Winifred believes that the family who adopted her took in foster children for money, not out of love
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Winifred was adopted by a couple who fostered several more children.
She was subjected to sexual abuse by members of the family and also some of the fostered children.
Winifred has been told that she was taken into care when she was a baby because her birth mother battered her.
The couple who adopted her took in a lot of children from care. At one point she recalls there were 11 people living in their four-bedroomed house.
Winifred’s earliest memory of living with her adoptive parents goes back to when she was about six, and the family were on holiday. She was in bed with her adoptive mother and woke up to find her putting her hand into Winifred’s pants and touching her. Winifred remembers having a clear sense that she should not talk about this.
By the time she was 10, one of Winifred’s foster brothers was sexually abusing her. He was five years older than her. She says he would ‘creep into the bedroom’ to abuse her. Another of the foster brothers also started sexually abusing her. She doesn’t know if each knew what the other was doing, but says again, she ‘learned not to say anything’.
As time went on, it was clear that sexual abuse was rife in the family. Winifred was subjected to it by two more boys in the house, and the grandfather and the father, who both sexually molested her. She says she thought ‘this was how you learned about sex … I thought every family was doing it’.
Winifred adds that her adoptive mother also physically abused all the children. She once tied Winifred to a chair and left her there as ‘punishment’ for falling over. Winifred wet herself and was then beaten.
All the children were kept in the house and not allowed out to play or to make friends. They even had to come home from school at lunchtime.
Winifred remembers that social services were ‘in and out of the house’ all the time. Three of the fostered children were removed by the social worker at one point and Winifred believes that one of them had told someone at school about the abuse.
She begged the social worker to remove her too, but was told she wasn’t their concern because she was adopted.
When Winifred was 16, she left home and went to live with an older foster sister who was by then living with another family.
In recent years, after Winifred’s children had grown up and left home, she decided to investigate her background. She was being supported by a charity and they encouraged her to go to the police. She now regrets that decision because the police lost important documentation; she feels they were not interested in pursuing the case and this has contributed to her mental health problems.
Winifred has tried to obtain her medical records and her social services file, but has been told they are not available. She feels angry that both social services and the police let her down – as a child and as an adult. She is suspicious that records have been lost or destroyed.
She suffers from PTSD, depression and anxiety. She has had suicidal thoughts and is on a waiting list for therapy.
Winifred suggests that education about abuse should begin in primary school. She adds that small children don’t know the words to use, and using role play with them can help them to understand and speak out.