Megyn says the only time her teacher was ‘nice’ to her was when he sexually abused her
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Megyn describes herself as ‘an extremely withdrawn and shy little girl’ with no friends.
She was labelled a ‘dunce’ by a teacher, who separated her from her classmates and sexually abused her.
Megyn grew up in the 1960s and 70s in a rural community. She was quite frightened of her ‘domineering’ parents.
At school, she found it hard to relate to other children. ‘I found the noise bewildering … I was the child who played on their own.’ She did what she describes as ‘zoning out’ and used to get into trouble for this.
When Megyn was 10 years old, she was put in a class with a teacher, Mr Jones. She says she was already terrified of him. She was one of a group of pupils he labelled ‘dunces or troublemakers’ and segregated from the others.
Instead of joining in the lessons, Mr Jones made these children write out the Lord’s Prayer repeatedly.
Mr Jones also made Megyn and the small group stay with him, supposedly for additional tuition. During these sessions, he would sit next to Megyn, take her hand and put it on his penis, sometimes through his trouser pocket. He would also touch her inner thighs. After this abuse, he would go into the store cupboard. She now thinks he went there to masturbate.
He also touched Megyn in the water during swimming lessons.
Megyn says that with no comfort or support from her family at home, and being bullied by other children at school, she appreciated the feeling that someone was being nice to her and giving her attention.
She remembers smiling at Mr Jones and wanting to please him, and she says she still feels very disturbed about the way she reacted. ‘I knew it wasn’t right, but it was the only time he was nice to me, so I let him do it’ she says.
Megyn describes how Mr Jones also psychologically abused her. She liked drawing, but he would tear up her work in front of the class. She thinks this was another way of making her feel excluded from the mainstream. ‘I found it overwhelmingly isolating’ she says.
Megyn started to self-harm, but no one at school or home showed any concern about this.
When she moved to secondary school, Megyn says she was ‘lumped in’ with a group of disruptive pupils. She made friends with a girl she was seated next to – not because she liked her but because she was frightened of her.
The girl had a boyfriend from the travelling community. One day, when Megyn was in her early or mid teens, she was out walking alone when the boyfriend’s brother approached her. She thinks he was in his 30s.
The man suggested going for a walk and then he knocked Megyn to the ground and raped her. She vividly remembers the excruciating pain of the assault, and that there was a lot of blood.
Megyn went home and had a bath. She didn’t dare tell her parents because she was sure they would blame her. She went to tell her ‘friend’, who just laughed.
Megyn has suffered from depression and she continued self-harming into her 20s, but she has now stopped this. She also suffers flashbacks, feelings of guilt and has had an eating disorder. She worried about her children going to school.
She says that as an adult, she has had some counselling but it was not helpful. She has also told her parents about the abuse by Mr Jones, but they didn’t believe her.
Megyn feels that teachers should be trained to pick up signs of possible abuse at school, such as self-harming, and also to recognise that not all children learn in the same way.
Megyn says her children are doing well and she is proud of them. She has spoken to them about the dangers of child sexual abuse.
She campaigns for causes she feels strongly about, and is passionate about allowing people who have had adverse experiences to be heard.