Rachel says ‘All I needed was just one person to act’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Rachel told several professional adults, and her mother, about the sexual abuse that she was suffering for seven years, but it wasn’t until she went to university that anyone listened to her.
Rachel’s father left the family home when she was about seven years old. She says she came back after an outing one day ‘and he was gone’.
Her mother began to have a relationship with a man called Harry. He spent a lot of time in the family home, looking after Rachel and her sister while their mother worked. Not long after, he started to sexually abuse Rachel.
Harry told Rachel not to tell anyone what he was doing and she says that at the age of seven, she did not know it was wrong.
But as she became older she began to realise that what Harry was doing to her ‘was not right’. When she was about 11, she started trying to tell different people what was happening.
She spoke to her friend about it first, then told the youth leaders at her church. She remembers being very afraid that her mother would find out and she thinks it’s possible that she begged the leaders not to tell anyone.
Rachel says that around this time her behaviour at school started to deteriorate. She found school ‘hard work’ as she was so unhappy. She remembers being an angry child, and crying a lot, but no one asked her why she was so distressed.
She did enjoy playing in a school band, and the after-school practices kept her away from home. She says the conductor was a senior teacher who was kind, so she disclosed the abuse to him, but no action was taken as far as she could tell.
When Rachel was in her early teens, Harry’s relationship with her mother broke up and the abuse ended. By this time she was feeling constantly depressed and unhappy.
A couple of years after this, Rachel told a doctor from her local surgery about the abuse, but again, no action was taken.
She joined a church and left a note describing the abuse in the minister’s correspondence pigeonhole. She did not receive any response or even an acknowledgement.
Rachel also told her mother on several occasions about the abuse, but she did not believe her. She says they had a difficult relationship with constant arguments, and they still do. She thinks this is because of the disclosures she made. She recalls once being sent from school to an NHS children’s mental health service, and her mother being very angry about this.
When Rachel left home to go to university, she finally found some support. She joined another church and two women believed her when she told them she had been abused. She says she had not expected this because she was so used to not being believed.
She also found support at university from the man who became her husband. She says that soon after they met, he said he thought that something had happened to her. She says that her relationship with him has helped her to process the abuse.
Because of the abuse, Rachel has also suffered with PTSD, anxiety and depression, has self-harmed and had suicidal thoughts.
A few years ago, Rachel met a police officer who encouraged her to contact the police. She began the process of reporting but she didn’t feel able to carry it further.
She says that counselling, her church and her family help her to cope with the impacts of the abuse.