Becca says ‘The school didn’t want anything to be wrong with me, because I did well’
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
In the outside world, Becca was regarded as an exceptionally high-achieving child who excelled in academic work, music and sport.
But at home, she was subjected to a tyrannical regime of bullying, control and emotional abuse by her father, who had a serious mental health condition. He also sexually abused her.
Becca gives a vivid account of her father’s extreme behaviour when she was growing up. She says ‘I don’t remember a time when home wasn’t a mess … an angry place where everyone was in the wrong apart from dad’.
She relates that she and her sibling were allowed no privacy and it was made clear that their bedrooms and belongings were not their own. She describes how her father would barge into her bedroom and into the bathroom, which had no lock, when she was using it.
Becca continues ‘Everything was our fault’ she says. ‘We were tolerated as property, not looked at as children’. Despite their intelligence and high performance at school, her father constantly demeaned, insulted and belittled his children, regularly telling them they were ‘stupid’.
Becca explains that her mother would not acknowledge there was anything wrong with her husband’s behaviour; in fact she often hid when he was bullying the children, and the household revolved around his demands.
She is not sure exactly how old she was when her father began sexually abusing her, but she knows she was a very young child.
On the pretext of not wanting to disturb his wife, her father would sometimes say ‘I’ll sleep with you kids’. Becca says she thinks her mother assumed he slept with her brother, but in fact he got into bed with his daughter.
She relates that when he sexually abused her, he claimed it was a ‘special thing’ that all fathers did, but no one talks about it. She says ‘When you are that little, you believe it’.
When she was seven years old, a talk at school about ‘stranger danger’ prompted Becca to tell her mother that she didn’t like it when her father slept in her bed. From that point on, the sexual abuse stopped, but Becca says her mother never asked her what had happened.
She remembers that in the following years she became ‘moody and quiet’ at school and was often found crying. She was sent to see a child psychologist but says that she was ‘so well-trained not to say anything’ she did not sayt what was wrong.
She decided to study as hard as she could, and get into a good university. ‘I thought maybe then they’d decide I was something of worth’.
Becca did continue to be a high-achiever at a prestigious university and in her career, but she comments ‘Nothing changed, we were still idiots’.
The years of abuse has taken its toll on her mental and physical wellbeing. At university, she says, she would sabotage friendships she made. There she consulted a doctor who enquired about her family’s mental health history. She said there was none, and was shocked to be told that she was a liar, because when she was a young child, her father had been diagnosed with a serious mental health condition.
She remembers thinking ‘What is the point of telling people if they are going to call you a liar? It was a pivotal moment in my adult life – you won’t confide if someone says something like that’.
Becca has had a number of high-level jobs, but her career has been affected by depression and mental health breakdowns. She says ‘I spent all my life trying to please people’.
Her anxiety makes it difficult for her to leave the house and this has led to physical health conditions.
She has limited contact with her family but is in a happy, supportive and loving relationship and she has hobbies she enjoys. She has sought help for her mental and physical health difficulties and feels some of this has been useful.
Becca feels that there were ‘danger signs’ that should have been noticed when she was a child, but she was labelled ‘difficult’ by her parents. She also believes that her school disregarded the signs because she was a high-achiever.
She advocates that if a parent has serious mental health issues, doctors should consider the children as well, and not dismiss people with low mood, particularly if there is a history of mental illness.
Her experiences have caused her to feel that ‘Families are not necessarily the best places to bring up children’ and she would like children to have access to places where they are made welcome to speak.