Norah says ‘People just didn’t believe kids in those days’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Norah told her mother, a GP, two teachers and a counsellor that her father was sexually abusing her.
Norah wonders if no action was taken because she wasn’t being raped, or because her father was ‘middle class and articulate’ and they seemed such an ‘ordinary’ family.
Norah grew up in the 1960s and 70s. She describes her family as ‘very respectable’; her father worked at a high level and her mother also had a good job.
Her father began sexually abusing her when she was nine years old. He came into the bathroom and told her to touch his penis. ‘He warned me I mustn’t tell anybody or the family would be split up’ she says. ‘It was the usual stuff about putting the onus for the happiness of the family on the child.’
The abuse happened in the family home on countless occasions over a number of years.
Norah says that her father wanted her to say she enjoyed being abused. He would touch Norah’s genitals and make her masturbate him. She learned that if he tried to rape her and she said it hurt, he would stop.
She soon realised he was also abusing her sister. ‘She used to kick off and make a fuss, and I kind of took the responsibility.’ She describes how she developed strategies with her sister so they could try and avoid being alone with their father.
Norah’s father was also emotionally abusive – she recalls trying to placate him when he was in a bad mood by kissing him. She says ‘That doesn’t mean I asked for it … I know now it wasn’t my fault but it still feels so wrong’.
By the time Norah was 13, she says ‘I was becoming increasingly concerned’. Her father was becoming more persistent in his attempts to rape her. He even began to rehearse a story with her which could be used as an explanation if she became pregnant.
When her family relocated, Norah was told she would move with her father initially and start a new school, and the rest of the family would follow. She recounts ‘I was absolutely terrified about what that was going to mean. I said I didn’t want to go … but I didn’t say why’.
Norah refused to go with her father. She began misbehaving at school and running away. She describes, with distress at the memory, how she would sit in her school uniform outside the local police station, hoping someone would ask what she was doing there. ‘But they never asked, they just looked straight through me. No one noticed I was there day after day after day’ she says.
Norah recalls that her mother had previously walked in on her father abusing her, but Norah, frightened of what might happen, had ‘colluded’ in covering up what he was doing.
She also remembers her mother telling her she was the cause of all the family’s unhappiness, and replying that it was not her fault, it was her father’s.
She then told her mother that her father was sexually abusing her. Her mother said Norah was ‘disgusting’ and this could not be true. Norah’s sister confirmed to their mother she was also being sexually abused by their father.
The girls’ mother went to see the family GP and told him what her daughters had said. Norah remembers coming home and finding the doctor there with two other men. Her mother told her later ‘Now he’s been found out it will never happen again. Because he has been found out it will be enough to stop him’.
After this Norah was referred to a clinic. She thinks this referral was made because of her behaviour at school. Norah told the counsellor in the clinic that her father had abused her. The counsellor in the clinic asked her mother if this was true, but no action was taken.
Just three months after Norah had disclosed the abuse, her father came into her bedroom and sexually abused her again. She protested loudly and he left the room. That night Norah climbed out of the bedroom window. After spending the night out, Norah rang her mother and told her what had happened.
Both her parents came to collect her. Her mother later told her she had called the GP, and according to her, he had said ‘With all Norah has been through, she will imagine these things from time to time’. She now suspects her mother did not call the doctor.
When Norah was 14, she had sex with a boy the same age as she didn’t want her father to be the first person to have sexual intercourse with her. She says she was ‘promiscuous’ for a time afterwards.
Norah’s father continued sexually abusing her, and she continued misbehaving at school. When she was about 16, she told a senior teacher what was happening to her. The school contacted the counsellor at the clinic, but still nothing happened.
Norah had previously told a male teacher she was being abused, because he found her crying and asked her what was wrong. She recalls ‘He looked absolutely disgusted … I realise now he thought I was making it up …’.
She continues ‘I sometimes wondered if I imagined it, because I can’t believe how many people I told, but I haven’t made this up … I couldn’t have tried any harder to tell people what was happening’.
She remembers feeling very angry. She suffered from depression and took an overdose when she was a young adult. After this she had counselling.
Norah thinks – and hopes – there is more awareness of child sexual abuse now than there was when she was growing up. She emphasises the importance of education, and listening to children.
During a conversation when Norah was an adult, her mother maintained it was Norah’s fault that her father abused her because ‘you threw yourself at him’.
Her father is now dead and that, amongst other things, has made Norah ‘feel free’ to talk about the abuse.