Lily

When Lily was young she and her siblings were placed into care, but not all in the same place, much to her disappointment. For the first few years, she and some of her family were in a religious care institution where they did not experience any abuse.

But she and one of her siblings were moved to another place, which she describes as a ‘workhouse’ rather than a home. She adds it was ‘cold’, ‘religious’, there was ‘no warmth’ and living there was a matter of ‘survival of the fittest’.

Following this time, Lily was moved to a third care home to join some of her other siblings. She says this home did not provide a supportive environment for children but instead pitted child against child, and they ‘just had to survive it’.

Here Lily experienced a range of abuse, including beatings and sexual abuse by older boys. She was not yet a teenager.

Lily felt unable to confide in her siblings. She told the adults running the home about the sexual abuse. However, she was not believed and instead was blamed for what had happened to her.

Her behaviour was compared to that of her mother, who she never saw. Lily feels that even as a young child she was labelled as a sexual predator whose behaviour needed to be monitored.

She says a range of documents accompanied her from home to home, identifying how she had been labelled. These documents were written by professionals charged with responsibility for her, such as doctors, school medical officers, psychiatrists and the head of care of the local children’s department.

Lily says that the professionals who treated her this way led her to feeling ‘total abandonment’, and ‘condemned to live with the harm’. 

A few years ago, Lily was approached unexpectedly by the police. She says she later received an apology from social services for what had happened to her.