Breen had to endure two court cases before the relative who abused her was convicted
All names and identifying details have been changed.
Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Breen had a chaotic home life, and was often left in the care of her older brother, who sexually abused her over four years.
She gave evidence against him in court on two occasions, and the ordeal of this and the abuse has had a significant effect on her life.
Breen explains that her dad died when she was nine years old, leaving her mum with three children. Her mum was a drug addict and often left Breen and her younger sister alone while she was out at night. The girls were not allowed to go to school or have friends.
Around this time, Breen says her older brother, Noel, started to take on a ‘man of the house’ role. He was three years older than Breen, and began to ‘order them all about’. He was physically abusive towards Breen – this included hitting her and spitting at her.
The physical abuse gradually escalated to sexual abuse. Breen says her mother never went upstairs, and this part of the house became Noel’s ‘territory’. He would wait at the top of the stairs for Breen, slap her and wolf whistle at her. He would intrude on both Breen and her sister while they were in their bedrooms, saying this was ‘normal’.
Noel threatened to kill Breen if she told their mum what he was doing. Breen was very scared of him and believed him, and in any case did not feel able to confide in her mum.
Wanting to protect her little sister from Noel’s abuse, Breen says ‘I took the brunt of it’ so that he left her alone.
Noel would touch Breen ‘in places he shouldn’t have’ and penetrate her with different items. He would watch her get dressed and instruct her on what to wear. She says ‘It was like my body was his and not mine’. He began raping her.
When Breen was 11, their mum took her sister away on holiday and left Breen and Noel alone together. She says ‘this was probably one of the worst weeks of my life’. Noel sexually assaulted her two or three times every day.
During the four years that she was abused, Breen says social services were involved with the family, but she says they never picked up on anything, or addressed the fact that the children were not going to school. She says she was ‘lucky’ if she saw her social worker once every three months and she feels they always minimised concerns.
Also during this time, Noel was accused of sexually abusing a neighbour’s child. The case was investigated by police but dropped due to lack of evidence. Breen remembers her mum being told Noel had to leave or the girls would be taken into care. He did leave for a time but returned.
When she was 13, Breen told her support worker what was going on at home with her mother. She and her sister were taken into care.
Breen was sent to a new school and told a school counsellor about the sexual abuse by Noel. He found out where she was and turned up to threaten her. Breen was brave enough to tell the police about the abuse, even though she was so terrified it took her four days to give them all the details. The case went to court but Noel was found not guilty.
After this, Breen had a number of different foster placements. She found it hard to settle, struggled if there were any males in the household and sometimes absconded. She did well when she was placed in a different locality, but was sent back to her home area just before she turned 17.
Noel found where she was and turned up to intimidate her. She says she had been led to believe by professionals that she would receive a lot of support, but this was not the case.
Some time later, Noel was accused of sexually abusing another child and the police asked her to be a witness in the court case. This time he was convicted but Breen found the court process even tougher than the first case. Her mother accused her of lying throughout and very little support was offered to her.
Breen suffers from PTSD and has flashbacks and nightmares. She says that she feels guilty and that she could have somehow stopped the abuse. She has self-harmed and taken overdoses, and spent time in a psychiatric unit.
She is scared of males. She is in a same-sex loving relationship, but finds physical intimacy difficult and says this puts a huge strain on the relationship.
Breen would like to see better support for victims and survivors, particularly when they are going through the court process. She says there are often long waiting lists and services are time-limited, which does not allow an individual to establish a trusting relationship to discuss experiences.
She adds that people are often passed between services, and there can be delays for young people when they move on to adult services.