Mildred feels strongly that sexual abuse is no less significant because it is ‘historic’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Mildred was sexually abused by a schoolteacher in the 1950s.
Her report was not taken seriously at the time, and she says the response was the same when she reported it decades later.
Mildred was born in the final years of the Second World War. She was brought up to be respectful to adults and authority. She describes her mother as ‘caring and loving’.
When she was eight years old, Mildred was sexually abused by a schoolteacher at her junior school, Mr Johnson. Her classroom was in a building separate from the main school and Mr Johnson would encourage Mildred to stay there at lunchtime on the pretext that he wanted her to help him mark exercise books.
Mildred says she enjoyed the responsibility, but this ‘special treatment’ was a way for the teacher to groom her. He started kissing her on the lips and put his hands down her underwear and touched her.
She remembers being frightened and trying to get away from Mr Johnson and hide in a corner of the room.
The abuse happened several times. Mildred says she didn’t fully understand what was going on, and she did not feel she could tell anyone. She remembers thinking about telling her parents but she was too fearful and awkward; she says nothing to do with sex was ever discussed at home.
However, it emerged that Mr Johnson was also sexually abusing another girl who was one of Mildred’s friends. The girl told her mother, who passed the information on to Mildred’s mother.
Mildred’s mother questioned Mildred, who managed to overcome her embarrassment and tell her what Mr Johnson had been doing to her. The parents of both girls went to the local education department, which was opposite the school. Mildred and her friend were left outside the room while their parents met with officials.
She remembers the meeting went on for a long time, then her parents came out and said ‘We will never talk about this again’. She adds ‘And we never did. I never knew what happened in that room’.
When Mildred went to school the next day, Mr Johnson continued to teach her and her friend. He did not sexually abuse them again.
Several decades passed until Mildred decided to report the abuse by Mr Johnson to the police. She says it was the Jimmy Savile case that prompted her.
She feels that the police did not take her report seriously because the abuse had happened so long ago and that not enough effort was made to find Mr Johnson. She also feels let down by the way the local authority dealt with the original report made about the abuse of her and her friend. ‘So much evidence was swept under the carpet … we were never interviewed’.
Mildred is angry that nothing was done to deal with Mr Johnson’s behaviour because he was allowed to continue teaching and he moved on to other schools where other children would have been at risk. She thinks the local education authority kept everything ‘in house’ without involving the police.
As a result, she has very little trust in authority and says she finds it hard to be assertive with people in positions of power, which has affected her working life.
Mildred feels she has a lot of unanswered questions about the abuse she suffered and what was done about it. Her parents are deceased and she regrets not trying to find out more from them.
She emphasises that non-recent child sexual abuse should be treated seriously. She says ‘it doesn’t matter if the person has died or it was 60 years ago … what’s important is that it is documented by people who understand, even if there is no action’.