When Luciana was assaulted as an adult, she began to make sense of her childhood experiences
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
When Luciana was a toddler, she was placed in the care of her grandparents.
For her whole life, she has lived with distressing memories and feelings from her childhood that she struggles to make sense of.
Luciana’s parents met and then married very young when they discovered they were expecting a baby. She has been told her mother never felt approved of by her affluent, middle class parents-in-law and she returned to her country of origin.
Luciana describes growing up in an ‘emotionally cold’ environment with her grandparents. She was told she was a bad person and that she was ‘odd’, like her mother. The only warmth she remembers experiencing as a young child, was from her grandparents’ housekeeper.
She has recollections of being in her grandparents’ bed with feelings she could not understand, while being aware she was upset and frightened.
She also remembers travelling to another city by train with her grandfather to see her father. During this visit she was taken to a hotel or large house to attend a party. She remembers feeling happy at first, as there was music playing, but this memory is replaced by images of being naked, being turned over and sexually abused by a group of men, and a feeling of being crushed.
Luciana has repeatedly experienced nightmares about being crushed, having strange tastes in her mouth and odd perceptions for days at a time.
She believes her grandmother knew what was happening to her. She once overheard her grandfather saying ‘It doesn’t matter as little children don’t remember things’.
Luciana says there were concerns about her within her primary school – she was noted to be a withdrawn, quiet and unhappy child. There was also concern expressed over some drawings she produced at school, but she believes they were related to her being without her mother.
She remembers feeling there was no one she could talk to. After both her grandparents died, Luciana says she was relieved because from the age of eight, she spent the rest of her childhood living with her father and his second wife.
Luciana relates that she has struggled to get her own experiences of childhood recognised within her family; her accounts have been denied and she finds this very hard.
Throughout her young adulthood, Luciana suffered very poor physical and mental health. She was unable to work and felt so angry she could not function properly.
She drank heavily, and describes being confused about her sexuality – hating intimacy yet having ‘no idea how to say no’.
Luciana has engaged in counselling to try to unravel the trauma she had experienced, but she says it was not until she was raped at the age of 50 that she began to make sense of what had happened to her before. The rape made connections to the feelings she had as a child, as she began experiencing significant flashbacks from her young years.
She says ‘It still causes me immense pain to try to unpick what happened to me’.
Luciana feels strongly that professionals should have an obligation to report concerns they have about children, rather than worrying about upsetting people.
She would also like there to be more professionals who can communicate with children through play, as young children often do not have the language to describe what has happened to them in words.