Ruthie describes sexual abuse that happened in recent years, and how social services disregarded her report
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
When Ruthie reported that a male relative had sexually abused her, her family and social services were callous and dismissive.
She says ‘I sometimes wonder where I would be if they had believed me, if they had actually gone and investigated’.
Ruthie grew up in a close family. They often went to visit an aunt and uncle who lived in the countryside. ‘It was my favourite place to go as a kid’ she says.
On one of these occasions, when she was in her early teens, they ate lunch outside in the garden. Afterwards, Ruthie and her cousins helped to clear the table.
Ruthie’s uncle came out and she thought he had come to help her carry things inside. But he moved behind her and put his hands down her trousers, inside her knickers. She describes being paralysed with shock, and her relief when a cousin came out and her uncle stopped touching her and walked away.
‘I don’t think my cousin saw anything’ she says. ‘I had to pretend nothing had happened.’
Ruthie and her family went home and she says she tried to carry on ‘as if everything was normal’.
The following weekend they were due to visit her aunt and uncle again.
‘I was panicking because I didn’t want to go’ Ruthie relates. ‘I said I was ill, and my parents said “No you’re not, you’re fine”.’
Desperate to protect herself, Ruthie put on far too many clothes for the time of year. ‘I looked like an absolute idiot.’ Her family noticed how odd she looked and she tried to make excuses, but then, she says ‘It got to the point I had to tell them, because I didn’t know what else to say … I just came out with it’.
She continues ‘Everything that happened after that is the reason I am here, talking to the Truth Project’.
Ruthie’s parents were very upset. They sent Ruthie to her room and she could hear them arguing. They telephoned her aunt and uncle to cancel the visit.
‘I felt they didn’t believe me; they were just very angry’ she recalls.
The next day Ruthie was woken by her mother who told her ‘You’re leaving’ and pushed her out of the house. Ruthie had no one to call and didn’t feel she could go to one of her friends, especially as she thought their parents wouldn’t believe her either.
She thinks someone must have seen her outside the house, crying, with her mum shouting at her, and called the police. An officer arrived and she sat in his car as he asked her what had happened.
‘Again, I was frightened no one would believe me so I tried to brush it under the carpet, saying we had an argument’ Ruthie says.
But, she adds, ‘I think he knew there was more going on and he asked more questions’. She decided to tell the police officer what her uncle had done. She says he took it seriously and made her parents let her back into the house, telling Ruthie she would hear from him soon.
However, a few months passed, during which time Ruthie says she was essentially grounded, not allowed to go out and hardly allowed to leave her bedroom. Her parents wouldn’t respond to her when she tried to talk to them.
One day she heard voices downstairs she didn’t recognise. Two people came to her room and introduced themselves as social workers, saying they were there to talk about what had happened with her uncle.
Ruthie says ‘I was surprised to see them, and very nervous’. She remembers that they didn’t write down anything she said, or record it in any way, as the police officer had done. She comments ‘He was more serious about it’.
She remembers she became upset as the social workers asked her for details of the abuse, and they then said they didn’t want to speak to her any longer as she was crying. ‘They didn’t even hear my whole story; they cut me off and left and didn’t tell me if anything else was going to happen’ she says. ‘I was 13, I didn’t know how to stand up for myself and I let them leave.’
The social workers didn’t tell her what, if anything, would happen next and she didn’t hear from them again.
‘That was that, no one spoke about it ever again’ Ruthie says. She adds that her family continued visiting her aunt and uncle without her.
The abuse, and particularly not being believed about it, has had a significant impact on Ruthie. She suffers with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder.
At school her teachers noted that she became withdrawn and quiet, and lost interest in lessons she usually enjoyed.
Ruthie remembers one teacher asking if she was ok, but she says ‘I panicked, thinking “Oh no they are onto me”’. After this, she thinks she began to mask how she was feeling, pretending to be normal, which she says was exhausting.
She had no idea whether social services were investigating the abuse, and she thought if her teachers found out it could add to her distress and confusion.
Ruthie says she finds it difficult to be alone, and feels she can be ‘clingy’. She also finds it hard to trust people, particularly older males. ’I can’t help feeling something is going to happen’ she says.
Some of her family relationships are fractured, and she finds it difficult and awkward when she hears relatives speaking highly of her uncle.
Ruthie says ‘I think social services hugely let me down. Everything from their body language – standing up, looming over me, when I was sitting; it felt they were interrogating me. They weren’t friendly ... they didn’t listen but cut me off when I was crying, and criticised me for crying’.
She feels strongly that social workers should receive regular training on how to treat children who are making allegations about sexual abuse, and listen to them. She also thinks it would be helpful if parents were educated about how to deal with the difficult subject of sexual abuse within the family.
Ruthie was not offered any therapy after she reported the abuse by her uncle. She says that children who have reported sexual abuse should be given appropriate support.
After sharing her experience, Ruthie says she may go for counselling.