Benny says ‘We are who we are because of what we have been through’
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Benny spent nearly all his childhood and adolescence in a foster home, where he was humiliated and sexually abused.
He has taken steps to help him cope with his early experiences, but knows he is still affected by them.
Benny was taken into care when he was three years old because his parents could not look after him. One of his siblings was also removed from the family home, but they were separated.
He was placed in a foster home with a couple who had a large family of their own, and he says ‘other foster children were coming and going’.
Benny was with the foster family for more than 15 years, and during that time he was neglected, humiliated, physically and sexually abused. Both the foster parents abused him physically, and the foster mother Julie also sexually abused him.
He remembers being very frightened when the foster father, Len, ‘once rammed me up against a wall when I was very small’. But he describes Julie as the main abuser. He recalls often being hungry because he was not fed properly and how she once force fed him biscuits because she had caught him stealing food.
He describes seeing her do the same thing to other children and how frightening this was to him as a small child. ‘I saw her force feeding a little girl, she was screaming with food coming out of her nose.’
Julie would regularly humiliate and sexually abuse Benny by tugging his penis and making him stand in a corner, in front of the other children.
Benny says that he enjoyed being outdoors and going to school, even though he was bullied at times. He thinks that he was targeted because he was vulnerable and possibly depressed because of his treatment in the foster home.
In his teens he went to college, where he worked hard. He says ‘I was very committed, I loved it, but I never fitted in and felt different. I didn’t really understand what had happened in my life’.
When he was 21, he left college and the foster home.
Some years later, he made contact with someone who had been fostered by Len and Julie at the same time. They had been very close as children and Benny says ‘We had so much to talk about’.
After their meeting, Benny says ‘I went to the police because a lot of what they said confirmed what I had remembered’.
He gave a statement to the police about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his foster carers. Soon after, the police contacted him to say they had investigated his allegations, but there was no evidence so they would not proceed with the case.
Benny says ‘It completely destroyed me … I had put my trust into them’.
He made a complaint to social services regarding his experience in care. He tried to gain access to his medical files but was told they were missing. However, Len and Julie were subsequently taken off the register of foster carers.
Benny still suffers with feelings of vulnerability and loss. He thinks he has had depression for many years, and at times has found it hard to cope with the practical details of life and how to ‘manage myself’.
He believes that the care system needs to take responsibility for the quality of care given by foster carers. ‘The main reason I am here is because of the mistakes the care system made’ he says.
He adds that children in care should be given good support to find their families.
Benny has had counselling and says this has been helpful. He finds comfort, as he did when he was young, in spending time outdoors. He has supportive friends who have helped him move on. He has also managed to connect with some members of his birth family, and says that finding his birth family has changed his life.