Mariella says if the police had believed her report of abuse, it would have saved her daughter
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
When she was a teenager in the 1970s, Mariella tried to report that her father was raping her, but she was called a liar.
Twenty years later, Mariella discovered that he had sexually abused her daughter. She says ‘I had tried to tell them before … it all would have been different if the police had believed me’.
Mariella describes being physically, emotionally and sexually abused by her father. This began when she was about eight years old, and continued until she was in her mid teens. She shared a bedroom with her sibling and has recollections of their father abusing them too.
He was a violent and sadistic man, who as well as raping and assaulting her, used to terrorise her. He often tied her up and locked her in a cupboard, and threatened her.
She remembers being tied up one day and desperately hoping her sibling wouldn’t discover her when they came into the bathroom. She says ‘I was shaking in fear in case they found me and saw me like that. I was so ashamed’.
Mariella explains that a lot of the abuse occurred when her mother was in the house and she believes that her mother must have known about it.
One day when she was in her early teens, she was summoned out of her school class and taken to the police station. Her mother was there, claiming that a neighbour had raped Mariella.
Mariella was questioned in front of her mother and examined by a police doctor, which she found extremely traumatising. He pronounced that Mariella was not a virgin, whereupon both her mother and a police officer slapped and verbally abused her.
Mariella tried to tell them that the neighbour hadn’t raped her but that her father had been abusing and raping her for years. Her mother called her a liar, and she was subjected to more humiliating treatment by the police.
No action was taken, and she says ‘I was made to believe I was lying about what happened….’
The abuse stopped after Mariella ran away to her best friend’s house. Her father persuaded her to return home by promising it would never happen again. Mariella says it never did.
Some years later Mariella met a man, moved away and had her first child. She later moved back to the area, feeling that the past was behind her.
However, when her daughter was a young teenager, she told Mariella she had been sexually abused by her grandfather. Mariella was so devastated by this revelation that she tried to take her own life. She says she can’t bear to know the details of the abuse but the police were informed and Mariella’s father was arrested.
She provided information to the police about nearly everything she had experienced, but held back some details as she didn’t want her family or strangers in a courtroom to hear them. Once again, her mother said that Mariella was a liar.
Mariella’s father pleaded guilty and was given a lengthy jail sentence, but she is not sure exactly what he admitted to, and no one has ever explained this to her or her daughter.
The abuse had a lasting impact on Mariella. She says ‘You carry it for the rest of your life. The fear of it doesn't go away’. She developed obsessive compulsive disorder.
She has phobias and experiences nightmares and flashbacks which can be triggered by medical procedures. Her physical health has also suffered.
Mariella feels she was badly let down by the police and would like them to apologise. She believes that health service professionals should receive training to improve sensitivity and responsiveness to the needs of survivors of sexual violence and abuse.
She suggests there should be a designated person in health services that victims and survivors of abuse can notify, so they can inform relevant staff and advise on the necessary adjustments.
In the last few months, Mariella has been seeing a counsellor who, she says ‘has changed my life completely. I wish I had found her years ago …’