Pippa’s family doctor said that he felt sorry for men who were accused of sexual abuse
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
As a young child, Pippa was punished harshly if she stayed out of her house for too long.
This didn’t stop her going out, because being beaten was not as bad as being sexually abused by her father.
Pippa grew up in the 1960s. She was the eldest of five children and her father was constantly violent and aggressive to them all.
For as long as she can remember, she lived in fear of his physical and verbal abuse. When she was about eight years old, he began to sexually abuse her.
After a particularly violent incident when her father raped her, she ran to her grandparents’ house and told them that her dad had beaten her and ‘touched’ her. Her grandfather went to speak to her dad, who cried and promised not to do it again. They agreed not to tell Pippa’s mother.
After this incident, her father’s violent behaviour became even worse. She remembers that when she was about 12, her sister had been injured by their father, so she took her to hospital without an adult. They told a doctor what had happened but no action was taken.
Pippa relates another painful memory of when she was a teenager. She was babysitting for a neighbour and became upset when she saw the children hugging their dad. When the neighbour asked Pippa why, she said she was sad that she could not do that with her own father. She told the neighbour some of the abuse she was suffering, and the neighbour advised her to tell her mother, in order to protect her younger sisters.
But when Pippa spoke to her mother, aunt and grandmother, she was dismissed, and made to feel the abuse was her fault. Comments she heard by family members included ‘Look at the way she dresses’, and ‘She encourages it’.
Her mother did take Pippa to their GP to talk about Pippa’s report. The GP commented ‘It’s the men I feel sorry for’.
However, the abuse was reported to the police. Pippa was taken into the kitchen in the family home with her mother while her father was in the other room. She was told to tell a policeman what had happened but she was afraid she would be punished if she did.
Social services also became involved with the family but her father carried on being extremely violent. Pippa says she often feared for her life but she felt she had nowhere safe to turn.
Pippa left home when she was in her mid teens, got married and had children. Her father later went on to sexually abuse her daughters and some other young relatives before he was eventually convicted and given a prison sentence.
She describes how her life has been affected by the abuse. Because she wanted to escape her home, she left school early and her education was disrupted. She wonders now what path her life might have taken if her childhood had been different.
Pippa has been frightened of men all her life and has suffered with mental health issues. She says she feels the pain of the abuse ‘as if it was still happening today’.
She feels that she was let down by all the professionals she came into contact with as a child. Instead of taking action to protect her and her siblings, they left her feeling that she was to blame.
Pippa feels particularly angry that this meant that her father went on to abuse the next generation of girls in her family. She does not think the sentence he received was long enough, and he has never acknowledged the impact of his behaviour on their lives.
Pippa was not eligible for criminal compensation because of the rule at the time that denied victims compensation if they lived in the same property as the abuser.
She feels strongly that people, particularly professionals, should allow children to speak freely and take notice of what they say. She would also like to see more severe punishments for perpetrators of child sexual abuse.