Sammie was placed in a number of different care institutions but none of them kept her safe
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Sammie describes being ‘bounced around’ several different secure units as a teenager because of her challenging behaviour.
This made her vulnerable to sexual abuse by care staff and other men she met outside the care system.
Sammie is neurodiverse but this wasn’t diagnosed when she was a child. By the time she was in her early teens, she was living in a secure unit.
She made friends with a girl and the two of them would often run away together. They met a man who she thinks was in his late 50s at the time. He gave the girls drink and drugs. When they were returned back to the unit he would call them on the phone, then pick them up and take them back to his place.
Sammie does not go into details about abuse by this man, but she says ‘he did things’. She adds that he had photos of her and her friend, and she worried that he would show these to other people if she didn’t do what he wanted.
When she was in her early teens, Sammie was moved to another home. She was prone to anger and would sometimes smash things up. A male worker, Jayson, seemed to want to help. ‘He would come into my bedroom and talk to me … I thought he was just being really nice’ she says.
Sammie confided in Jayson about the older man she had known when she was in the previous children’s home. Jayson asked her a lot of questions about what drugs the man had given her, and how much money, and what she had done with him.
Then, Sammie says, the tone of conversation suddenly switched, and Jayson said to her ‘If you were doing that for him, how about you start seeing me instead?’
She says this scared her. ‘I thought he was my friend.’
Jayson started working night shifts and would come to Sammie’s room at night. He wanted her to touch him, and she felt the only way to get rid of him was to do what he wanted.
Sammie would try to avoid the abuse by attempting to barricade her door at night. Sometimes she left the home and stayed out all night to escape Jayson. Eventually she was removed from that home and was sent to a number of other units.
She developed an eating disorder and became addicted to tranquillisers. Social services intervened and found her a place in another children’s home. Sammie says she was happy to be there at first – she felt safe and started to recover, but then Jayson joined the staff.
Sammie says when she saw him she was shocked and frightened. Jayson began ‘going after’ her again, giving her drugs and inviting her to parties. He trapped her in rooms and sexually abused her.
One day Sammie told another care worker what Jayson was doing to her. The police became involved and interviewed her. She also told them about the other abuser, and that this man had given her money. She remembers thinking she sounded like a prostitute and feeling sure that was how the police viewed her.
Jayson was removed from the home but continued to work with children at another institution. Some of the other staff began to treat Sammie badly because she had reported one of their colleagues, and she ended up leaving and going to stay with the older man who first abused her.
She knew he had abused other children in care as well as her, but she says it still felt safer to stay with him rather than sleep on the streets.
Sammie feels she was let down by inconsistent care from social services, being moved so many times, and a culture of ‘victim blaming’.
She was given a flat of her own when she was 16, but with no experience of looking after herself and with little support, she struggled to cope and remained vulnerable to predatory abusers.
Sammie feels that the care system needs to be much more structured, better organised, with consistent support and placements.
She would also like to see improved access to therapy for young people in need. She says ‘I was so messed up … but I spent so much time in isolation ... I never got the chance to talk like I am now’.