Sydney says ‘You can’t change what’s happened to children but you can change how you care for them’
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Sydney was told she should have said ‘no’ when her stepfather sexually abused her.
She says having someone she felt was on her side would have made so much difference to her.
Sydney was born in the 1960s to a teenage mother who hid her pregnancy and gave birth when she was 16. Sydney has never known her biological father.
She lived with her mother and grandmother until she was two years old, when her mother’s partner legally adopted her.
Sydney says that Peter was often violent, but ‘I thought that was what all fathers were like’.
Her home life became even worse when her mother walked out and left Sydney and her brother with Peter. The children were mainly left to their own devices. Sydney took over looking after the house. They were very poor and she remembers frequently going hungry.
Peter drank heavily. One night, when Sydney was about 12 years old, he came home drunk, late at night, and sexually abused her. From then on, he abused her regularly. She says ‘I was scared, I was frightened, I didn’t know where to turn’.
Sydney did not feel she could talk to any of Peter’s family because she was not his biological daughter and did not think they would support her. But she did tell a school friend, who told her mother. The mother reported it to the school, and a senior teacher spoke to Sydney.
Sydney says she did not tell this teacher exact details of the abuse, but she said that Peter was making her do things ‘that girlfriends should be doing’.
The police became involved. Sydney describes the detective on the case as ‘the loveliest man I could have ever encountered, especially in those times’.
The police arrested Peter and Sydney was sent to a children’s home. She arrived with no possessions to anchor her to her earlier life. ‘I’ve got no photos … I have no belongings. I have absolutely nothing from my childhood.’
She says ‘I felt like I was being punished’, adding that she was frightened of men and didn’t like it that there were male staff in the home. After an unsuccessful fostering, Sydney’s grandmother took her in. She says ‘It took a year to go to court and she saw me through that’.
During this time, Sydney was seen by a child psychologist who said that she should have said ‘no’ to the abuse.
The trial of Peter was very difficult for Sydney. She describes being ‘ripped to shreds’ by the defence and having to face Peter and his family across the courtroom. He was found not guilty.
‘Throughout all that time … I didn’t feel that I had anyone on my side’, Sydney says. But she adds that she feels lucky that the police believed her.
Speaking of the impact of the abuse, Sydney says that for a long time she believed ‘Love is being controlled, love is someone telling me what to do, how to do it’, and that it has taken a long time to ‘unlearn’ this. She was involved in an abusive relationship, but describes her current partner as ‘the loveliest man ... the first man in my life that I have trusted completely’.
Sydney says that children who have been abused need someone to tell, to be believed, and to feel valued. She says she wished for ‘someone to have gotten angry on my behalf, to say this should never have happened’.
She would like to see better explanations of legal processes to children, so they can make an informed decision about reporting abuse and appearing in court.
Sydney describes her children as her greatest achievement and says they have made her so happy over the years.
She says ‘For most of my life, I felt that I wasn’t worth the trouble’, but she now feels ‘I am worth fighting for, I am worth looking after’.