Sammy appreciated that the police kept him informed when they investigated his report of sexual abuse
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Many years after Sammy was sexually abused by a teacher, he realised the abuser could still have contact with children.
He was very impressed by the response of the police, and the way they handled the investigation.
Sammy attended a private prep school in the 1960s. He had one-to-one music lessons with a teacher called Mr Johnson, as did several other boys.
This teacher sexually abused Sammy, who was 12 at the time, during these lessons. The abuse consisted of him touching Sammy and it happened every week for a few months, until Sammy blurted out in front of his class what Mr Johnson was doing.
Mr Johnson told him to shut up, and none of the boys thought his disclosure was out of the ordinary. Sammy says this was probably because mutual masturbation frequently occurred between many of them. ‘It was quite normal between the boys. At that age we didn’t know it was wrong for an adult to be involved. We had no idea what a paedophile was.’
He adds ‘It was a good job I did that’, because the abuse stopped from that point.
Many years later, when there was media coverage about child sexual abuse, Sammy realised the significance of what he had experienced. He says ‘I did some calculations and realised from his age that he might still be in contact with children, and thought I’d better do something about it’.
Sammy went to the police and says that their response was ‘absolutely amazing … it was extremely well-handled’. They traced other pupils during the investigation who had been abused by the same teacher and were prepared to give statements.
Mr Johnson was convicted and sent to prison. Sammy also praises the police for regularly updating him on the progress of the case. ‘I felt it was very professionally done’ he says.
After Mr Johnson was sentenced, Sammy learned that the teacher had previous convictions for sexual offences against children.
Sammy was referred to a victim support organisation but he chose not to take this up. He does not feel that the abuse has had any specific impacts on him. He thinks he repressed what he felt about it for many years before talking about the abuse, and is not sure it has had any lasting effects.
He says that when he was at school there was little in the way of safeguarding and that huge steps have been made in this area in recent years. ‘Generally people are very much more aware and a lot has been done. I applaud anything that makes it more difficult for people to be perpetrators. It was very easy in the 1960s.’
Sammy believes that nowadays parents are more likely to have conversations with their children about abuse, and that there is more education and awareness about child sexual abuse.
He adds that schools have a responsibility to provide education on the topic and that it is particularly important that it goes beyond warning children about ‘stranger danger’.