Linton says that in the strict care home where he lived ‘you wouldn’t dare speak up’ about sexual abuse
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Linton was sent to a children’s home when he was 10.
The supervisor sexually abused him, and many decades later he still struggles with the repercussions of his early experiences.
Linton grew up in the 1960s and 70s. He was taken into foster care when he was six years old and sent to a children’s home when he was 10.
Soon after he arrived, Rufus, the supervisor of the home, began sexually abusing him. Rufus made Linton strip naked and stand in front of his desk while he touched him sexually. He also made Linton get in the bath in front of him and sometimes came into his room at night and touched his genitals.
Linton didn’t tell anyone about the abuse at the time. ‘Children were seen and not heard’, he says, adding that in such a strict environment ‘you wouldn’t dare speak up’. He knows that he did have a social worker, but says he had no access to a telephone or any way of contacting them.
By the time he reached his early teens, Linton was clear that what Rufus was doing was wrong, and he ran away from the home and went back to the city where he was born. After a brief spell with foster parents he was put into a boys’ hostel, but was ‘booted out’ to look after himself when he was in his mid teens.
In the following years, Linton says, he was ‘totally screwed up’. He suffered from severe depression and spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. He became involved in criminal behaviour, got into a lot of trouble with the police and spent several periods in youth detention and prison.
Linton says that when he was in his early 20s ‘I straightened myself out’. However, he finds it hard to trust people most of the time, and says he is becoming more unsociable as he gets older.
After his mother died, he obtained his file from the children’s home and he says reading social services reports about his parents and home life made him realise ‘exactly why I did what I did’.
Linton would like all children to have access to someone they feel comfortable with who will keep an eye on them. ‘I had no one to turn to’ he says. He adds that everyone in positions of authority over children ‘should be thoroughly checked out’.
He has a good relationship with his children and has been referred for therapy.