counsellor, but did not find this helpful.
Over the following years, she began to think more about what had happened, from the perspective of an adult. She says that as she became aware she had been sexually abused as a child, ‘it was a relief to be able to understand it, but I still had no idea what to do about it’.
She started to think that Mr Donald probably abused other pupils. She made enquiries and discovered that there had been complaints about him, and he no longer taught in the borough. She says she felt sick at the thought he had had access to hundreds of children in different schools.
Lara still felt unable to talk to anyone about the abuse. She heard her mother making a derogatory comment about girls who had been sexually abused by a celebrity – words to the effect that they wanted a relationship with him – and that reinforced her feeling that it was pointless saying anything.
She thinks it would have been unlikely any teachers at school would have picked up that she was being abused, as she was always very quiet. But she thinks it would have been helpful if there had been a designated person at school she could have talked to.
She adds that education for parents about child sexual abuse would also help protect children. She says ‘I’d had the usual warnings about “Don’t get into a car with someone you don’t know”, but I did know him and he’d met my parents’.