Leonora says ‘There was so long when people didn’t believe me or take it seriously’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
As a vulnerable teenager, Leonora was groomed over a number of years by a youth leader, who began sexually abusing her when she was 18.
She feels that because of her age, many people in authority did not see her experience as child sexual abuse, even though she was 13 when the abuser started grooming her.
Leonora’s parents worked full time and when she was about 11, she joined a youth group connected to a local church.
On the first day there, she met a leader, Paul.
She relates ‘Around that time I started to develop an eating disorder. I had a poor relationship with my parents and I was struggling at school, sometimes staying up working all night’.
Paul noticed she didn’t look well, and he asked her questions about herself. ‘I guess he became someone I could talk to when I couldn’t talk to my parents. I began to confide in him’ Leonora says.
Sometimes Paul offered to give Leonora a lift home. She recalls ‘We would often sit and chat in his car outside my house. About how I was struggling with my parents and at school. About my eating disorder’.
‘At that point he might give me a hug but he didn’t do anything obviously inappropriate. He was kind, and seemed to understand.’
This pattern of behaviour continued for about four years, until Leonora finished school.
Paul continued to encourage Leonora to confide in him. Sometimes she would cry after these conversations. He began giving her back massages when they were alone together in the office. He explained that he was ‘a tactile person’ and sought her reassurance that it was ok for him to do this.
Paul seemed keen to help her address her eating disorder.
The touching progressed to him touching her under her clothes, and occasionally touching her breast and backside. ‘It was really brief but I remember being nervous about him seeing my underwear.’
Leonora remembers wondering if it was normal, but says ‘I really trusted him; he was married, I thought this can’t be weird but also thought how do I question him? I was afraid of losing his friendship’.
She had never had a boyfriend and Paul knew this. He began to involve her in ‘horse play’, wrestling her to the floor and lying on top of her. She knew she didn’t like this but didn't know what to do.
On one occasion, Leonora babysat for Paul and stayed the night. He contrived to be in the house alone with her, then pinned her down onto a bed and tried to undress her. He stopped after she repeatedly yelled at him to stop.
Leonora left for university but her mental health was poor. She was told there was a three-year waiting list for eating disorder services. She often returned home. Although she was uncomfortable with some of the things he did, she still felt Paul was an important source of support to her and she continued seeing him.
After confiding in some friends and a tutor about her confusion about the relationship with Paul, Leonora wrote to the church to tell them how he had been behaving towards her.
She was invited to attend a meeting with Paul and two church officials. Paul expressed his remorse and accepted full responsibility. She was told a plan was put in place in response to her disclosure.
Leonora later discovered that the church had not responded to the incident as a safeguarding matter and did not follow through with the plan. In fact, the church recommended and supported Paul to train for a senior role.
Leonora continued to feel distressed about her experiences with Paul and she told her parents what had happened. She also spoke to a therapist who dismissed the idea that she had been abused.
When Leonora was a young adult, she reported Paul to the police. She felt they took her seriously but Paul claimed that she had consented to everything he did, and the case was not taken forward.
Leonora feels that many professionals failed to appreciate the effect of the abuse she experienced. ‘I almost wish I had been raped as there would have been something tangible for people to “see”’, she says. ‘I’ve had years of people treating it as nothing … it was a huge abuse of trust and vulnerability.’
She still feels appalled at the church’s response to her report and that no safeguarding procedures were followed. She recalls ‘No one in the meetings took notes’ and adds that afterwards, the officials in the meeting said they could not remember what had been said.
She thinks they failed to understand, or ignored, the fact that Paul groomed her, and then sexually abused her as a young vulnerable adult, often on church premises.
Leonora also feels let down that the church did not offer to support her with counselling.
The police were concerned about the issue of consent, because Leonora was 18 when Paul began sexually abusing her. But Leonora points out that the grooming started when she was ‘very much a child … I was not an adult, I was 13’.
Leonora still feels profoundly affected by the abuse she experienced, and this is made worse by not being taken seriously by people who should have taken action or supported her. She finds it very hard to trust people and has never been in a relationship.
She would like professionals to have a better understanding of grooming and understand that a lot of sexual abuse takes place within established relationships. She says that professionals should listen to the victims’ and survivors’ experiences of the impact of abuse and not prejudge what they believe it should be.
Leonora adds that churches and other institutions should have rigorous and transparent safeguarding procedures.
Leonora considers that focusing on the age of the victim does not take account of the power that abusers have if they are in positions of trust. She says ‘There is a massive imbalance of power … Paul abused his position. He violated my boundaries and my trust and this will have consequences for me forever, and I don't think the law recognises that’.