Wendy’s parents would not let her stop music lessons even when she said the teacher was abusing her
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Wendy was neglected by her parents, and sexually abused by her mother, and also by a teacher.
She says because ‘you hear such horrific reality’ from other people who have suffered abuse, she was not sure if what happened to her was significant.
Wendy describes having a ‘different upbringing’ in the 1960s and 70s, in a ‘strange environment’. Both her parents were entertainers.
Because they worked at night and slept in the day, Wendy got herself up for school and ironed her own clothes. ‘I very much had to fend for myself.’
When she came home she would clear up beer cans, empty ashtrays and get the evening meal ready for her parents. She remembers tidying away her father’s pornographic magazine.
Wendy’s parents had ‘no clue’ or any interest in her progress at school. She felt she had no one to talk to in the family and she ‘didn't do the things that other kids at school did’; she usually played on her own and felt very isolated.
She believes her account of abuse by her mother ‘is not as vile as a lot of stories’ but nevertheless she thinks what happened to her was abuse.
She describes how she would ‘absolutely dread’ bath time, because up to when she was about 11 years old, her mother would not let Wendy bath herself and would scrub her ‘inside and out, the front and the back’. She did the same thing when she was drying Wendy.
She adds that her mother would never cuddle her.
Wendy remembers going to school feeling extremely sore. She says a teacher would give her a cushion to sit on, but did not ask her what had happened.
She says ‘I didn’t know it wasn’t right for people to touch you in those places’. She thinks this sexualised her from a young age, so she allowed boys to touch her in the same way.
Wendy took private piano lessons for several years from the age of seven. The male teacher often touched her inappropriately during lessons, putting his hands up her skirt. When she was about 10, she told her parents what he was doing, and said she wanted to stop having lessons.
Her mother told her not to be ‘silly’, and said ‘Just get on with it’. She thinks they didn’t want her to stop playing the piano because it was about performing on stage.
Wendy’s parents often held parties at the house. They would frequently wake Wendy and make her go downstairs and sing and perform for everyone, while they were drinking and smoking.
When Wendy was 18, she got married. She says she knew the marriage wouldn’t work, but it seemed the only way to get away from the family. Her husband was violent towards her.
She has been over-protective of her son, but, she adds, she has always made sure he knows that she loves him. She needs to feel in complete control of her life, and for this reason she is ‘obsessively tidy’ and prefers to live on her own.
Wendy says that all private teachers should be subject to careful checks and should not be alone with children. She would like to see more training for all teachers to recognise signs of possible abuse in children. She adds that children should have access to services outside family and school. Nothing was available for her and there was no one she could have talked to at school.