Beth’s mother could not get the authorities to respond to her reports that her daughter was being abused
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When Beth was in her early teens, her father died, leaving her with her mother who had serious mental health problems.
An older man pretended to empathise with her difficult life, and groomed and sexually abused her.
Beth grew up in a small community with her parents. She says they did not have much contact with relatives or friends and that she was a shy child. She knows she was close to her mother when she was very young, but they became more distant as her mother spent a lot of time in hospital because of her mental health issues.
When Beth’s father died, her mother’s mental health was extremely poor and Beth was left trying to deal with this alone. Out of the blue, she says, she received a text from someone she didn’t know, who said he had been given her number by one of her friends.
They exchanged messages; she told him about her dad passing away, and he told her his mother had mental health problems. Beth says this ‘gave me the confidence to open up about my mum’s struggle with mental health with him’.
Beth says she told him she was in her early teens, and he said he was 22. She adds that he started asking inappropriate questions, such as ‘Are you a virgin?’ but says ‘At the time I thought nothing of it … overall he came across as very understanding and supportive ... I felt like I had someone I could turn to’.
They began to meet up and talk. ‘He seemed to care about my problems’, Beth says. Then he started offering her cigarettes, alcohol and cannabis. At first she said no, but he insisted taking them would make her feel better and help her to cope with things.
Beth says ‘By this point I believed I was in a relationship with him’.
She went to his house, and he began sexually abusing her. He made her perform sex acts, and raped her. She told him she wasn’t ready for this, but he pressured her. She says ‘I was scared if I didn’t do what he wanted he would leave me, and I would have to cope with my mum’s mental health on my own’.
The abuse continued until Beth was in her late teens. Throughout this time, she says, the abuser isolated her from her friends and was very controlling and manipulative. She became pregnant in her mid teens but had a miscarriage.
Beth’s mother found out about the relationship, and over several months she made reports to social services and the police, but neither took any action. Beth says her mum tried to stop her seeing the abuser, but he convinced her that there was nothing wrong with their relationship and said her mum was only objecting because she was mentally ill.
Beth’s mother persisted with trying to report the abuse, and at one stage the police came to speak to Beth. She was too scared to say the abuser was raping her; he told the police they were having a ‘relationship’ but said it was not sexual.
The police said they would check on Beth every month for a period of time, but they did not do this.
Beth feels that she was let down by social services, the police, the clinical staff who saw her when she was pregnant, and a teacher at her school who knew about the abuse. She says the abuse caused her to lose two years of her education, she has low self-esteem, finds it hard to trust anyone and her mental health has been affected badly.
She feels that authorities should take all concerns and reports about suspected child abuse seriously, and allow for the fact that victims may be too scared to say what is happening. She also thinks the public should be encouraged to be confident to report any suspected abuse.
In recent years, she reported the abuse to the police. They admitted they had not taken it seriously before. The abuser was prosecuted and received a prison sentence.
Beth says that keeping busy is her way of coping with the effects of being manipulated, controlled and abused as a vulnerable young girl.