Aimie says parents need to be guided to listen to their children and respond to any disclosures
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Aimie wants to bust the myth that white middle class ‘functioning’ families don’t have abusers among them.
She was sexually abused by her grandfather, but her parents’ main concern seemed to be to protect him.
Aimie describes her parents as ‘happily married’ and says she grew up in what appeared to be a ‘normal’ family life.
Every few months, Aimie’s family visited her grandparents for the day. They lived in a large house and Aimie’s grandmother would make a special lunch for everyone.
Much was made of the fact that Aimie was her grandfather’s ‘favourite’. The reality was that he was sexually abusing her. She has clear memories of this from when she was eight years old, but thinks she was groomed and probably abused when she was even younger than that.
Aimie used to call her grandfather ‘Grandad’ but doesn’t want to now, because it sounds too much like a ‘cosy label’.
Her grandfather always wanted to spend time with Aimie – she says the rest of the family would say it was their ‘special time’. Sometimes he would take her into the sitting room on her own. She remembers the house had wooden floorboards and says ‘You would hear someone coming’.
She describes how he would sit her on his lap and put his fingers inside her, and say things like ‘This feels nice, doesn’t it?’ Aimie remembers thinking ‘No, your skin is quite scratchy, and it’s painful and I don’t like it at all’. But she didn’t want to say it because she was scared that her grandfather would withdraw his love from her.
At the same time Aimie’s grandfather was sexually abusing her, he also did ‘nice, non-abusive things’ with her, like help her make things in his workshop, which she would show to her family with pride.
One day, when Aimie was about 10 years old, her family were getting ready to visit the grandparents and she told them she didn’t want to go. When her mother asked why, she said ‘Because Grandad put his hands in my pants’.
Without turning round to look at her, her mother said, ‘Well make him stop’. They went to see the grandparents that day, and not long after, Aimie and her younger brother were left to stay with them for a week.
During their stay, Aimie was with her younger brother in her grandparents’ bed in the morning. Her gran went downstairs to make tea, and she remembers seeing her grandfather’s penis out of his pyjamas. He told her to touch it. Frightened, she grabbed her brother and ran to the bathroom with him.
She locked the door and sat on the edge of the bath crying, until her grandfather knocked and said he was sorry for scaring them. This is her last memory of sexual abuse by him.
Aimie’s grandfather died when she was a teenager. She went to university and says she was very confident, but she felt angry, more towards her parents for not acknowledging her disclosure, than her grandfather.
She thinks that for many years she tried to make excuses for him, but after she got married and had therapy, she understood that he was an abuser.
Aimie feels that her family were more concerned about maintaining her grandfather’s reputation as a good person and sparing the feelings of other relatives, than about her feelings.
She is still angry about this, but comments that her family were victims of the times in which they lived. She recalls the culture of the 1970s when she was growing up, with sexist humour that was seen as ‘good honest family fun’.
She adds ‘Children weren’t honoured, weren’t respected’.
Aimie has children and has never left them in the care of any man apart from their father. Her experiences have underlined for her that an abuser can be ‘the nice, kindly man’ who most people would trust, and adds ‘This is how they get away with abuse’.
She feels that children should always be listened to and given relationship as well as sex education at school, in an age-appropriate way, to help them recognise abuse. It makes her very angry to hear women being blamed for men not being able to control themselves.