Celeste says ‘ignorance and lack of knowledge and awareness are the biggest covers for abuse’
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Celeste says her parents were religious, strict and naive.
She enjoyed regular visits to her grandmother, but a male relative who lived there sexually abused her. The impact of this has been all-encompassing and lifelong.
Celeste writes that her parents gave her very little positive attention and she remembers being told off a lot. She was quiet and shy and subjected to bullying from other children throughout her time at school.
She relates that at home ‘fun was scarce’ and she enjoyed going to stay with her grandmother who lived on a farm, with Celeste’s male relative. She is not certain how old she was when he first sexually abused her, but thinks she was about four. He said he wanted her to help with some chores, took her to one of the farm buildings and attempted to rape her and ejaculated over her.
He sexually abused her many more times on visits to her grandmother’s house. The abuse escalated to what she now knows was rape. He would sometimes abuse her while pretending to play games with her when her parents or other relatives were nearby. She describes her discomfort and confusion, and how she found it hard to get away from him because she was afraid her parents would say she was being rude.
One night in her bedroom at her grandmother’s house, the male relative came in and forced her to masturbate him. He ejaculated on her hand, and she thought it was urine. When her father came up to say goodnight, Celeste told him he had ‘wee’d’ over her. Her father told her to settle down and go to sleep, but she thinks he went to speak to him. She says ‘That was the last time he raped me, or attempted to rape me’.
Celeste explains how her parents and other relatives failed to protect her. She writes that when she first told her parents of the extent of the abuse, only a few years ago, her mother said she had caught him with his hand down her pants when she was about three years old. Her mother added that she had shouted at him, but thought the abuse was a ‘one-off’ and never thought to keep checking him. Celeste says she remembered the occasion and that she was worried by her mum’s anger and shouting.
She now knows that a relative who worked in the health sector warned Celeste’s parents about the male relative. Celeste says this aunt would not let her children be alone with him, but says, ‘my mum thought she was over-reacting’.
Celeste gives a powerful account of the effect the abuse had on her, ‘Words do not do justice to the scale of the impact … It has affected and continues to affect every aspect of my being, body, mind and soul. I was so young that I will never know who I could have been had it never happened’. She has suffered with mental health issues all her life and has had difficulties with her career and relationships but she has had psychotherapy which she says has been very helpful.
She welcomes improvements in safeguarding but adds ‘there is still a sense that abuse ‘does not happen’ in certain parts of society ... in my experience a lack of parental knowledge and awareness enabled the problem to be hidden in full sight’.
She would like to see education for parents so they spend time with their children, listen to them and know what the possible signs of abuse are. She also feels that all survivors should be offered specialist support and counselling for as long as it is needed.