Wynne says the abuse he suffered might ‘seem small’ but it has affected his whole life
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Wynne was sexually abused by a teacher during a school outing.
His mother told him not to tell anyone, and he was sent back to school where the abuser intimidated him.
Wynne attended a grammar school where, he says, he was ‘doing quite well’. When he was in his early teens, he and a group of boys were invited by a teacher, Mr Williams, to take part in a practical skills course. Wynne was keen to go, and his parents agreed.
He travelled to Mr Williams’ house with the other boys, including one who was older, probably about 17 or 18. When they arrived, Mr Williams told them the equipment needed for the activity hadn’t arrived, but he would take them swimming instead. They went to some open water, and Wynne says they ‘had a good time swimming and messing around’.
However, Wynne relates, when they returned to Mr Williams’ house, ‘the mood changed’. The teacher told the boys to get undressed and have a shower, and as they did so, he started photographing them.
Wynne remembers that he immediately knew ‘this was all wrong’ and he describes being ‘gripped by fear’. He remembers noticing that while he and the younger boys kept covering themselves with their towels, the older boy stripped off completely. Mr Williams told the others to remove their towels and continued taking pictures of them.
At some point, the older boy took a book from Mr Williams’ bookshelf and showed the younger ones pictures of people naked. Wynne doesn’t remember the exact title, but it was some sort of sex manual. Looking back, Wynne thinks that Mr Williams and the older boy were ‘working together’.
After a while, boys were allowed to go. As soon as he got home, Wynne told his mother what had happened. He says he was upset and crying, but she told him not to tell anyone else. She did send a letter to the school saying that Wynne did not want to carry on with the course because he wasn’t interested in it.
Wynne describes how he felt consumed by shame and fear that anybody would find out what had happened. At this point, memories began coming back to him that were very troubling and unpleasant, and he realised that when he was a small child, he had been sexually abused by an older relative.
When the new term started, Wynne found it very hard sitting in classes that Mr Williams taught. He began to dread school, he became increasingly anxious and found it hard to concentrate and study. His grades started slipping and he passed far fewer exams than expected.
Life at home was also difficult. He didn’t like the fact that his mother knew what had happened but wouldn’t talk about it. He began bed-wetting and he says strenuous exercise was the only way he could escape the thoughts going through his head.
After some time, Wynne told his best friend what Mr Williams had done. His friend said he should go to the police, but Wynne says he couldn’t face the thought of other people knowing. He remembers being very conscious of Mr Williams watching him, and feeling that the teacher was doing this to intimidate him.
Another very painful memory for Wynne is a gathering at school at the end of his last year there, when his parents met all his teachers, including Mr Williams. Afterwards, they commented to Wynne how nice Mr Williams was and how pleased he was that Wynne had done well in his subject.
Wynne says he couldn’t believe that his mother could talk about Mr Williams like that, knowing what he had done to her son.
Eventually Wynne had a breakdown and as he recovered, he decided the only way to ‘tackle everything’ was to report the abuse to the police.
He says the police ‘were good in their way’, but he felt ‘dismissed’ as they made it clear to him they were unlikely to be able to do anything with his allegation.
Troubled and preoccupied with thoughts of other abuse that Mr Williams might have carried out, Wynne tracked down his address, and discovered the abuser had died a few months before.
Wynne says his relationship with his mother had broken down completely, and sadly she died before he was able ‘to clear the air with her’.
He says the feeling of shame has been one of the hardest things for him to deal with over the years. He finds it difficult to believe that other people at school didn't know what Mr Williams was doing to children.
Wynne strongly believes that organisations need to be transparent and open on the subject of child sexual abuse. Schools that are proactive about dealing with it should be encouraged.
He would also like to see technology more widely used to support victims when they are making reports of abuse.
He adds that it is important for others to understand the shame that victims and survivors feel and how that can make them behave in a certain way. He says that what happened to him may seem to others like a small incident, but it set off a sequence of events that affected his whole life.