Bryce feels guilty that he was not ‘braver’ as a child when he was sexually abused by adults
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From the age of 12 until he was in his mid teens, Bryce lived in children’s homes. He never experienced any love or compassion – only cruelty, humiliation, violence and sexual abuse that still cause him immense suffering.
He says ‘It’s been 42 years since I left there, and I can still remember everything as if it were yesterday’.
Bryce grew up in the 1950s and 60s. His parents did not care for him and he truanted from school and drifted into petty crime.
He was sent to an assessment centre, which was an introduction to the brutality that he was subjected to for the next five years. Staff stood by as the older boys bullied, beat and sexually assaulted the younger ones.
He says he ‘grew savvy about what to expect and learned to keep out of the way of certain lads and staff’, and would do all he could to avoid crying in front of them. He recalls how ‘they pick on the weak ones. You have to try to be a little bit stronger even though you’re not.’
He tried to run away twice, running over fields and through hedgerows, but they caught up with him and dragged him back.
One day Bryce’s social worker turned up and with no explanation, drove him a long distance to a children’s home. Again, Bryce suffered bullying, violence and sexual abuse by older boys. He says that one in particular was ‘all touchy feely’ with him. He told a female warden about this but she didn’t do anything about it. Desperate to get away, Bryce stole a bike and cycled miles before he was picked up by the police. An officer made calls to both his parents, but his father said he didn’t know Bryce, and his mother simply told them that he lived in a home somewhere.
Bryce was taken to another residential home. He was made to do most of the cleaning for several weeks, as punishment for running away. The other boys were allowed to ‘supervise’ him, which meant beating him if he stopped, and spitting and urinating on him. He ran away a few times but each time he was caught and taken back.
One night Bryce was woken by one of the older boys touching him under the bedclothes. He reported this to the manager of the home, who called him a liar. This manager soon turned out to be a sexual abuser too. He used to stand close to Bryce with his erect penis touching the boy, and ‘prowl around the dorms’ at night, touching Bryce and other boys.
Bryce says he told two of the female domestic staff at the home about this abuse. They said they would try and do something, but nothing ever happened and the manager continued abusing him and others for the next four years.
When he was in his mid teens he began an apprenticeship in local industry, but he had to stay at the home for another year. Around this time, a different manager arrived, who also sexually abused Bryce.
Bryce wrote letters to his social worker, telling him what was happening, but he never got a response. In fact, he adds, he never saw his social worker again after he dropped Bryce off at the first home.
When Bryce finally left the children’s home, he says he was ‘a troubled young man’, drinking a lot and getting into trouble. Bryce had started to turn his life around when he was contacted by the police who were investigating allegations of abuse in the homes he had lived in. He gave them statements about both managers and gave evidence in court in a case against one of them.
He describes how much he hated seeing one of the men who abused him in court, and being called a liar by the defence barrister, but the manager was convicted and sent to prison.
Bryce says that being involved with the court case did not make him feel any better and he is frustrated that the other manager who abused him was not prosecuted.
He has suffered with depression and has attempted suicide. He feels upset and angry that he was not given any support during his young life, or after the court case. He says ‘One thing that annoys me is that I never got an apology from social services for everything they put me through … for placing me into a community where people are meant to look after you, not harm you but look after you, and that is a failure on both counts’.
Bryce knows that he avoided the abusers as much as he could, ran away numerous times, and told adults about it who he thought would help. But despite this, the pain he feels is made worse by feeling guilty that he wasn’t ‘braver’ at the time and didn’t stop the abuse happening to him.
He adds ‘I’ve never married, never had kids, for the simple reason I couldn’t live with anyone who knew what had happened to me and feeling sorry for me’.