Laurna says ‘I wonder what person I would have been if I grew up in a house with a mum and dad’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Laurna grew up deprived of love and nurturing, and was sexually abused at home and in the care system.
She is still hoping to receive the support she has needed all her life.
Laurna’s mum left home when she was a baby. She and her siblings were left with a man she refers to as her dad, but she says he was not her biological father. He was physically and sexually abusive, and she remembers he would have other men in the house who ‘used to do stuff to us’.
She adds that her dad used to ‘beat us up pretty bad’ and she still has scars from his attacks. She says ‘I can never understand how my dad got away with it and I can never understand why we were never taken out of that house’.
Eventually the children were taken into care when Laurna was about nine or 10, after her dad severely beat one of her siblings. Laurna was separated from her siblings and taken to a children's home.
The head of the home was called Mr Jones, and Laurna describes him as ‘one nasty horrible man’. He would sit Laurna on his knee and touch her. She says ‘I just used to close my eyes and wish it was over’.
But she adds that because of the sexual abuse she had experienced at home, she probably thought that what Mr Jones was doing was ‘normal’.
She stayed in the home for about a year and after that ‘I just got passed around to loads of other kids' homes’. During that time she experienced physical and emotional abuse from staff. ‘They got pleasure out of doing it’ she says. She never went to an outside school.
Laurna’s mum died when she was about eight, and she can remember someone coming into her room to tell her the news. She has wondered whether this was why she was taken advantage of. She thinks that perhaps abusers ‘pinpoint you as they know that you have no one to turn to and no one to talk to’.
When she was a teenager, Laurna says, she was quite wild. She ran away when she was in her mid teens and was sent to a different home where she was locked up for long periods. She says ‘I used to cry every day, I couldn't understand what I had done, as all I had done was run away from somewhere that I didn't want to be’.
She adds ‘Not one person stopped and asked me why I was unhappy and why I was unsettled’.
She continued running away, and during this time she was raped and she had a baby.
When Laurna left care she was given a few basic possessions and placed in a homeless unit, where she was raped by a male member of staff.
She got married and had children but says there was a ‘wall’ between her and her husband. She had a nervous breakdown and lost custody of her children. She told her social worker about the sexual abuse she had suffered and then spoke to the police. She discovered that Mr Jones had already been convicted but had died in prison.
After disclosing the abuse to her social worker, Laurna says she did not receive any support.
Laurna suffers with mental health problems, has attempted suicide and has abused alcohol. She struggles to manage her anger, has nightmares and is unable to work.
She has seen a psychologist but her treatment has not been consistent.
Laurna feels strongly that when children are in the care system they need one key worker to follow them wherever they go, so they have consistency. ‘When a child gets taken away from parents they need someone there for them, and someone to talk to’ she says.
She reflects that when she was growing up, no one talked to her about ‘life or being a woman … the birds and the bees or what happens to women’s bodies in puberty, pregnancy and menopause’.
Laurna has no faith in social workers, although she knows ‘there will be some good ones out there, but I didn't have one’. She said that nobody stopped to ask why her behaviour was so bad.
She is aware that she is still very affected by her traumatic experiences and says ‘I don't want to be like this anymore, I want help’.