Moira emphasises that some of the interventions concerning the abuse she suffered were effective
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Moira was sexually abused by her grandfather from a very early age.
Good understanding and awareness of child sexual abuse by her mother and other professionals have helped her survive her experiences.
Moira thinks she was under five years of age when her grandfather began abusing her. She knows that the abuse escalated when her mother started working longer hours and she was left alone in the care of her grandfather more often.
He threatened to kill Moira’s sister if Moira didn’t do what he wanted, or if she told anyone about the abuse.
Moira describes how she would lock herself in the bathroom after her grandfather had abused her. She would sit on the floor and ‘pull myself together’ before her father came to collect her. They would eat a meal at the house, and she would often be physically sick on the way home.
During the time she was being abused, Moira developed a number of ailments, including pains, urinary infections, discharges and vomiting.
Moira says ‘My mum had done training on child protection … it started raising alarm bells for her’.
She adds that her mum kept asking her if anyone was hurting her, but her fear that her grandfather would carry out his threats against her sister made her deny it. Her mum asked social services to speak to Moira when she was eight years old but she says ‘I apparently convinced the social worker nothing was wrong’.
The social worker wrote to the GP stating that Moira was not being abused. However, the GP had treated Moira and her extended family for many years, and he had concerns she was the victim of abuse.
He referred her to a hospital specialist for investigations and tests, and the consultant also became suspicious that something was wrong.
Moira did not know this at the time, but a member of the extended family contacted Moira’s parents and said she had been abused by her grandfather. The police were called and an officer was allocated to support the family and gather information from Moira. However, Moira continued to deny the abuse, to protect her sister, and her grandfather died before a full investigation could be carried out.
It was not until she was in her late teens that Moira acknowledged she had been abused. After a family bereavement she began experiencing nightmares, flashbacks and memories of the abuse.
In great distress, Moira went to her GP for help – a different doctor to the one who had seen her as a child. Although her history of sexual abuse was documented, he put her on a waiting list for therapy and suggested she take some exercise in the meantime.
When she finally got counselling, Moira says it was ‘very basic, and not long enough’. Her father was struggling to deal with what had happened to her, and her parents separated. She was referred by another agency for more counselling, which she says was very helpful and has enabled her to manage the distress that is caused by certain triggers.
Moira is now successful in a high-level professional career, but says she lives with ‘major imposter syndrome’ and feelings of worthlessness. She suffers with depression, nightmares and terrors. She does not want to have relationships or children.
The abuse has also affected her physical health and she finds it impossible to eat certain foods because she was so frequently sick after her grandfather had abused her.
Moira is very close to her sister and says ‘To this day I am so protective of her’. She thinks this is because she strongly believed her grandfather’s threats that he would kill her sister if Moira spoke about the abuse. ‘It was always his threat’ she says, ‘That’s why I lied to the social worker’.
She has put a good deal of thought into the effectiveness of the intervention and support that she and her family received from professionals regarding the abuse. She emphasises that there were many things that worked well, particularly the care they received from the family GP when she was a young child.
Moira explains ‘It was the days of the traditional family GP – he knew me and family really well … the reason he could follow through was continuity of care, that isn’t there any more ... I think that is such an important thing’.
She adds that it was helpful she was seeing an educational psychologist for an unrelated matter, and also that the police officer assigned to her family was extremely supportive.
Finally, Moira says ‘I have a very supportive mum which not everyone does … without that, I could have fallen apart … it could have gone so wrong’.
Moira would like to see more long-term specialist therapy available. ‘We don’t all fit a textbook definition … how one abuse victim presents is different from another.’
She would also like to see support for families to enable them to deal with their own concerns and help the abused child, and she suggests that it should be flagged on medical notes if patients have experienced child sexual abuse.