Alys was not supported by her family or any services after she reported she was being sexually abused
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Alys was sexually abused for many years by her alcoholic father.
Her mother was angry that she reported the abuse, and her experiences with the police and the courts added to her trauma even more.
Alys explains that she was the eldest in the family and had her own bedroom. She thinks she was seven years old when her father began to abuse her. The abuse began with touching and escalated to rape. It would happen every weekend, when he had been drinking heavily.
She remembers putting things behind her bedroom door so she would hear when he was coming in. During the abuse, she says, she ‘played dead’ and tried to ‘switch off’.
He told her no one would ever want her and that she was going to spend her life being ‘used and abused’.
Alys says she was still very naive when she was a teenager, and during a conversation with a friend about her boyfriend and sex, Alys revealed she ‘did that kind of thing’ with her dad. When she saw how shocked her friend was, she tried to pretend she was joking, but the other girl started a rumour in the school about it.
After this, a teacher asked Alys several times if she was ok; she found it very uncomfortable talking to him because he was a man, and other pupils could see she was in his office. She says she was also worried she would be in trouble, but eventually she managed to say ‘my dad touches me’.
It was late on the last day of term and the teacher said he couldn’t do anything about it then, but he gave her his telephone number and advised her to try and block her bedroom door. She says there were no mobile phones at that time so she could not have rung him.
When the next term began, the teacher told Alys that he would need to call the police. Two officers came to the school to interview her; she remembers she was crying and terrified, but did repeat what she had told the teacher.
The police drove her home. On the way, one of the officers turned round and said to her ‘You are telling the truth aren’t you? You are too quiet’. Alys said she was.
In the house, her father went straight upstairs and Alys’ mother asked ‘What she’s done?’ She remembers how devastated she was by this reaction.
Her father left the house and she never saw him again. The police also left and Alys was not spoken to again or told anything. She tried talking to her mother, but she shouted at Alys ‘You have ruined my marriage and my life’, and told her ‘Just go’.
For a time afterwards, Alys lived with different relatives. She remembers how ‘totally alone’ she felt. At school, the teacher did not mention what had happened.
She had already started self-harming and this became much more frequent and serious. She would try to fix the damage to her legs with superglue.
Alys thinks she had a social worker during this time but can’t really remember. She was placed into foster care. Here, for the first time, she felt safe and she told someone she was self-harming.
She remembers ‘a very nice woman’ coming to talk to her in her foster home, but she didn't realise at the time it was preparation for a court case. She says she was ‘never really told anything’.
On the day she went to court, she remembers feeling confused, dazed and frightened about seeing her dad. She was told that her mother was there, holding her dad’s hand.
Alys had been self-harming and had blood on her shirt. The support worker told her to hide it and she recalls that made her feel she ‘had to look a certain way to be believed’. She adds that she felt she was ‘very small and insignificant’.
She describes how very frightened she felt when she gave evidence and had to face tough questioning. A few days later, she was told her father had been acquitted because some of the details she had given ‘did not match up’.
After this, Alys self-harmed so badly she had to go to hospital. Her foster carer did not want her back. She started drinking and letting men ‘take advantage’.
When she was 16 or 17, she went to live with an older man who was an alcoholic and became pregnant. He was violent towards her and after she gave birth she left him, but married another abusive man who controlled and monitored her, and would only give her money if she had sex with him.
After a violent incident, the police became involved, but Alys says they did not protect her from her husband and she had to move several times to escape him. She was very distressed at the way she was treated and says it brought back memories of her dealings with the police in the case against her father.
As well as seriously self-harming herself, Alys has attempted suicide. She suffers with anxiety, and finds trust and relationships very difficult. The smell of stale alcohol triggers traumatic memories and she never drinks now.
Alys says it is essential that teachers act immediately if children disclose sexual abuse. She would like the police to ensure they handle victims and survivors with more care and sensitivity than they did with her.
In court cases, it should be understood that traumatised children may not be able to understand and take in what is going on, and there may be reasons they get details wrong.
Alys has support from a rape crisis organisation and her ambition is to work with teenage mothers.