Micah’s social worker was worried about her, but was not allowed to make extra visits to check on her
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When Micah was eight years old, she and her brother were taken to a children’s home and then placed with foster parents.
‘I thought they were going to love us and care for us, but they didn’t’ she says.
More than 40 years later, Micah sobs as she recalls the terrible way she was treated as a child.
Her foster father, Norman, physically and emotionally abused her. He hit her with belt buckles and other hard implements. She often had painful and visible injuries, but she says she took care at school to keep these hidden.
Micah was not allowed to have friends and was made to eat food she disliked. Norman terrorised her with a vicious dog that he kept, threatening that he would feed her to it if she stepped out of line. Micah describes how petrified she was and says she did not dare talk to anyone about what was happening.
A couple of years after Micah arrived, Norman moved out to live with another woman, who had a child. Micah was sent to stay with them sometimes because they wanted a babysitter, and she was treated just as badly in this house.
One night when she was staying, she woke to find Norman on top of her, raping her. This was the first of many times he did this.
When she was a young teenager, she went to school one day and was unable to sit down because the injuries on her buttocks were so painful. A teacher noticed and questioned Micah, then told her to go home and contact social services.
Micah ran home and got the number, then phoned her social worker from a telephone box. She was removed from the foster home and taken to the police station, where she was told to remove her clothes so that her injuries could be photographed. After that she was given a medical examination which established that her hymen had been ruptured.
Norman was arrested and charged but he was allowed bail and absconded before the trial. He was never apprehended and it was believed that he had left the country. Micah says ‘He has never been brought to justice’.
Micah remained in care until she was 18, when she was given council accommodation. By that time, she had a young baby. She was not given any support or counselling. ‘I was given a flat and told to get on with my life’, she says.
She has recently been trying to access her care records and the police files of the investigation, but has been told that both are missing. She has managed to make contact with her former social worker, who told her that she had been worried about Micah but her manager would not allow her to make additional visits.
Micah’s education was badly affected by her difficult childhood and she left school without any qualifications. She suffers with depression, anxiety, flashbacks and panic attacks. ‘I can’t make friends with anyone … I don’t trust people’ she says.
Micah believes that institutions should be required to take better care of records and she would like to see the process of accessing them made easier. She would also like to see more counselling and support provided for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.
She adds that social workers who have concerns about clients should be supported by their managers and given sufficient time to investigate.
Micah is waiting for one-to-one counselling. ‘I feel like I’m just existing in life’ she says.