Arabella thought ‘I’ve carried this round for all these years; I want to deal with it’
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Decades after Arabella was abused, a seemingly trivial argument triggered significant upset for her.
She went for counselling which has helped explain some past events in her life and the way she responds to certain things.
Arabella grew up in the 1970s and 80s. She describes her family as middle class.
She and her brother wanted to learn to play a musical instrument, and a relative recommended a teacher, Vernon.
The lessons began when Arabella was seven years old. She and her brother went into Vernon's house separately. Arabella recalls that the lessons took place in a room with the door closed.
Soon after she began the lessons, Vernon sexually abused her. It started with him sitting next to her and putting his hand round her bottom, and escalated from there. Vernon told her the abuse was ‘our secret’.
She says ‘I didn’t know what was going on but I always knew I didn’t like it. I would tell my mum I didn’t want to go anymore but she kept taking me’.
Vernon regularly abused her over three years. Then the family’s circumstances changed, and Arabella and her brother were sent to a different music teacher. In the meantime, Vernon married a woman who worked with children.
During this period, Arabella spent time with the relative who had recommended Vernon, and looking back she is concerned about his behaviour and his motives. He was very involved with the local branch of a political party.
Arabella says ‘I don’t know if groomed is the right word … I thought it was great because I would be taken to a play centre and allowed to eat ice cream'. She continues that afterwards, she would be dressed up and her relative took her to parties with mostly male adult guests.
‘They always took me, not my brother and I felt special’ she says. ‘I just don’t know … there are so many connections that don’t stack up right … is that why he married someone with access to kids? Are there more pieces to the jigsaw somewhere?’ She adds that she is concerned her relative knew what was going on with the music teacher he had recommended.
One of her relative’s friends was a politician against whom allegations of child sexual abuse were made.
Arabella says she had a difficult time in school. ‘I was a bit of an outcast’ she says. ‘I think because of what I was living with, but no way would you have said anything back then.’
When she had sex education, Arabella realised that what had happened to her was wrong, but she says ‘I had no one to talk to’.
Arabella got married and had children. A few years ago, a domestic disagreement led to her having a disproportionate reaction and this prompted her to seek counselling. She says this helped her realise ‘I always felt I had to keep people happy because that’s what the music teacher told me, but it was to my detriment’.
While she was having counselling, Arabella remembered that she used to have a lot of outbursts at school when she was being abused. She now thinks her behaviour was a cry for help.
She has a happy family life and is successful at work, but says that she has ‘hang-ups’ and finds it hard to trust people. She doesn’t like being touched. ‘It makes me feel “What’s going to happen next?”, because that’s how the abuse started.’ She adds ‘You feel dirty, and that never goes away’.
Arabella thinks children need to be made more aware of what is acceptable and what isn’t. She is concerned that there is still a stigma around child sexual abuse that can make it difficult for people to disclose.
She is also concerned that many people still think abuse only happens in children’s homes or on council estates. ‘But I was in an affluent area having private music lessons’ she says.
Arabella says that children should not have one-to-one lessons in closed rooms. She recalls that during her music lessons ‘I was in the dining room with the door shut and his wife wouldn’t have interrupted because she thought he was teaching’.
She says it is good that Childline exists and thinks it might have helped her if it had been in place when she was abused. However, she wonders whether it is difficult for younger children without phones to make contact with it.
Arabella paid for her own counselling, and says she feels lucky to have been able to do that. She says that the usual six weeks allowance on the NHS would not be enough for most victims and survivors.