As a young teenager, Tabitha found it traumatic to be interviewed by the police
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Tabitha was sexually abused by her stepfather.
She feels that reporting it caused her as much distress as the abuse itself.
After her parents separated, Tabitha’s mother married a man called Clayton. She was eight years old when he began sexually abusing her. Because her mother worked at night, he had plenty of opportunities to abuse her.
When she was in her early teens, she went to the police to report the abuse. She found the interview very difficult and some of the questions impossible to answer. For example, when she was asked how many times she had been abused, she could only make a guess.
She would not agree to a physical examination, but did show the police inappropriate text messages that Clayton had sent her. They did not pursue the case.
For a while after this, Tabitha went to live with her father. He did not make sure that she went to school, and she often stayed away. Her frequent absences were not questioned by anyone.
She missed her siblings, and when her mother and stepfather asked her to go back to live with them, she agreed. Clayton began abusing her again. Her school attendance was still poor and in one year she went to a number of different schools. Social services knew about this.
Tabitha reported the sexual abuse to the police a second time, but again, it was not followed up. Clayton threatened her that if she told anyone else, she would have to go back and live with her father.
She was supported by friends and their parents and she thinks they may have suspected she was in need of protection. After another incident of abuse, one of her friends persuaded her to go to the police and agree to an examination. It was the same police unit that had previously not proceeded with her allegations, but this time, they began an investigation.
Tabitha was placed in foster care. Relationships with her family became strained; her older sibling felt guilty for not protecting her and her younger sibling didn’t want her to report Clayton, who they saw as the only father figure in their life.
Clayton was arrested and given bail. When the case came to court he failed to appear. It emerged that he had committed suicide.
Even though he abused her, Tabitha says she feels guilty that Clayton took his own life and about the effect it had on her mother. However, she knows it was right to report the abuse. She finds it hard to trust authority and has struggled with her mental and physical health.
She feels she was let down by authorities who did not see her irregular attendance at school as a sign that something was wrong. She feels there was a lack of support when she was in foster care and that in meetings, her mother was allowed to undermine her account of the sexual abuse. In addition, Tabitha feels that there was insufficient support when she moved from foster care back home.
She would like to see more support and counselling available for victims and survivors, and improved training for professionals involved with child sexual abuse cases.
Tabitha would also like to see better education and awareness of child sexual abuse in schools for young children. She might have spoken up sooner if this had been available.