Thora remembers how when she was abused as a child it ‘made me feel someone wanted me’
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Thora’s parents both had mental health problems and they emotionally and physically abused her.
Her longing for affection made her vulnerable to a succession of sexual abusers.
Thora grew up in the 1960s and 70s in an unstable home. When she was nine her father was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a period, which made her family life even more chaotic.
Around this time, she was in the park with another girl when a man approached them and exposed himself. He then touched them. Thora says ‘because he was an adult we felt we had to do what he said’.
When the friend told her mother, she blamed Thora for what had happened because she was older, and called her a ‘slag’.
The police took Thora to the park to try and find the man, but he wasn’t there.
When Thora was 12, a neighbour who was in his 50s asked if she would do some cleaning for him. She says ‘he seemed really nice’, and she liked going there, because it was so different to her home where she was always being shouted at.
She says this man would touch her, but she remembers him as ‘a good guy’ because he didn’t hurt her and he gave her money and presents. In fact, she says, ‘I really felt loved by him’.
When Thora’s mother found a ‘love letter’ from this man to Thora, she told the police and stopped Thora going to see him.
Thora took some tablets from her mother’s bag and tried to take an overdose. She was taken to hospital and saw a psychologist for a short time, but she says because it was a man she didn’t feel able to talk to him openly.
She started running away from home, and when she was 13 she was put in care. She was given a psychiatric assessment and labelled ‘emotionally immature’. When she was sent back home, her family called her ‘nuts’ and ‘crazy’.
Thora got a Saturday job as a young teenager, and the man in charge would give her extra money if she let him touch her. ‘By this time’, she says, ‘sex made me feel someone wanted me … any affection I could get was better than loneliness’.
On one occasion, her employer took her to see another older man, and she was paid money to have sex with him. Thora told her mum, who told the police. The man claimed he had been with his wife, and the police did not continue investigating.
Thora ran away from home again when she was 15. She was hitchhiking and a lorry driver picked her up. He took her to another man who said she could stay in his house. She went, and while she was in the bath, another man broke in and told her that she had to ‘go on the game’. Then he raped her.
For the next few months, Thora was raped by up to 10 different men every night until she managed to escape. From there she went to the city and began working as a prostitute, until the police caught her and sent her back to her parents. She was still only 15 years old.
Within a year, she was back on the streets. She was gang-raped by six servicemen in a barracks. Afterwards they all urinated on her. ‘I was just like a rag doll’ she says. She remembers another man coming in and yelling at the others. He got her out but told her not to tell anyone what had happened, or she might be arrested.
Thora begged her parents to take her back, but when she realised she was pregnant, they threw her out. She left and went back on the streets. She was arrested by the police for soliciting when she was eight months pregnant.
‘I was so damaged and too scared to trust men or women … the only kindness I could get was with some punters’ she says. However, she adds that she did also suffer a lot of violence from punters.
Thora has been involved in several abusive relationships with men. Now after ‘years and years of therapy’ and a mental health diagnosis, she takes medication. She is in a stable relationship and says ‘I’m finally in a good spot’.
Thora believes that teachers should be trained in how to recognise the children that are at risk and would like to see ‘drop in’ centres so that any child or young adult can go to get help and advice.