Rosalee still finds it hard to talk about being abused for fear of being judged
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Rosalee was sexually abused by a family friend.
The abuse occurred several times when she was a small child, but she was too embarrassed to tell anyone.
Just before she was born, Rosalee’s parents moved to a new area, far from their extended family. Keen to make friends, they began socialising with a man her dad met at work, Ned, and his wife. This couple were about 20 years older than her parents.
Rosalee thinks her parents were quite naive because they soon began leaving her and her brother alone in the house with Ned when they went out. She was about four years old the first time Ned sexually abused her. She remembers sitting on his knee and his hands being ‘all over’ her. He then took her to her room and she says he ‘did what would be considered as rape’.
Ned abused Rosalee on several more occasions. The last time was when she was about seven, but he was interrupted by the doorbell ringing.
Rosalee didn't have the experience or the confidence to tell anyone what was happening to her. She remembers trying to describe it to her family, saying ‘Ned did this’ and putting her hands over her body, but everyone just laughed. She was embarrassed and didn't have the words to tell people, and adds that anyway, ‘they didn't want to hear it’.
Ned attempted to abuse her once more when she was in her early teens, but she ran away and locked herself in the bathroom.
The following year, when she started to learn more about sex and relationships through ‘teenage talks’, the implications of what happened hit her for the first time.
She became unable to concentrate at school and remembers feeling ‘dirty’. She began to withdraw, feeling she couldn’t trust anyone and went for days without speaking. Her attendance became erratic.
By the time Rosalee was in her mid teens, she was getting bad school reports. She also started drinking, and one night when she was drunk, she told her dad about the abuse. This was partly ‘a relief’ but adds ‘the aftermath was probably harder than the abuse’.
Rosalee’s dad immediately contacted the police. Ned admitted the abuse and was given a prison sentence, which she thinks was not long enough.
At the time, Rosalee was in the middle of her GCSEs. No one told the school what had happened, and although she passed a few exams, she should have done better. She remembers the police gave her dad a leaflet about support but she didn’t take this up. She ‘needed to look fine’ for her dad’s sake.
The abuse was not discussed in her family, but ‘there was an awkwardness’. She continued drinking and began taking drugs. She couldn’t take A Levels because of her poor GCSE results, so went to college but spent most of her time with her boyfriend.
Rosalee reached a turning point when she got an office job, found that she liked the work and went on to obtain qualifications to allow her to continue working professionally.
The impacts of the abuse have stayed with her for a long time, and she has spent the rest of her life ‘trying to play catch up’.
Looking back, Rosalee feels that she was treated like an adult when she was going through the criminal justice process as a teenager. She was virtually told, ‘Thanks. You have told us about this now … he has gone to prison’.
Rosalee says families in this situation should be encouraged to have counselling. Her parents ‘weren’t right’ following her disclosure of the abuse and were not in a fit state to give her the support she needed. Her life could have been very different if she had had support.
She feels it is important to make it possible for children to talk without embarrassment about sex.