Sheridyn says ‘Hiding issues will never solve them’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
The man who abused Sheridyn was a respected figure in her church.
She was encouraged to forgive him when he apologised, but in later years has felt guilty that the abuse was not reported to the police.
Sheridyn describes a complex childhood, with positive and negative experiences. Her parents were born-again Christians and very involved in an independent church. They had a big extended family who were very supportive and were close to lots of people in their local community. She says ‘We had lots of great times together’.
But at the same time, family life could be stressful, as they had financial problems and her parents often argued. Sheridyn says that she and her siblings ‘always felt loved, praised, supported and encouraged, but had high anxiety due to the strained situation with my parents’.
Sheridyn says that families in the church would often host speakers and visitors from around the country and the world. When she was nine years old, a speaker called Joe came to stay with the family. He slept on their sofa, but during the night he came into Sheridyn’s bedroom and sexually abused her.
She describes her fear and confusion, saying that she didn’t understand what was happening. She knew it was wrong but she also knew her parents welcomed and trusted Joe. She adds ‘I froze and couldn’t scream out to my family as I didn’t want to wake my sisters or upset my parents’.
Joe told Sheridyn that it was their ‘special friendship’ and her parents didn’t need to know about it. She recalls how difficult it was the next day pretending that nothing had happened, and how relieved she was when he left.
A few months later, Joe came again and asked Sheridyn’s parents if he could take Sheridyn on a visit to another church. Sheridyn says she didn’t want to go but felt she had to agree, to ‘keep up the pretence there was no problem’.
While they were away, Joe sexually abused Sheridyn in a room in the church, but was interrupted by a member of the church knocking on the door. She remembers this person seeming annoyed and concerned, and asking Joe why the door was locked. ‘I felt guilty and ashamed’ says Sheridyn.
Over the next few weeks, Sheridyn worried about what might happen to her sisters when Joe came to stay again, and she managed to tell her mother about the abuse. She says her parents were distraught, and her father and a church leader went to speak to Joe.
Apparently, he ‘apologised’. Sheridyn does not know if any other action was taken, but she knows the abuse was not reported to the police.
Sheridyn says she understands there was not the same grasp of child protection issues when she was a child, but she feels let down by the church.
She adds that in some ways, the strong emphasis on forgiveness in the church helped her at first to deal with what had happened. However, when she was a teenager, she understood more about the abuse, and ‘I had to deal with it all over again’.
In Sheridyn’s early 20s, the police contacted her because they were investigating Joe for other offences of child sexual abuse, and he had made a confession. She did not attend court but knows he was convicted.
Sheridyn says that while she knows there have been improvements in child protection since she was young, she thinks there is still much more work to be done, and that institutions should talk about issues more openly and honestly.
She has frequently felt guilty that she did not tell the police what Joe had done, even though she was only a child when she told her parents about the abuse. She has suffered with depression and anxiety but feels that having a husband, close family and friends who encourage her and boost her self-esteem has helped protect her from a lot of impacts of being sexually abused as a child.