As a survivor Sharone says ‘There are days when I just want to get wasted, but it’s not the answer’
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Sharone was brought up by her stepmum, who she describes as ‘fragile’.
Because of this, she went to great lengths to cover up the fact that she was being sexually abused.
Sharone’s mother abandoned her when she was a baby, and she went to live with her dad and stepmum.
When she was ten years old, Sharone suffered a further loss when her dad died. Her stepmum took a new partner, Neill, who moved in and became Sharone’s stepdad.
Almost immediately, he started to sexually abuse Sharon. It began with him coming into her bedroom, touching her and trying to kiss her when he thought she was asleep. This happened every week for about six months.
Over the next few years, her stepmum would take her other children to stay with relatives, and leave Sharone with Neill. He frequently had other people in the house who drank heavily. They would play drinking games, which she now realises was a ploy to get her drunk. Afterwards, Neill would come into her bedroom and molest her.
Sharone was on the child protection register and had counselling at school. She doesn’t remember what she told her counsellor, but she knows she definitely talked to a friend about the abuse. This friend told their mother, who must have reported it, because the police came to school and interviewed her.
Because Neill had always threatened Sharone that if she spoke about the abuse her stepmum would kill herself, she told the police she had made up the allegation, and nothing was done.
Sharone still denied it when her stepmum asked soon after if Neill was ‘doing anything’ to her. ‘She was very fragile’ she says.
Sharone adds that she put herself in ‘weird situations where I used to force myself to be around him .... I think now I maybe used to do that to make sure no one would think anything was happening’.
Neill used to remind Sharone ‘You’re on your own’, because she was the only child in the house who did not have at least one biological parent.
The abuse escalated during Sharone’s adolescence, and when she was in her mid-teens she woke up to find him raping her. She told him to stop and he did.
Sharone spoke to one of her sisters about the rape, but her sister said she should not say anything else about it.
On one occasion after this, her stepfather demanded she perform oral sex on him. When she refused, he repeatedly punched her to try and make her.
The abuse stopped when she left home completely.
Sharone went to stay with her boyfriend, and Neill harassed and threatened her with phone messages saying he would rape her and kill her. Once he actually sent someone round to the house to repeat this threat, and another time he came with a weapon and damaged the property.
When she was in her mid-teens, Sharone reported Neill to the police herself. They interviewed her and Neill but they said there was not enough evidence about the abuse and he was only charged with criminal damage. She knows that Neill told his family and the police that he and Sharone were ‘having an affair’.
Sharone has nightmares and has misused alcohol and drugs. She says she didn’t do well at school but had no one she felt she could trust to talk to. She has struggled with relationships and intimacy, but says she now lives for her children, who she loves.
Looking back, she wonders why nobody stepped in to help and support her, given that she was known to be a vulnerable child from a very young age.
She says ‘I was a child without a parent of my own … I felt it was my fault. And now I know it wasn’t. He said we were having an affair, but even if I was consenting, which I wasn’t, I was still a child’.
Sharone says ‘I think it will always affect me but I used to feel it was my fault and blame myself, and now I am not going to let it define my life’. She has had counselling but preferred to put it on hold during lockdown.
She says her main reason for speaking out is that she wants to try and help others and make sure that other children don’t have to go through what she did.
‘I’ve been through so much, but I’m a good mum and a strong person … my duty now is to try and make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.’