Prim says ‘The only time he was ever kind to me was when he was sexually abusing me’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Prim writes a harrowing account of extreme cruelty and abuse that she endured for years at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend.
She was too terrified to tell anyone, but there were many clear indicators of abuse that were overlooked by professionals who regularly saw her and the family.
Prim was the oldest of three girls. Her mother did not show much interest in her children.
When Prim was about seven years old, a man called Stu, who was a friend of a relative, moved into the family home. Her mother allowed him to sleep in the girls’ room.
Looking back, Prim can see how he began grooming them. She recounts ‘He was very kind and friendly to us kids at first, he would try to defend us to our mum if she was telling us off for something. He would buy us sweets and play games’.
Before long, Stu told Prim to get into his bed. He would touch her all over her body and make her touch his private parts. ‘He told me it was our secret and that I was special, and that he was my friend and friends looked after each other’ says Prim.
Prim didn’t understand what was happening, but she knew she didn’t like it. She says she didn’t tell anyone because she didn’t have the words to describe it, and she didn’t think anyone would believe her.
About a year later, Prim’s father left home and her mum told the girls they had to call Stu ‘dad’, and do everything he said. He insisted they use his surname.
Stu immediately imposed a regime of extreme physical and emotional abuse on the girls and their mother.
The girls were kept as virtual prisoners and not allowed to see their father or any relatives, or play outside. They had no bedding or heating in their room, and they slept under their coats.
The girls were terrified of Stu and there was no question of them telling anyone what was happening. Prim says she and her sisters were even too frightened to speak about it amongst themselves. ‘We could not talk about anything as sisters because we never knew if he was there. We were scared into silence on all fronts.’
Stu often kept Prim off school – sometimes because he wanted her to work for him, and sometimes because he did not want anyone to see her injuries.
He covered up his brutality in the neighbourhood, telling people how badly behaved the children were. ‘He convinced everyone he was a great guy’ says Prim.
Throughout the six years he lived with the family, he sexually abused Prim. He would drag her into the toilet and force her to perform sexual acts. ‘I had to do everything he said but it seemed better than being beaten’ she says. Sometimes he gave her food as a ‘reward’ when he abused her.
Stu told Prim that sexual abuse happened to all little girls. She continues ‘He told me that only male adults who truly loved me would do similar things with me. He brainwashed me into believing my dad and grandad did not do that because they did not love or want me’.
When Prim was 10 or 11, Stu raped her. He did this regularly until she started having periods. By this time, Prim was in a state of complete despair. ‘I honestly did not care if he killed me, because if this is what happened to girls to get them ready for married life then I did not want to live that long’ she says.
After she went to secondary school, Prim began to understand what Stu had been doing to her. But in the 1980s, sex education was very limited. ‘I still did not know that it was illegal and that it was actually rape at that point. Strangers raped people’ she says.
Prim was bright and performed well in most subjects. She says ‘I was lucky I was a quick learner’ because getting bad marks was another reason Stu used to beat her.
But as she became older, Prim says, she became withdrawn and disconnected at school, and found it hard to make friends.
When Prim was 13, Stu left her mother for another woman. This was a huge relief, although he still visited the house to threaten her mother. One of her mother’s new boyfriends sexually abused Prim, but she says ‘I never said anything because I was so accustomed to such violation that it did not occur to me that it should not have happened’.
After this, Prim began fighting at school and was excluded. She was then sent to another school. Prim’s mother threw her out and she went to live with a relative.
Prim had told a friend about the abuse by Stu, and she thinks this girl must have reported it, because one day some people came to see Prim and asked about it. She says ‘everything came pouring out’. She gave a statement to the police and when the case came to trial, she had to give evidence in open court.
Before the hearing, Stu was in the same waiting room, and he kept staring at her and making threats. Her address was read out in the trial, and afterwards her relatives were advised to put her in hiding. She adds ‘I never found out what happened in the court case; the police never told me’.
Prim moved around between different relatives, none of whom seemed to want her. Only one person, a family friend, supported her and encouraged her to finish her exams and not go to London, as she planned. ‘I am so glad he did … I dread to think what could have happened to me.’
By this time, she says ‘my mental health was in tatters’. She was also suffering with several painful gynaecological and stomach disorders.
In her late teens and early 20s, Prim was drinking heavily and made several suicide attempts. She had sex with a lot of men, sometimes because she was scared she would be beaten if she said no. Other times, she says ‘I felt that I had to have sex with anyone who was kind to me because everything had to be paid for in some way’.
Over the following 18 years, Prim had children. She was determined to be a better parent than her mum had been, and to be self-reliant. She changed her name from the one Stu had imposed on her, ‘so I could become someone new and leave behind the horror … I needed not to be that little girl who suffered so much’.
But throughout this time she had several long-term relationships with men who were controlling, and physically and emotionally abusive. She was also raped at a social occasion, but did not report this to the police because of her previous experiences with the criminal justice system.
Prim had a major breakdown in her mid 30s and still suffers from very poor physical and mental health. She feels worthless and that people she loves would be better off without her. ‘I am still broken and damaged’ she says.
She once bumped into Stu and became increasingly terrified that he would track her down and take her children. She still lives with this fear.
During the years that Prim suffered extreme abuse, several professionals and institutions were involved with her family. Social services and the truancy officer visited their home and spoke to the girls several times, but always with Stu present.
She ran away from home a few times, but the police took her back and they too questioned her in front of Stu. She says ‘I had to lie about it ... I had no way of telling them about the beatings and the other things he made me do’. But she adds ‘A happy child does not run away from home’.
Prim says that Stu had a middle-class accent and was very good at manipulating everyone. But she says the professionals who dealt with the family ‘should have seen the fear in our eyes, but they did not and nobody helped stop what was happening … to us it just looked like people in authority always believed whatever posh-sounding people said and never would believe us’.
She emphasises the need for training to help professionals spot abuse, early intervention when abuse is suspected, and for professionals to talk to children alone. She says therapy and support should be offered promptly to children who have been abused, for as long as they need it.
Prim feels strongly that children and young people should be supported and protected during and after investigations and court cases. She adds that siblings taken into care should be kept together and that different agencies should be better at sharing information.
She believes that child sexual abusers should receive longer sentences, and not be allowed to return to the area where they offended.
Prim is now in a stable relationship with a loving and supportive man. She still lives with significant impacts from her traumatic early life, but she has worked hard on her personal relationships and on trying to heal herself.
She says ‘I cannot change the past but I have to get over it and try to enjoy whatever amount of time I have left on this planet’.